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- Justice Action Team
- Sep 6, 2022
Here is a list of great resources to begin and continue your journey learning about racial justice and how to become actively anti-racist. The list has been compiled by our Justice Action Team.
Books
Dear Church: A Love Letter from a Black Preacher to the Whitest Denomination in the US
The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander
The Fire Next Time; I Am Not Your Negro; The Cross of Redemption all by James Baldwin
I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness by Austin Channing Brown
Bury My Hear at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown
White Fragility, Robin DiAngelo
An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America by Michael Eric Dyson
Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America by Juan Gonzales
How to Be Antiracist; Stamped from the Beginning both by Ibram X. Kendi
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Between the World and Me by Ta Nehisi Coates
An African American and Latinx History of the United States by Paul Ortiz
The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America by Andres Resendez
Is Everyone Really Equal? Ann Introduction to Key Concepts in Social Justice Education by Oslem Sensoy, Robin DiAngelo, et al.,
From#BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
Articles
Podcasts/Radio
Movies/Documentaries/Videos
Social Media Accounts to Follow
Other
Resource Lists from Others
Trainings
For Kids/Working with Kids
- Justice Action Team
- Aug 21, 2022
This statement was officially adopted by the RFC members on 8/21/22:
Riverfront Family Church is fully committed to the liberation of each person from the bonds of oppression and injustice, acknowledging that we all need to be liberated. This is our sacred work.
We believe in a God who loves us all, without exception, and that God’s love is both just and merciful.
We believe that it is our responsibility to work to heal the wounds caused when the Christian church has been used as a weapon of intersectional harm and exploitation. This is our spiritual responsibility.
We actively seek to expose and dismantle our complicity with beliefs and systems--including white supremacy--that perpetuate injustice and oppression.
We reject the violence and spiritual falsehood of relationships based on coercion or hierarchy. We embrace “power-with” relationships, elevate the value of communal responsibility over the value of individualism, and seek the ongoing creation of cooperative egalitarian community. This is the lived expression of our beliefs.
We value deep listening, humility, joy, relational power, transformation, restoration, and equity.
We commit to following pro-Black BIack, Indigeness, and People of Color (BIPOC) civil rights leaders & community leaders of all ethnicities, genders, sexualities, abilities, faith traditions, and generations--past, present, and future--in solidarity and with deep respect. We commit to supporting justice work as it takes shape in our congregation and beyond.
We believe justice and liberation of all of us is necessary for real love, joyful relationship, and the wholeness that the Creator intended for all of creation.
- Pastor Ben
- Jul 3, 2022
This is a statement from the organization, "Christians Against Christian Nationalism". I have signed it; I hope you will consider doing so as well.
As Christians, our faith teaches us everyone is created in God’s image and commands us to love one another. As Americans, we value our system of government and the good that can be accomplished in our constitutional democracy. Today, we are concerned about a persistent threat to both our religious communities and our democracy — Christian nationalism.
Christian nationalism seeks to merge Christian and American identities, distorting both the Christian faith and America’s constitutional democracy. Christian nationalism demands Christianity be privileged by the State and implies that to be a good American, one must be Christian. It often overlaps with and provides cover for white supremacy and racial subjugation. We reject this damaging political ideology and invite our Christian brothers and sisters to join us in opposing this threat to our faith and to our nation.
As Christians, we are bound to Christ, not by citizenship, but by faith. We believe that:
People of all faiths and none have the right and responsibility to engage constructively in the public square.
Patriotism does not require us to minimize our religious convictions.
One’s religious affiliation, or lack thereof, should be irrelevant to one’s standing in the civic community.
Government should not prefer one religion over another or religion over nonreligion.
Religious instruction is best left to our houses of worship, other religious institutions and families.
America’s historic commitment to religious pluralism enables faith communities to live in civic harmony with one another without sacrificing our theological convictions.
Conflating religious authority with political authority is idolatrous and often leads to oppression of minority and other marginalized groups as well as the spiritual impoverishment of religion.
We must stand up to and speak out against Christian nationalism, especially when it inspires acts of violence and intimidation—including vandalism, bomb threats, arson, hate crimes, and attacks on houses of worship—against religious communities at home and abroad.
Whether we worship at a church, mosque, synagogue, or temple, America has no second-class faiths. All are equal under the U.S. Constitution. As Christians, we must speak in one voice condemning Christian nationalism as a distortion of the gospel of Jesus and a threat to American democracy.
