Five years ago, on the historic holiday known as Juneteenth, the United Methodist Council of Bishops unveiled a churchwide initiative called “Dismantling Racism.”
The bishops were responding to the series of high-profile killings of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd that sparked demonstrations throughout the United States.
Church initiatives, often introduced with great fanfare, also often disappear with hardly a whisper. In contrast, the UMC’s “Dismantling Racism” initiative, also known as “United Methodists Stand Against Racism,” marked its fifth anniversary in June with widespread evidence of ongoing commitment in personnel, money and programs aimed at overcoming racial injustice, which the 11-million-member worldwide denomination officially terms a sin.
As with the new United Methodist Social Principles, the UMC’s objectives put it at odds with the current anti-diversity sentiment in federal policies. Church leaders acknowledge the surrounding U.S. culture has turned inhospitable to diversity, equity and inclusion, but they say they have no intention of stopping their antiracism efforts.
The independent online journal United Methodist Insight surveyed all 52 U.S. annual conferences along with churchwide agencies and some local churches that have made “Dismantling Racism” a cornerstone of their ministry. The research resulted in a four-part feature series and an editorial documenting the status of the initiative as it enters its sixth year.
The series found:
- “Dismantling Racism” efforts share a common goal but differ widely in their local applications.
- All 52 U.S. annual conferences list some form of antiracism program on their websites.
- Pilgrimages touring historic sites related to racism and civil rights are a key component of many local-church initiatives.
- A tool called Intercultural Development Inventory is widely used as a first step for conferences and churches to assess their levels of racial prejudice.
Most of all, the series found church leaders agreed on this: Overcoming racism is a long-term struggle that requires understanding local contexts, approaching the topic as a Christian imperative. The most successful programs have had solid spiritual and practical support from church leaders and members.
Amania Drane
Amania Drane, a consultant who oversees the antiracism programs of the Chicago-based Northern Illinois Conference, said the conference adopted a statement in 2019 saying, “Racism is incompatible with Christian teaching.”
“I’m not sure we’d have had as much success if we didn’t have the unwavering support of conference leadership and the clergy and laity who volunteer their time,” she said.
Northern Illinois has nine approaches in its antiracism programming, such as Collective Action 2 Build Community, a collaboration of universities, libraries, faith communities and grassroots groups showing movies around a racial justice issue. The feature film for 2025 is A Binding Truth, which the collaboration will show in September prior to its debut in October on PBS.
Two annual conferences, Indiana and Missouri, found success with a publicity campaign called “Hate Divides. Love Unites.”
The campaign began in Missouri when its bishop, Robert Farr, reacted to the implied racism of a Confederate battle flag displayed on the highway to the Ozarks Lake District. Missouri leaders assumed responsibility for an antiracism billboard message that had been set up by a private citizen near the flag display and drew upon the denomination’s communications agency for help with advertising design.
The theme “Hate Divides. Love Unites” was reproduced in other billboards, posters, flags and even advertising toppers for gasoline station pumps, said Kim Jenne, Missouri’s conference ministries director.
“We’ve seen our churches make sermon series on ‘Love Unites,’ do their own T-shirts and give out stickers,” Jenne said.
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Missouri shared its “Love Unites” theme with the neighboring Indiana Conference, said Lan Wilson, then Indiana’s associate director for diversity and inclusion who moved in July to a similar position in the Virginia Annual Conference.
“We invited all Indiana United Methodist churches to change their signs to ‘Hate Divides, Love Unites,’” he said. “We put up billboards and posted messages on social media.
Lan Wilson
“We didn’t know if it was working until about three months ago, when we got a message from a woman in South Bend. She said she’d been apart from the church for a long time, but that reading a ‘Love Unites’ billboard every day for weeks made her believe God is real.”
Local United Methodist churches offer similar expressions of “belonging” through diverse practices.
Since “Dismantling Racism” began in 2020, First United Methodist Church and St. Paul United Methodist Church in San Diego, Calif., have jointly awarded racial justice grants to local nonprofits that serve Black, indigenous and people of color communities working to dismantle systematic racism across San Diego County. The grants, funded by the Racial Justice Endowment, amounted to $40,000 in 2024 and will provide $36,000 this year.
“We know we have to sift through our tradition to see what needs to be unlearned.”
West End United Methodist Church in Nashville, Tenn., invokes God’s unconditional love as a “bedrock belief” in its AntiRacism Covenant. West End’s website offers a list of Black-owned businesses to support and an array of anti-racism resources, arranged in categories such as “Racial Reconciliation for Beginners,” “Mass Incarceration,” “First-Person Accounts,” “Deep Studies” and “Anti-Racism Resources for Youth.”
“Knowing our historic legacy, we know we have to sift through our tradition to see what needs to be unlearned and how that sinful way of thinking made its way into the church,” said Stacy Harwell-Dye, West End’s pastor of mercy and justice ministries.
Stacy Harwell-Dye
“We see the impact of racism in the ways and places that money gets spent or not spent, laws that are passed or not passed, and communities that continue to have to make a way out of no way,” Harwell-Dye said. “Anti-racism is part of our commitment to our (United Methodist) baptismal vows to ‘resist evil, injustice and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves.’”
In the end, church programs, such as his conference’s Divine Conversations and Embracing Our Differences studies, are only effective when they inspire people to change their behaviors about racism, said Miguel Padilla, staff member for equity, diversity and inclusion in the San Antonio-based Rio Texas Annual Conference, covering Southwest Texas.
“We can train and reach groups, but we must be intentional in living out our values, to create space for minority voices,” Padilla said. “We must really listen and be intentional and listen to those who for years have been outside.
“Just like Divine Conversations, (anti-racism) is a journey; how do I live it out on my own?” Padilla said. “We can put in legislation or laws or mandates, but people won’t see the beauty and benefits from diversity until they live it themselves.”
United Methodist Insight has compiled its “Dismantling Racism” series into a 52-page booklet that can be used as a church study. The booklet may be downloaded for free.
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