Epistle from the Committee for Ministry on Racism of FGC

October 27, 2001

To Friends Everywhere:

Greetings from members of the Friends General Conference Committee for Ministry on Racism as we enter our second year as a standing committee. Our committee has grown from the seed found in the concerns of some Friends in Central Committee several years ago. For them it became clear that we needed to face the challenge of enhancing racial and ethnic diversity through eradicating racism within Friends General Conference (FGC) and its affiliated yearly and monthly meetings. Central Committee took up this leading, carried forward by a small multi-racial group of Friends which became the Ad Hoc Committee on Racism. During Central Committee Meetings for the past three years, members of Central Committee have had opportunities to learn about and share our understandings and experiences of racism. Simultaneously, the members of the Ad Hoc Committee on Racism felt a growing need to recognize the validity of the concern formally at an organizational level. From that need, the Committee for Ministry on Racism was born at FGC's Central Committee meeting in October 2000.

The committee, which has sought racial parity in membership, has met in deeply Spirit-led discernment in both spring and fall of 2001 as well as informally at the annual FGC Gathering and via e-mail, phone and letter throughout the year. We continue to seek and to feel the Lord's blessing in our endeavors. We are clear that our best work together is grounded in worship and acknowledge that when we truly center together, we do not know where we will be led. We have been willingly vulnerable to that process and affirm that there is a fundamental relationship to God in what we are doing. We are clear that eradicating racism is a ministry of healing, education and empowerment. It is time to move beyond guilt toward the center of this work, which is God's love.

As our work on racism at Central Committee has progressed, FGC program committees have been taking steps forward in focusing on this work. We have been told that many monthly meetings also have been taking small and large steps forward in making their meetings more accessible to Friends of Color and inviting to People of Color who might be seekers. We wish to support the move toward a time when every Friend will be a willing witness and an agent of change, moving us toward greater racial and ethnic diversity and the eradication of racism within all meetings affiliated with FGC.

We invite Friends everywhere to labor with us as we move forward in this mission. We ask for your prayers. We ask you to hold these concerns in the light of your own conscience. We invite you to join us in this work. Let us hear from you about how God is moving within you in response to racism amongst Friends. Let us hear from you about how we can be of service to you as we move forward together.

In the Light,
FGC Committee for Ministry on Racism

ean-Marie Prestwidge Barch, Bruce Birchard, Ernestine Buscemi, Vincent Buscemi, Janice Domanik, Vanessa Julye, Theodora M. Mace, Beckey Phipps, Christopher Sammond