The Diversity and Reconciliation Commission has had to postpone its workshops due to COVID-19. To continue our work until we are able to meet together in person, you are invited to join with us in online book study sessions.
As we fight COVID-19 and many are temporarily out of work and/or have lost their jobs, a Minnesota man named George Floyd was brutally killed. Our Country is in complete turmoil.
This is not the only incident that has shown its ugly head of racism. It happened to Breonna Taylor on March 13 in Kentucky. It happened to Ahmaud Arbery on February 23 in Georgia. Racial terror in this form has occurred for many years. It extends back to the lynching of many blacks slaves. It’s not just our present or our history. It is part of the fabric of American life.
There has never been a more relevant time to help our churches strengthen their understanding around issues of diversity, equity and inclusion.
Please join us in these book study sessions, which will be held online via Zoom. We will follow up with those interested in attending with a Doodle poll to determine the best time to hold the study sessions.
Book One – Just Mercy
Just Mercy is a story of justice and redemption written by Bryan Stevenson. It is a powerful, true story about the Equal Justice Initiative, the people they represent, and the importance of confronting injustice. Just Mercy has been adapted into a feature film. It tells the true story of Walter McMillian, who, with the help of young defense attorney Bryan Stevenson, appeals his murder conviction.
In a 2017 interview, when asked why he wrote the book, Stevenson responded, “Well, I wrote Just Mercy because I think that our criminal justice system, and what happens to millions of people in this country is largely unknown. We literally have walls blocking people from seeing what happens inside jails and prisons, and these trials take place in largely empty courtrooms.”
The New York Times wrote, “Just Mercy a memoir, aggregates and personalizes the struggle against injustice in the story of one activist lawyer. Bryan Stevenson grew up poor in Delaware. His great-grandparents had been slaves in Virginia. … McMillian’s ordeal is a good subject for Stevenson, first of all because it was so outrageous.”
if you are interested in these study sessions, please respond before July 1, 2020 via e-mail or phone call.
(Details Below)
You can purchase the book in hardcopy or e-book format from Amazon or from any bookstore. If you like you can also obtain it from your local Library.
Interested? Sign Up.
if you are interested in these study sessions, please respond before July 1, 2020, via e-mail or phone call to sbolden2@comcast.net or call (816) 560-1656, providing your name, address, phone number and e-mail address.
From Presiding Bishop, Michael Curry:
“Love, as Jesus teaches, is action like this as well as attitude. It seeks the good, the well-being, and the welfare of others as well as one’s self. That way of real love is the only way there is.”
Please join us as we work to eradicate racism in this country.