So the United Church of Christ is to begin its “dialogue on race” this Sunday, May 18. The mainline church calls it a “proactive response to the heightened interest surrounding Trinity UCC in Chicago.” That’s Sen. Barack Obama and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s church, for those of you living under rocks.
UCC Prez and General Minister John Thomas has called on all of the church’s 10,000 pastors to “preach purposefully on the subject of race,” this Sunday. “Sacred conversations are never easy,” Thomas said. “This is especially true when honest talk about race confronts us with a painful past and won’t let us ignore the troubles of our present day.”
But not everyone is pleased with the plan. The Rev. David Runnion-Bareford, of the UCC’s Confessing Movement, says the dialogue should be suspended.
The “leadership of the United Church of Christ, in support of UCC Pastor Jeremiah Wright, damaged Obama’s candidacy by refocusing attention on racial division in a way that, sadly, energized racism in the nation. We call our church not to compound this error by engaging in ‘dialogue’ on the pain of the past or the issues that divide,” he says.
