Dear friends, I’d like to invite you to join me and Bishop Todd Hunter virtually for an online conference Saturday, June 8 from 10am-3pm ET “Do You Want to Be Well: Diagnosis, Treatment, and Healing for the Church in America.” We, along with others, are offering this gathering because we love the Church, grieve for the Church, and more because we love Jesus and want to make his love known. Coracle, The Center for Formation, Justice, and Peace, and others are partnering together for the sake of healing for the Church and care for her members.
In the last year we’ve seen with greater clarity and with great sorrow how the very atmosphere of the White Evangelical movement can malform sincere followers of Jesus and create a damaging environment for many people, especially women and people of color. The maladies that afflict this particular expression of the Christian faith have their roots in the movement’s formative years and need to be honestly identified so lament can be made and repentance committed to for healing to occur, so that Jesus can have a truer witness in this tradition and so that folks within it can encounter Him more fully.
The threads of Christian nationalism, racism, and patriarchy are not often discussed constructively in the same conversation—and we rarely explore paths toward healing. This online conference will offer something different: opportunities for hope, healing and spiritual practice.
On Saturday, June 8th, we are taking time to consider diagnosis, treatment, and healing in an interactive environment with diverse speakers including Natasha Sistrunk Robinson, Greg Thompson, Mariah Humphries, Carolyn Custis James, and David Swanson (click here to read more about these friends). We will listen, learn, ask questions, share thoughts, and wrestle together. We hope you’ll join us. If you can, consider hosting a watch party with others in your community to have these conversations with, so let us know if you’d like to do that and we’ll provide some suggestions about how to. Also, please forward this along to those you think might want to participate and be encouraged by it or simply the fact that it’s being offered. If you’d like a flyer to spread the word, let us know, and do share our socials as they come out. Email me if your church or organization would like to partner with us on this.
Friends, it’s been true that, short of His glorious second coming, since Pentecost that the greatest hope for a different world and the clearest revelation of Jesus is his Bride and Body–the Church. We can’t give up on the Church even when she’s not so beautiful or behaving badly (see Hosea). That’s actually when love leans in and does the hard work, love for her because we love Him.