- Welcome to "American Black Journal."

I'm your host, Stephen Henderson.

It was five years ago this month that George Floyd was murdered by a Minneapolis police officer, setting off a worldwide protest against racial injustice.

For the Episcopal Diocese of Michigan, this watershed moment represented the opportunity to embark on a mission of linking spirituality to racial healing.

Joining me now to talk about this initiative are Bishop Bonnie Perry and Reverend Sister Veronica Dunbar.

They are both from the Episcopal Diocese of Michigan.

Welcome to "American Black Journal."

- Thank you.

- I think it's really interesting that five years, as we come up on that five-year anniversary of George Floyd's murder, people are starting to ask real questions now about the things that have been done since that, right?

Did it make any sense to engage in this experiment with DEI, for instance?

I mean, people are really questioning that.

People are questioning whether racial healing is possible or necessary, and I think you've gotta have pretty good answers right now.

(all chuckling) You know, I mean, people are pretty aggressive about this.

So I'm really curious first about how you made this decision to focus on racial healing as a result of what happened five years ago, and I guess how it is going, whether you feel like it's paying off in the ways that you thought.

I'll start with you.

- Yeah, no, Stephen, I was elected bishop and became bishop right before COVID.

- [Stephen] Okay, perfect timing.

- Right, it was perfect.

I think my consecration was the last big gathering.

- [Stephen] Really?

Wow.

- And I came here talking and wanting to do racial repair and reparations.

That was something I came here thinking that we really needed as a church, as a majority white church, that we needed to be doing this work.

And then we do COVID and then Mr. Floyd is murdered.

And it became super clear to me that we needed to do even more.

- Yeah.

- And as that was all happening, I had been developing a connection with my colleague, Sister V, and we began to do some book studies.

'Cause, you know, the white people like to read the books.

We do the book studies, right, but to begin to move the momentum.

And I think with George Floyd's murder, many people had bits and pieces of ideas, people of color knew for sure.

White people come in and out, like we know, and then we decide not to know.

And I think with that, there was a tearing away of the scales from people's eyes, much like Paul on the road to Damascus.

And it's like, now we're not going back, and now we need to move forward.

And it was not long after that, I invited Sister V to join my staff, and that we would have a dedicated staff person to spirituality and race.

- And race, yeah.

Yeah, that connection is not intuitive for everybody.

- Yeah.

And I think it is for us when we think about it, but I think for a lot of, even Episcopalians, that sounded a little odd at first, but really, spirituality underlies, you know, anything like repair, anything, like building community, certainly anything in our language and building the body of Christ, you know, and if we're going to have that kind of unity or repair, it does not come without justice.

You can't have repair without justice.

And so that meant, you know, just learning about who we are and how we got here, continuing education, but also just making those connections and dialogues with people who are just beginning to think about this because of what happened with George Floyd.

- And to have an on-ramp.

There's a justice on-ramp, but not everybody wants to go on the justice on-ramp.

- Right.

- Right?

So instead to say, "This is a spiritual issue, we are people of faith, and so we are people of faith, we address things from a theological and a spiritual lens."

And it became very clear to me in our conversations that this was a way that we could invite all sorts of people onto this road towards repair.

- [Stephen] Yeah.

- 'Cause people hear social justice, and that puts up a lot- - Uh, we're not sure.

- But in our tradition, if we say discipleship, if this is how we become more Christlike, if this is how we embody our faith in the world, then that's looking at it differently and opening the door in a different way.

And so, we don't actually talk about social justice, we talk about discipleship, we talk about faith formation, and, you know, what it means to really deepen your faith and to embody it.

How do we embody the gospel?

How do we embody Christ's message?

- So you've taken a lot of folks on this journey, in five years, talk about what that journey looks like and what the outcomes look like.

- Yeah, so we ended up designing an anti-racism curriculum for our diocese.

It's one of the requirements for lay leaders and clergy.

And we had the opportunity to really shape it specifically for who we were here in Southeast and South Central, Michigan.

So we did that.

And we also, and Bonnie can talk more about this, we partnered with the Episcopal Divinity School on an Anglicanism and Social Justice course that lasted two years.

And we just sent out the invitation, we came up with money for scholarships.

