The Love of Christ Impels Us:
Becoming an Anti-Racist Parish

Click here to learn more about our parish Racism and Reconciliation committee.

What is anti-racism?  Racial prejudice usually means a belief that some racial groups are better or worse than others.   Structural racism describes the ways in which our institutions and structures create and maintain racial inequalities. Anti-racism goes beyond simply avoiding racism, and is an effort to oppose and dismantle racism and to promote racial equity.

Why is College Church talking about anti-racism?  College Church has a long history of ongoing commitment to justice and racial equity. More recently, since 2014 and the Ferguson uprising, we as a parish have been asking ourselves some hard questions about our role in racial inequality.  How have we ignored it? How have we supported it? How have we worked to change it? In addition, the USCCB recently released its pastoral letter against racism, which explains how the work of anti-racism is deeply rooted in our Catholic faith.

What anti-racism work has College Church been doing? Since June of 2018, parishioners and staff representatives who had been working in various ways on racial equity efforts within our parish have been meeting monthly as the College Church Anti-Racism Leadership Team. We hope to create a focused vision and mission for our parish to become an anti-racist institution. That means we want to be working purposefully to oppose racism and create racial equity: within ourselves as individuals, within our parish as a community, and within our city.  We are asking: How can College Church increase our commitment to dismantle racism? How can we grow in our understanding of racism and inequality? What would College Church look and feel like if our intentional identity was that of a truly anti-racist institution?

How are we doing this work?   We have connected with Crossroads, an organization based in the Midwest that helps religious communities and secular organizations learn how to do the work of anti-racism.  Their vision is that Racism dehumanizes us all —Dismantling racism heals us all.  Their method is to help organizations transform themselves, thereby transforming their communities. The Leadership Team attended a full-day training with Crossroads and has been using their tools to conduct focus groups within already established commissions and ministries within our Parish.  

Want to be involved?  Our team has been evolving and is still very much in the beginning stages of this work. We value the experiences and gifts of all of our parishioners and want to enrich the makeup of our leadership team. Please contact Christine Dragonette at christine@sfxstl.org if you are interested in being a part of this impassioned ministry.

Undoing Our Knots

The webinar, Undoing Our Knots, presented by Dr. Maureen O’Connell was presented on March 30 , 2023. In this talk, Dr. O’Connell Maureen O’Connell tells the stories of her Irish Catholic family’s history, sharing some of the choices her relatives made that reinforced racial segregation and inequity, often with the encouragement of a complicit church hierarchy. She further explores some of the spiritual practices of our Catholic faith that help us to undo our own knots and free us to create more inclusive Catholic communities. You can view the webinar at the following link: youtube.com/watch?v=h_A3-njwx40

Our Parish vision: antiracism

 

Our Parish Racial History

As part of the ongoing Parish Racial Equity Review under way at College Church, the History Committee has been discovering and sharing some of the concealed stories of race that are part of the formation of our city, the archdiocese, and our parish, including its relationship to St. Louis University, and the Society of Jesus.  Sharing these stories is part of our work to interrupt the systemic racism that persists within our institutions.  Highlights of our findings may be seen in a printed brochure available through this link.

In 2022, a series of presentations was held to provide a more complete understanding of the story of race that continues to impact us today.  Recordings of those presentations may be viewed through the following links:

Slavery, Faith, and the Pursuit of Freedom – September 18, 2022

Jesuit Ministry to African American Catholics – October 16, 2022

Voices of Resistance, Advocacy, and Activism – November 20, 2022

If you have questions or would like more information about these presentations or the work of Antiracism at College Church, please contact Winnie Sullivan at penultim@swbell.net or Lisa Burks lmburks60@gmail.com.

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And to know the place for the first time.                                          
T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets