Repairing the Breach in Society & Institutions

1/6/2024

The Episcopal Church’s work toward racial reconciliation, healing and justice is guided by the long-term commitment to Becoming Beloved Community. We organize our ministries around the four quadrants of the labyrinth. Each quadrant represents a commitment that is vital to lasting change within us, our churches, our communities, and society at large.

• Telling the Truth about Our Churches and Race
• Proclaiming the Dream of Beloved Community
• Practicing Jesus’ Way of Healing Love
• Repairing the Breach in Society and Institutions

Doing the work of repairing the breach is how we put into action the things we hear and say in church. God puts it this way,

“This is the kind of fast day I’m after: to break the chains of injustice, get rid of exploitation in the workplace, free the oppressed, cancel debts. What I’m interested in seeing you do is: sharing your food with the hungry, inviting the homeless poor into your homes, putting clothes on the shivering ill-clad, being available to your own families. Do this and the lights will turn on, and your lives will turn around at once. Your righteousness will pave your way. The God of glory will secure your passage. Then when you pray, God will answer. You’ll call out for help and I’ll say, ‘Here I am.’ “If you get rid of unfair practices, quit blaming victims, quit gossiping about other people’s sins, If you are generous with the hungry and start giving yourselves to the down-and-out, Your lives will begin to glow in the darkness, your shadowed lives will be bathed in sunlight. I will always show you where to go. I’ll give you a full life in the emptiest of places— firm muscles, strong bones. You’ll be like a well-watered garden, a gurgling spring that never runs dry. You’ll use the old rubble of past lives to build anew, rebuild the foundations from out of your past. You’ll be known as those who can fix anything, restore old ruins, rebuild and renovate, make the community livable again.”

Isaiah 58:6-12 translation from The Message

Our own church body has said this:

If all our action centers on the Church and nurturing our interior experience of Beloved Community, we will have missed the core of the loving, liberating, life-giving good news of Jesus Christ: it is for all the world, not just for those within the walls of the Church. … Our Church has enjoyed a unique degree of economic and social privilege in the United States, thanks in part to our origins in the British Empire. That privilege often extends to Episcopal congregations in Latin America and Asia, and it often transcends the actual economic status of the congregation itself. The Episcopal Church has a special vocation to examine our history, to say we are sorry, and to participate in the repair and restoration of communities and institutions that struggle to flourish because of systems built to privilege our Church’s historic membership. Put frankly, we cannot speak of reconciliation and healing without also speaking of justice and repairing what our Church has contributed to breaking.

“Becoming Beloved Community,” p. 21

As we work to repair the breach in society and Institutions, we ask questions:
What social institutions and systems most clearly bear the signs of racial injustice and brokenness? How could we participate in the repair, restoration, and healing of people, institutions, and systems?

As we work for restorative justice, we take advantages of opportunities and tools we have as a church:

• Becoming Beloved Community Where You Are (p. 8)
• Resources: Justice and Action Office of Social Justice and Engagement (including “From the Pew to the Public Square” and “Protest Chaplains”)
• Asset-Based Community Development
• Office of Government Relations (including Episcopal Public Policy Network)
• Eco-justice and Creation Care
• Episcopal Migration Ministries
• Poor People’s Campaign
• Absalom Jones Center (including Reimagining Policing and Public Safety Project)
• Historically Black Colleges and Universities: St. Augustine’s University and Vorhees College

All of these are here for us as a part of our commitment to Practicing Jesus’ Way of Healing Love.

Baptismal Promise: Baptismal Promise: Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?

Our Answer: I will with God’s help.