Can Black and white churches partner in antiracist work?

Warren United Methodist Church and First United Methodist Church are just 2 miles apart. One is mostly white, the other Black. To ‘wrestle with racism,’ they had to face their segregated pasts.

 

by Chris Hedlin, PublicSource

The evening of Monday, Nov. 1, 2021, about 80 people stood on the corner of South Aiken and Centre avenues outside of First United Methodist Church. They held candles and signs with calls to action like “Black Lives Matter” and “Stop protecting property over people.”

The vigil honored Jim Rogers, a Pittsburgh man who died the day after officers repeatedly shocked him with a Taser in October. A medical examiner ruled Rogers’ death accidental, the result of a lack of oxygen to the brain. 

The organizers of the vigil, members of an interchurch Wrestling with Racism group, are among those pushing officials to investigate further. 

Founded about 15 years prior, Wrestling with Racism brings together members of First Church, a predominantly white church, and Warren United Methodist Church, a Black church in the Hill District. The group also includes members of a few other faith communities including Lutherans, Mennonites, Quakers, Presbyterians and Baptists. 

The Wrestling with Racism group has held regular vigils for racial justice since George Floyd’s murder. They also use their voices to write letters to political leaders and national TV personalities and to discuss anti-racist books, movies and plays together. 

People holding signs that read things like "Black lives matter" and "Stop prioritizing property over people" stand at night on a grassy hill outside of First United Methodist Church's brightly lit, large brick building.
People gather for a vigil outside First United Methodist Church on Nov. 1, 2021. The vigil honored Jim Rogers, who died the day after being repeatedly tasered. The vigil was sponsored by Wrestling with Racism, an initiative with members from First Church, Warren Church and neighboring faith communities. (Photo by Ron Chan/First United Methodist Church)

Before COVID, they had an annual celebration where they worshiped in each other’s churches and ate meals in one another’s homes. One Sunday, First Church would close its doors, and everyone would go to Warren. The next week, it would switch.

Pastor Don Blinn Jr., who served at Warren at the time and had brought them into the Wrestling with Racism group, said he’d never seen anything like it.

“People so often feel, ‘I can’t worship any place but in my sanctuary,’” he said. He cited the biblical cry of the Israelites when they were forced into exile in Babylon: “How can we sing God’s songs in a strange land?” 

Unlike Israel and Babylon, Warren and First Church are only 2 miles apart, bookending Centre Avenue. Still, the factors that have separated them — neighborhood boundaries, racism, segregation in Methodism — can make that distance seem far.

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