Black History Month
During Black History Month, we will celebrate and continue to learn from Black Christian leaders who have inspired the Iona Community.
The Challenging Racism CCN is passionate about projects which advocate for racial justice in churches and wider society. We seek to address the issue of white privilege, and develop strategies to challenge racism in society and large institutions. We support people who are challenging racism in their life and work, finding places where racism has gone unchallenged and uncovering hidden or unconscious bias. At our Annual General Meeting in June 2024, we renewed our commitment to challenging all forms of racism and oppressive practices.
We are called to learn, pray and take action
Learn
- Iona Community Young Adults Group has developed an Anti-Racism Resource which we use with our family groups
- We have been inspired by Ben Lindsay’s book We Need to Talk About Race, to reflect on the Church’s role in racial inequality.
- Azariah France-Williams challenges us to admit our complicity in racism in his book Ghost Ship: Institutional Racism and the Church of England
Act
The Challenging Racism Common Concern Network is:
- working through outcomes from a recent qualitative survey of experience and working practice which we undertook to understand and challenge racism across all our Family Groups
- seeking to hear more narratives of differing heritage from the life of our Community in the year ahead
Pray
Throughout Black History Month and beyond, we hold in the light the untold stories, the unsung heroes, and the everyday individuals who have made an indelible impact on our communities. We pray, inspired by Kaz Reeves’ poem, that we might be communities who determine never to give in, but in love will always hold on.
Saturday People
Joy is there at midnight’s morning when the sun peeps through, you find
being with God in the darkness raises the heat of blood run so slow in fear and pain
when grey dawn is the only hope and the light in the warmth of God’s hand
keeps out the frozen death of never loving anyone, never being well again
emptying the spaces of our faith or none, opens the coming of this hour in the dark
Saturdays of waiting for the Christians, not Sunday bright congregating
but faithful carrying coal of ages, pulled out of earth pressed, hard ancient bark
here too are Muslim, Atheist, Hindu, Humanist, Buddhist and Jew all waiting
listening unsure in debates of generations to grow and flow in bright fierce warmth
the new day, the new day, the new day breaking out in flame and chant and song
prayer of not knowing that we share the truth our search from this sparkling forth
this we know even waiting patiently in silent hope and peace, our calling long
not knowing anything in the dark we tell the people, oppression’s endlessness is done
in communities who determine never to give in, but in love will always hold on
Kaz Reeves
USA North East