Chicago diocese confronts legacy of slavery with Repentance, Repair and Reconciliation Project

[Episcopal News Service] The Diocese of Chicago has begun holding listening sessions intended to advance its yearslong examination of the legacy of slavery in the diocese. Its Antiracism Commission is leading the sessions as part of a project that will produce an updated report on that legacy and recommend actions to help repair the harm caused by past racism.

The first online listening session was held Sept. 7 and will be followed by a second online session on Oct. 5. In addition, in-person listening sessions are being held at historically Black churches in the diocese to receive input on steps the it and its members can take toward repentance and repair. The most recent in-person session was held Sept. 8 at St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Chicago, Illinois.

“We can sometimes learn a lot from just being in community with one another, sharing our hopes, our dreams, our aspirations,” Rory Smith, a member of St. Thomas, told Episcopal News Service. Smith serves with Kathleen Murphy as co-chairs of the Antiracism Commission’s Repentance, Repair and Reconciliation Project, which hopes to report back to the diocese by the end of this year.

The project also has contracted with Osiris Professional Services to help facilitate the discussions. “Their work will help us deepen our understanding of repentance, repair and reconciliation, and provide practical steps for our community to engage in meaningful action,” Ida Butler, Antiracism Commission co-chair, said in a diocesan news release.

The Diocese of Chicago is based in Illinois’ largest city and includes congregations and communities across the northern and western parts of the state. For the past 15 years, the diocese has mirrored the wider church, as both have examined past complicity with racist systems and launched efforts to promote racial healing.

The Episcopal Church, with roots dating back to the earliest white European settlements in North America’s colonial era, remains today a denomination with a membership reported to be about 90% white. In 2006 and again in 2009, the church’s General Convention called on dioceses and congregations to research their history of supporting and benefiting from racial oppression.

The Diocese of Chicago took up that call in 2009 by commissioning a report on the legacy of slavery in the diocese, with research assistance from a professor of African American Studies at the University of Illinois, Chicago. That research culminated in 2017 with a 28-page report intended to help guide all the diocese’s congregations in subsequent conversations about their own histories.

The release of Chicago’s report came just months after The Episcopal Church in May 2017 launched what would become its cornerstone racial reconciliation framework, Becoming Beloved Community, a resource for deepening conversations about the church’s historic complicity with slavery, segregation and racism, while enlisting all Episcopalians in the work of racial healing. The four-part framework is illustrated as a labyrinth: telling the truth about our churches and race, proclaiming the dream of Beloved Community, practicing the way of love in the pattern of Jesus and repairing the breach in society.

Smith, the Diocese of Chicago lay leader, described the Antiracism Commission’s latest effort in the language of Becoming Beloved Community. Before the diocese could turn to “repairing the breach,” its 2017 report on the legacy of slavery was about “telling the truth,” he said. It found past examples of the diocese allocating resources to growing white suburban communities, often at the expense of struggling Black congregations in more urban parts of the diocese.

Other examples, he said, revealed a history and a culture of exclusion, such as when white congregations would accommodate Black worshippers not as equals but by requiring them to worship separately and at nontraditional worship hours.

“It’s not just your intent,” he said. “It’s the impact of what happens that matters.”

Conversations like the ones in his diocese have become widespread across The Episcopal Church, and some dioceses have begun committing financial resources to addressing the enduring harm caused by racial bias embedded in many American institutions, including the church. Such funding often is referred to as “reparations” but goes beyond that term’s secular connotations of individual payments to enslaved persons’ descendants.

In May 2022, the Diocese of Maryland awarded $175,000 in its first round of community grants in a newly created program of racial reparations. The dioceses of Texas, New Jersey and Washington are among the others engaged in similar reparations initiatives.

The Diocese of Virginia, its colonial roots dating to 1607, passed a resolution in November 2021 to use $10 million to establish an endowment for a reparations fund and set aside an additional $500,000 for a racial justice and healing fund.

More recently, the Diocese of New York held a service of apology in March 2023 as part of the ongoing work of the diocese’s Reparations Commission and as the diocese developed plans for distributing money from its own reparations fund.

The Diocese of Chicago has not yet outlined a specific plan of action in response to its historical research. The listening sessions underway now are expected to guide the Antiracism Commission in proposing next steps.

“This is what it means to be in good relations and treat everyone fairly within the diocese,” Laura Singer, who is the Antiracism Commission co-chair with Butler, told ENS. “We acknowledge that there have been wrongs done, and we need to take the steps to repent and repair and come up with a process for reconciliation.”

– David Paulsen is a senior reporter and editor for Episcopal News Service based in Wisconsin. He can be reached at dpaulsen@episcopalchurch.org.