St. Luke's completed Phase One of our work in January 2020:

•  Truth-telling 

  •  A video documentary series in partnership with members of a partner AME-Zion congregation to capture stories by those who grew up in the Jim Crow era in Salisbury.

  • A weekend workshop for the community headlined by Bishop Will Willimon and Dr. Catherine Meeks of the Absalom Jones Center.

    • Links: Willimon lecture​, Meeks lecture, Willimon-Meeks dialogue, Willimon sermon

  • Funding research on the history of slavery and St. Luke's, with a public presentation given by historian Gary Freeze (link to presentation). A written report was published in 2021.

• Partnership with Soldiers Memorial AME-Zion Church: Located on just one block from St. Luke's, we regularly partner with Soldiers Memorial to get to know each other as sisters and brothers in Christ and to work towards our shared mission of reconciliation.

• Racial Equity Training: Our clergy have attended training by the Racial Equity Institute and we commend it to all. St. Luke's is also a proud sponsor and partner of Racial Equity Rowan, a local organization working to bring REI workshops to Rowan County, and our Rector and another church member serve on the Steering Committee of this group.

• Supporting others: Recognizing that this work can never be done alone, we are grateful for the work being done by the Salisbury-Rowan circle of the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival and Racial Equity Rowan.

• Beloved Community Discussions: We meet over a meal every few months to watch videos on the topic of race and then have conversations, both as small groups around our tables and as a larger group. These events are typically attended not only by members of St. Luke's, but members of the wider Salisbury community. Videos that we have watched and discussed include:

  • Debby Irving - Finding Myself in the Story of Race

  • The Myth of Race

  • The Story of Race

  • Bryan Stevenson - The Urgent Need for Reconciliation

  • Michelle Alexander - The Future of Race in America

  • Mellody Hobson - Color Blind or Color Brave?

  • Alice Goffman - How we're priming some kids for college — and others for prison

 

As the work of racial reconciliation will span generations, there will be many more events to come...

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Phase Two of our Becoming Beloved Community had been planned to commence in the spring of 2020 but many of those events, which were built upon relationships and gatherings, were postponed due to the pandemic. However, spring 2020 was also a time when our nation was having conversations about race. Out of these events and conversations, we launched a icon project to address the need to have a worship space that included a greater diversity of representation and more fully depicted our prayers for becoming a beloved community. You can learn more about the results of this work on our icons page.

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Phase Three... Is in development. Please keep us in prayer and be in touch if you'd like to be a part of this ongoing work.

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