- We plowed a great deal of money into giving deep financial assistance to folks to engage in a two-year course of study to deal with, to reckon with, to see what our faith says about the sin of racism.

- Yeah.

- Right?

And this is right after Mr. Floyd's murder, and I had contacted the folks at the Episcopal Divinity School and Union Theological Seminary to say, "I am tired about the issues of race and justice being the icing for people's formation.

I wanted the bricks and mortar, help create a program, that I can have my people attend."

And we did.

- Yeah.

- And how many folks did the two years?

- We had a total of 30 people just from our diocese during the two years.

But this program, it pulled in people from the entire country.

- Okay.

- So all Episcopal diocese and outside the Episcopal church went through this very intensive and well-formed course.

- And when you say that it's taking them through the understanding of what your faith says about racism, give us just some examples of what you're drawing from.

So the Bible, is it stories, is it just belief?

What does that look like?

- Well, some of it is gonna look like James Cone's book, "The Cross and the Lynching Tree."

- [Stephen] And the Lynching Tree, yes.

- Right, and to be able- - [Stephen] That's sitting on my coffee table in my living room right now.

- So James Cone was my advisor at seminary.

- Okay.

- Right.

And to be able to say, "These two are connected."

That lynching is crucifixion.

- Yeah.

- Right.

And that we cannot, and as white people, we cannot differentiate.

We need to be able to see that.

And we need to know, are we the ones who were standing by and they stood by watching?

Are we again at the foot of the cross or are we just walking by?

- [Stephen] So what are you finding?

- When I specifically go into congregations, you know, I will draw directly from the Bible, particularly from the Book of Acts, because you have this story of these people from completely different backgrounds who would've never interacted otherwise.

They're called to make community with one another, and they're called to really change the world that they live in.

Well, how do they do that?

And so there are many ways that I can draw from the Bible and say, "And this is also about what we're meant to be doing right now, and this is how it relates to racial repair."

- Yeah.

- So, yeah.

When I go in, the Bible is something that I can draw from.

- The Bible is where you're starting.

Yeah.

And what are you finding from the folks who are participating in this?

Is it working?

Is it sinking in?

And again, you're not trying to indoctrinate people, but you're trying to get them to see something that maybe is not obvious.

- I like to go in and say, "I love good questions.

And that the Bible is not here to give us answers, it's here to make us ask really good questions."

And so, just kind of opening that door of looking at the Bible in a different way to say, "This is speaking to us now in maybe ways I didn't see before."

And, you know, it's not gonna be like all of a sudden everyone's gonna have this moment of enlightenment.

But it's really in little steps.

- It's bit, I mean, you know, bit by bit, morning by morning, as the psalmist writes.

And one of the things, so we have the work that Sister V's doing, and we are also doing pilgrimages.

So we are going- - You're going to see the history and the context.

- Right.

And we're going to Montgomery, we're going to Selma.

We're going to Birmingham, right, and we are going to, we're going to the Legacy Museum.

And we are seeing, we are immersing ourselves in a world of pain to understand just for a moment of what enslavement of human beings actually is.

- [Stephen] Yeah, yeah.

- And what it might feel like, and how it's connected to lynching, mass incarceration.

- Right.

- For people to begin to reckon with that and to go between the Legacy Museum, where we're really immersing ourselves in that story, that experience of being an enslaved person.

And then we're having Eucharist, we're having communion, St. John's in Montgomery, which is a wonderful (indistinct) place, also a building built by enslaved people.

- [Stephen] Right, right.

- And so, going between the two, and that's the legacy of the Episcopal church.

- So what's, for you, five years after George Floyd is murdered, what is the proof that this is working, and what's the sign that you still have more to do?

(all laughing) - I think the proof that it's working is that people are willing to have the conversation a little bit more.

It's still uncomfortable, but we are learning that life in the Spirit involves discomfort.

- Yeah.

- And we have to go with it.

- [Stephen] Yeah.

- And to create opportunities and spaces for people to just dwell in that discomfort while they're learning about the legacies of racialized injustice that maybe they didn't see before.

But here it is.

- Congratulations on the work and thanks for being here.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

Have us back in a few more years and we'll tell you even more- - Yeah, right, we'll ask the same questions.

- Of what's happened because we're going somewhere.

Because we are really clear in the Episcopal church, people are beloved.