day of repentance
October 10, 2008
Prayers, tears and song mark Episcopal repentance for slavery
[Episcopal News Service] Expressing “profound regret that the Episcopal Church lent the institution of slavery its support and justification based on Scripture,” Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori issued a public apology October 4 for the church’s involvement in the institution of transatlantic slavery.
She went on to state that “after slavery was formally abolished, [the church] continued for at least a century to support de jure and de facto segregation and discrimination.”
The historic gesture of remorse drew hundreds of Episcopalians, both black and white, to St. Thomas African Episcopal Church in Philadelphia October 3-4 for the Day of Repentance — a two-day solemn observance which included presentations that examined racism in the past, present, and future. Jefferts Schori’s complete homily is here.
“It is an immense honor and joy for St. Thomas to host this two-day solemn observance and most fitting that it is being held here at the nation’s first black Episcopal church,” said the Rev. Martini Shaw, rector of St. Thomas.
St. Thomas, founded in 1792 by the Rev. Absalom Jones, a former slave, is the oldest African American Episcopal Church in the United States and the first black church in Philadelphia. Jones was the first person of African ancestry to be ordained a priest in the Episcopal Church. He and Richard Allen, the nation’s first African-American Methodist preacher, changed history when they initiated a walkout from St. George’s Methodist Church after blacks were denied full membership.
Bonnie Anderson, president of the Episcopal Church’s House of Deputies (the national legislative house that includes clergy and lay members), was in attendance for both days and said, “This is an amazing day that has been long in coming.”
However she emphasized that although “this is a great start to a new beginning,” no one should view it as being over. Understanding that the “work is hard” and can be emotional she stressed that “it must continue” for the betterment of the Episcopal Church.
“Our coming together shows that this is not an Episcopal problem, nor a Christian problem, but a human problem,” explained the Rev. Jayne Oasin, program officer for Anti-Racism and Gender Equality for the Episcopal Church. “We are saying that we have marginalized and oppressed others, and have not regarded every one as God’s equal creation but we’re not going to be that way anymore.”
Seventeen bishops participated in the event which welcomed the following ecumenical partners: Baptists, Catholics, Presbyterians, Unitarian Universalist and Christian Methodist.
Bob Brundige, of St. Elizabeth Church in Ridgewood, New Jersey said he felt strongly that an “apology” was not enough and what was missing from this event was some form of reparations which he felt was owed to African-Americans by the Episcopal Church for its involvement in and support of slavery and segregation. He suggested the creation of scholarships for black students to attend seminary and/or college as one type of reparation.
Karen Hardwick of the Diocese of Washington said that the question of reparations is “the hard part. It’s virtually impossible to measure injustice and the damages that flow from slavery,” she said.
Bishop Eugene Sutton, the first African American bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland, called it “an emotional day.”
“It’s part of a year of turning the clock forward in Maryland and continuing the work of fighting intolerance,” he said.
Sutton, a descendant of slaves, was referring to the stain on a diocese that was first led by Thomas John Claggett, the first bishop consecrated on American soil, who owned slaves while serving as the rector of St. James’ Parish in Ann Arundel County.
Through tears Loretto VanGrasstek, 72, of Church of the Ascension in Stillwater, Minnesota, said, “I cried from the moment I sat down to the last song we sang.”
Born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, VanGrasstek of Creole and Choctaw descent, said, “It’s overwhelming to hear white people admit the things I’d only heard my grandmother speak of.”
Loretto’s husband Skye said when his wife recalls the memories of her great grandmother Josephine Starks, a former slave who lived to be 113 years old, she remembers brushing her hair and asking where the “ridges” she felt on her back came from and the answer would always be that “master beat her” sometimes “cause she had done something wrong and sometimes cause he just felt like it.”
At the other end of the spectrum is Skye who discovered four years ago that his great, great, great uncle was a slave trader in the Caribbean in the early 1800s.
Skye said despite the commonality of Loretto’s family “living with the brutality of the Ku Klux Klan and his living under Nazi brutality in Amsterdam during World War II” he is “taking care of Loretto so everything just comes around.”
In this year marking the 200th anniversary of the abolishment of slavery, John Vanderstar, Executive Council member and author of the 2006 General Convention resolution A123, which called for the occasion, said that “the church needs to confront its past in order to change its future.”
Resolution A123 declared that the institution of slavery in the United States and “anywhere else in the world” was and is a sin, and mandated that the church acknowledge and express regret for its support of slavery and for supporting “de jure and de facto segregation and discrimination” for years after slavery’s abolition. The resolution also asked the Presiding Bishop to call for a “Day of Repentance and Reconciliation” and to organize a service.
C. David Williams, president of the Union of Black Episcopalians, who Jefferts Schori also referred to in her homily, described the day as “sublime.”
“It [the day] was offered to God from hearts and minds of black and white people who had need for this apology and received it,” he said. “But we have a long way to go in making the apology real and I’m pledging myself to it.”
