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Additional Resources

Faith and Race
Reflections from our members

A Note from Pr. Beth.  Once each month for the next three months, the Reflection will be provided by a member of the conversation group on Faith & Race that met over several months in late 2020.  We thank them for their offer to reflect with you on their experience.   

Ruth on Race (Jan 10 2021)

This Fall about 13 of us from the congregation met on Zoom for five conversations about Faith and Race.  We read articles and listened to and videos before each gathering, and then had an opportunity to share our reflections on the material with one or two other people, and the whole group, as beautifully facilitated by Anne Hall and Jessica Ingram.

For me the experience was not only personally moving and helpful but also allowed me to meet and listen to others in our congregation and beyond.  I’ve lived and worked in the San Juan Islands for only 2.5 years. Civil unrest and racial violence in our cities came to a head this year, and after 37 years of living in some of those very cities I was glad to find that, just as in the cities, it was my community of faith who brought me a way to focus my emotions, confusions, and concerns.

Of the many things I learned and am still reflecting on, I will share two here.  First is a concept I hear from both our African American sisters and brothers and our First Nations sisters and brothers.  We are not disconnected from our ancestors. Yes, I was not here 400 years ago when slave ships arrived from Africa. And yes, I was not here 200 years ago when white missionaries brought infectious diseases and an abusive form of Christianity to the Pacific Northwest. But we are called to pray for and think about seven generations behind us and seven generations ahead of us. Our ancestors created structures that are unjust at best and abusive at worse. We are all living with that legacy.  I personally find it enlightening to begin, in my own simple way, to pray for those seven generations past, to ask God’s forgiveness, and to ask God’s guidance on how to bring healing forward into the next seven generations. For me praying is key for my ability to make changes.

Second is the concept that I am white, and that “white” is a race just as much as “black” is. What is race? We heard from a deep thinker and scholar, Dr Robin Di Angelo, about this. She is the author of a book titled, White Fragility:  Why it’s so Hard for White People to Talk About Racism.  It isn’t easy but I am beginning to better see the structural and system racism that has been apart of my entire life, even growing up as a small town preacher’s daughter in rural Idaho and Oregon. What I yearn for and am hopeful that these conversations are leading us to, is a transition from a world of ‘racism’ (where group and institutional power is rooted in skin color, birth, and ethnic identity) to a world of ‘universalism’ (where group and institutional power is rooted in honor for human diversity and all of God’s creation). 

And I ask myself, is this not what Jesus, our teacher and Christ, has been asking us to focus on for two thousand years?

I look forward to our continued conversations, prayers, and works in this ELCA Congregation.

Ruth Fothergill

Annual Congregational Meeting

The Annual Congregational Meeting is scheduled for Saturday, January 23rd at 10am on Zoom.

Please plan to attend.

A message from Bishop Shelley Bryan Wee
Northwest Synod of Washington, ELCA

Recorded January 7, 2021

https://vimeo.com/498096758
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