Special Committee on the PC(USA) and Race holds a General Assembly informational session

LOUISVILLE — A Wednesday General Assembly informational session saw the Special Committee on the PC(USA) and Race discuss RAC-04, the Special Committee’s Final Report, which will be considered next week by the 227^th General Assembly’s Racial Justice Committee.

“Over the last two years, we have held up a mirror to ourselves and our denomination,” said the Rev. Tim Marquez, co-moderator of the Special Committee together with the Rev. Kate Jones Calone. “We confronted a painful reality: institutional white supremacy functions within our structures.”

“Our siblings of color are exhausted from sharing painful stories without seeing structural change,” Marquez said. “We come before you with absolute confidence that this recommendation will move us forward.”

“If our church is going to live into God’s shalom,” Marquez said, “dismantling racism cannot be a side justice. It must be our agenda of justice.”

The Rev. Fran Lane-Lawrence, a member of the Special Committee, said the work of the PC(USA) “is no longer to investigate, but to actually do the work of ridding ourselves of white supremacy,” which “prevents the PC(USA) from doing the work inside its structure and within the world.”

“Our Special Committee has met, discerned, listened and wrestled together for close to four years,” said Ruling Elder Edgar Hayes. “It’s been a powerful and frustrating experience.” Hayes said that “holding up a mirror to ourselves is a painful and sacred enterprise.”

Hayes said the Special Committee has noted “how the burden of this cycle of work is borne by people of color, only to see little follow-through done. This work must be a persistent and urgent commitment. We see an opportunity now to break those cycles.”

“Dismantling [white supremacy] will not happen until it becomes the collective work of us all,” Lane-Lawrence said.

Members of the Special Committee took the 65 or so people who participated in the webinar through some of the report’s recommendations, including:

• Directing Presbyterian Life & Witness to create a tracking system that displays the progress of all GA business, beginning with business related to race, racism and white supremacy submitted at the 227^th General Assembly and working back until all business is captured, at least back to reunion in 1983.
• Directing PL&W to assemble and centralize resources on antiracism, diversity, equity, inclusion, white Christian nationalism and racial justice “in one place easily located and accessible on the PC(USA) website.”
• Making “an institutional commitment, with dedicated staff and budgetary resources,” to continue and expand the Matthew 25 movement. Lane-Lawrence said this recommendation came about following conversations with congregations and mid councils. “It’s a bottom-up and grassroots commitment,” Lane-Lawrence said of the Matthew 25 movement.
• Directing PL&W to provide interpretation and translation “in any language necessary” for people to “fully participate in the assembly, address the body and carry out committee work in their preferred language” at the 228^th General Assembly and at successive assemblies.
• Amending the Book of Order to require that mid councils hold antiracism training at least every three years for teaching elders, commissioned ruling elders, persons “certified and called to service” in congregations, councils and church-related entities, and inquirers and candidates under their jurisdiction.
• Directing PL&W to provide annual antiracism training, accessible to all members and councils of the PC(USA).

“We have hope, and we hope this report gives you hope, too,” Lane-Lawrence said. “We don’t pretend that a few recommendations from a Special Committee will transform the PC(USA).”

“White supremacy is embedded in the system,” Marquez said. “Sometimes you see it and sometimes you don’t. If you don’t name it as such, it gives white supremacy permission.”

“A person of color like me is appealing to all of you that [white supremacy] exists,” Marquez said, “and you need to accept that.”

Watch recordings of GA informational sessions here.