The Episcopal Church will now join other denominations and the Church of England, which in 2006 voted to acknowledge its complicity in the global slave trade.
‘Springboard for future action’
The gathering began October 3 with three presentations entitled “Revisiting the Past”, “Taking Action in the Present” and “Charting a Course for the Future.” Presenters included the Rev. Dr. Harold Lewis, rector, Calvary Episcopal Church, Pittsburgh, and author of “Yet With a Steady Beat” the foundational book about African Americans and the Episcopal Church; Bishop Chip Marble, assisting bishop in the Diocese of North Carolina; Dr. Anita George, chairperson of the Executive Council Anti-Racism Committee; and Byron Rushing, member of the Massachusetts State Legislature.
In his address “Bend our Pride to thy Control: The Need of the Church to Repent for the Sin of Slavery and its Aftermath” Lewis described slavery as “that odious institution” that has been a virulent cancer that has “metastasized through the bloodstream of our society.”
“The church early on could have assumed the role of that of physician, placing herself in a position to ‘heal the sin-sick soul’ of the society to which she ministered, assuring its people that there is indeed a balm in Gilead,” he explained. “Instead, she allowed herself to be infected along with her patient, rendering herself unable to be of any assistance.”
Marble and George acted as moderators while the dioceses of Delaware, Maryland, Atlanta, Mississippi, New York, North Carolina and South East Florida reported on the current work toward racial healing happening in their dioceses.
Nearly all mentioned using the documentary film, “Traces of the Trade,” by independent filmmaker Katrina Browne as an educational tool. The movie tells the story of Browne’s New England ancestors, the DeWolfs, the most-active slave-trading family in the United States and prominent Episcopalians from Rhode Island.
Browne said Jefferts Schori’s mention of her film in the homily “was an honor.”
“What has been striking about the power of the film is how it seems to resonate with people’s truth,” she said.
In speaking on the future, Rushing told those present that “the course for a future of awareness of the foundation of slavery to our society winds through remorse.” He said that remorse, as opposed to apology, “requires truth today and tomorrow mark the public announcement of this winding course.”
“Nothing is being accomplished by us today except beginning,” he explained.
Ed Rodman, professor of Pastoral Theology and Urban Ministry at Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, summed up all three topics of discussion and said “vision only comes when you learn your history.”
“What would make me most proud is if people draw from this event and use it as a springboard for future action,” said Oasin.
She said a DVD will be available in a month but programs of the gathering will be distributed to dioceses in the coming weeks.
churches evicted
October 10, 2008
This is an email I just recieved from the Boarding School Healing Project that I thought worth sharing.
Update from Kevin Annett and The International Human Rights Tribunal
into Genocide in Canada
Oct. 05, 2008 – Squamish Nation Territory Greetings from the
ancestral land of Chief Kiapilano and his people!
This morning, groups of residential school survivors will be posting and
distributing notices at all of the main downtown churches in
“Vancouver”, declaring to the officials and members of the Catholic,
Anglican and United churches that they are illegally trespassing on
Squamish Nation land and are now subject to arrest and imprisonment
under both Squamish and British Columbia law. (see statement at right)
This bold act is a sign of the times, of how far some survivors have
evolved in their campaign to win justice from the churches that murdered
50,000 innocent children.
“It’s time for the churches that killed our people to get off our land”
hereditary Squamish Chief Kiapilano declared last March, when he
formally evicted the “Gang of Three” (Catholic, Anglican, United)
churches from his territory, which encompasses all of Vancouver, the
north shore and Whistler, the site of the 2010 Olympics.
Chief Kiapilano commented yesterday,
“We’re tired of waiting for the churches to be held accountable for all
their crimes, because they never will be unless we do it. So I’ve
declared the convening of traditional Squamish courts of justice in
which we’ll put on trial the heads of these churches and known offenders
at residential schools.
“The trials start immediately. We will be issuing arrest warrants
against the church officials. I am calling on other hereditary chiefs
will do the same thing on their territories: evict the murderers from
your land and bring them to trial!”
Chief Kiapilano is not acting alone. More than two dozen groups are now
working across “Canada” in conjunction with Chief Kiapilano and our
International Human Rights Tribunal, which has arisen as an alternative
to the phoney, toothless, government-run “Truth and Reconciliation
Commission” (TRC) into residential schools. (The TRC has no power to
subpoena, prohibits people from naming names or even describing a
wrongdoing at a residential school, will not conduct any criminal
investigation, and was set up by the very churches that ran the
schools!).
Our Tribunal has been recognized by a host of indigenous groups in
Guatemala, the Philippines, Mexico and Europe, some of whom will be
sending international observers to our forums and investigations over
the next year, especially as we begin to unearth the forensic evidence
in mass graves near former Indian residential schools.
In a nutshell, the direction of our campaign now has three main foci:
1. Create a counter-Tribunal to the government’s “TRC” that will hold
alternative hearings to the TRC forums, and will publish a “Counter
Report” to the TRC’s anticipated whitewash of residential school crimes.
(At our forums, we will encourage people to name names, and provide
evidence of all the crimes that went on in the schools).
2. Identify and repatriate the buried remains of the children who died
in all the Indian residential schools.
3. Evict the Catholic, Anglican and United Church from all indigenous
territories across Canada, reclaim their buildings, and establish in
them aboriginal courts of justice where known offenders and the
fiduciary head officers of these churches, the RCMP and the government
of Canada will be tried and sentenced for crimes against humanity,
including murder.
If this sounds like a tall order, know that actions are already
happening in many territories to bring about this sovereignty and direct
justice. (We can’t say where and how, quite yet, for security reasons,
but if you write or call me I will put you in touch with organizers in
your area, who will tell you more!)
Our strength lies on the ground, in our communities, among the survivors
and their families who know that they have been used and abandoned by
the whorish “Assembly of First Nations” (AFN) and other puppet native
politicians, who serve the government and the churches first and last.
It’s among these survivors that I have been travelling, speaking, and
organizing throughout 2008, in five separate tours across Canada and the
USA. I’ve also been to Europe, where we are rallying forces to support
our International Tribunal, and bring charges against Canada and its
churches at the UN and other bodies.
It’s because of this grassroots movement that the government caved in
last year, and began admitting that thousands of children died in the
residential schools. We have forced the feds and the churches to the
wall, and they are doing their best now to bury their guilt (with help
from the AFN) and worm their way out of any responsibility for the mass
murder that Steven Harper admitted to publicly in his “apology” last
June 11 in Parliament.
It’s up to us to prevent them from getting away with the biggest crime
in Canadian, and world, history.
Someone asked me today is I was going to vote in the Canadian election,
or speak up at all candidates’ meetings about the Canadian Holocaust.
I replied by saying,
“Why would I vote for the system that is murdering my friends every
day?”
(Yesterday, I met Harry Wilson, an Alberni residential school survivor,
who told me that three of his family have overdosed and died after
receiving their paltry “compensation” for years of torture in the
Alberni United Church school).
The murder goes on. But one of our best weapons is our film UNREPENTANT,
which has been seen by nearly a million people worldwide, and tells the
story of planned genocide in Canada. Please arrange a screening of it in
your community and use it to rally people to our movement. (see
www.hiddenfromhisto ry.org <http://www.hiddenfr omhistory. org/zxs> for
details of how to order and download it).
From mid October to mid November, I’ll be conducting my sixth tour of
Canada and the USA to prepare for our spring campaign. I will be
speaking and showing UNREPENTANT in Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec
and the Maritimes, New York, the mid west, and California. If I can
raise the funds, I will also be speaking in Italy, Spain and Germany -
look out, Mr. Pope!
If you live in these areas, please contact me and I’ll let you know more
about my venues.
Our Tribunal needs your support, and financial help. We depend
completely on you for our work. If you can contribute anything to the
cost of my travel and the production of our film and books, please
donate through the pay pal on my website (www.hiddenfromhist ory.org) or
send a cheque made out to Lori O’Rorke to:
Lori O’Rorke
260 Kennedy St.
Nanaimo, B.C. Canada V9R 2H8
(We also have a direct bank deposit system which you can use – please
ask about it).
This is a crucial time – please help us make a stand for the living and
the dead.
I hope to see many of you soon. Please reply!
Sincerely,
Kevin Annett – Eagle Strong Voice www.hiddenfromhisto ry.org
pager: 1-888-265-1007 (pager in Canada)
email: hiddenfromhistory@ yahoo.ca or kevin_annett@ hotmail.com
<http://groups. yahoo.com/ group/FirstPeopl esNews/post? postID=EkXeecTI9 Vn2\
GH8Ia718iF2yHDvtMrM J7agG8Y-RacNHYO- 26h9D0QFtCVYWz8p glA1r8SY8dj_ z88DeVaZF\
uVvK> Notice of Illegal Trespass
You are Trespassing on Squamish Nation Land , claimed by hereditary
Squamish Chief Kiapilano in a writ duly filed in the Supreme Court of
British Columbia on March 4, 2008. (Docket S036483)
Under the Trespass Law of the Province of British Columbia , you may go
to jail or be fined if you enter this building.
The Catholic, Anglican and United Church of Canada were legally evicted
by Chief Kiapilano from his territory in what is called Vancouver
because of their refusal to return the remains of the children who died
in their Indian residential schools.
This legal Trespass Notice is in immediate effect.
You have been duly warned.
Siem Kiapilano
Squamish Nation
Lawful Owner of these Premises.
October 5, 2008
www.hiddenfromhisto ry.org/LinkClick .aspx?link= 82&tabid= 36
<http://www.hiddenfr omhistory. org/LinkClick. aspx?link= 82&tabid= 36>
—– Teresa Anahuy
http://groups. yahoo.com/ group/FirstPeopl esNews
<http://groups. yahoo.com/ group/FirstPeopl esNews>
