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OUR ANTI-RACISM MISSION

 

We know solving racism in our country - or even our community - is a generational task. This year we are focusing on socializing anti-racist values and seeding long-term, anti-racist investments in each other and in our community.

These values are:

  • Collaboration & Cooperation

  • Expansive Inclusivity

  • Abundance

  • Responsible Interdependence

  • Inherent Worthiness of All Living Beings

  • Transparency

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We aim to do this work with joy, honesty, love by centering the love Jesus Christ has for us. This page will be continually updated with new information and resources. Please feel free to use them, reach out, and even join the committee!
 

Our Current Projects​​​​​​​

  • ​Capturing FCC history and it's relationship with race

  • Discussing race with the teens

Meet The Anti-Racism Committee

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Fredric Mitchell, Co-Chair

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Anna Carvalho, Co-Chair

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Matt Epperson

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Stephanie Poole-Byrd

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Megan Brackin

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Karyn Bowman

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Angela Butler

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Rev. Julie Van Til (ex officio)

Our Personal Recommendations

Karyn's Book Recommendations: 

Angela's Movie Recommendation: Cinderella 2021 (Prime)

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"For this particular movie, we’ve all shared how different our respective “children, grandchildren” are, their generation’s personal friendship-base groups, combined of all colors, reflective of one Race, and with them discussing almost anything, everything, comfortably so!"

In 2020, the FCC Governing Board approved that FCC work to partner with groups that are committed

to redevelop Harvey.  Please click below for information on the project and ways to volunteer!   

Anna Carvalho and Jay Readey are the FCC coordinators of this project. 

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Harvey Project

FCC's comittment to community redevelopment in our neighboring town of Harvey, IL

Recommendations and Continued Learning

 

The team who brought you our all-congregation conversations about race in the Summer of 2021 and compiled recommendations for  reading and viewing to aid our continued learning. Ask yourself where you are on your anti-racism journey and which topic might spur your understanding, compassion or contribution to the work ahead.

PAST RESOURCES

Excerpts from The 1619 Project

 

Our discussion of August 18, 2019 issue of The New York Times Magazine called "The 1619 Project".  This Project was created with the goal of re-examining the legacy of slavery in the United States and timed for the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first Africans in Virginia.   

 

The living artists, writers, and scholars who contributed to this magazine issue and the broader project received the primary focus and place of honor as our course teachers.  We spent time to appreciate, in general, their broader life work, but also the courage and care they offered in wrestling with a particular topic or event of US Black history to make their individual contribution to the Project.

 

The course presentation, including links to further resources is available below, as well as link to the "1619 Project". 

“Why Bring it Up?” 

Raising Race Conscious Children

 

This session was an introduction to a parenting resource: a website called Raising Race Conscious Children.  We discussed “Why Bring it Up? Pushing Back Against White Supremacy” in which a parent describes their process of using multiple daily interactions to help children start noticing how majority white culture is presented as the default culture.

"Slurs and Biased Language"

 

The article “Slurs and Biased Language” provides a list of open-ended questions that caregivers can use as discussion starters with children, and ideas of how anyone could respond when in the presence of slurs or biased language being used to target someone.

BOOKS WE RECOMMEND
from previous Adult Education discussions

NON-FICTION

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Waking Up White: And Finding Myself in the Story of Race
by Debby Irving

Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson

So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo

CITIZEN: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine (poetry)

Dear Church: A Love Letter from a Black Preacher to the Whitest Denomination in the US  by Lenny Duncan

Born a Crime by Trevor Noah

How to be Anti-Racist by Ibram X. Kendi

White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo

Jesus and the Disinherited by Howard Thurman

Reparations: A Christian Call for Repentance and Repair by Duke L. Kwon and Gregory Thompson

FICTION

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The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones

The Known World by Edward P. Jones

Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward

Mudbound by Hillary Jordan

Hum if You Don’t Know the Words by Bianca Maria

The Woman Next Door by Yawande Omotoso

Statement
BECOMING ANTI-RACIST
ADOPTED AUGUST 19, 2020

The idea of “race” rationalized the concentration of power in the hands of those who were white. Consequently, people of color have had diminished access to goods such as housing, education, and jobs, while suffering greater exposure to risks, such as injustice, invisibility, and danger. More broadly, culture reinforces this false labeling in ways big and small, blinding us to gifts, causing deep hurt, and fracturing the beloved community.  

 

Jesus stood with those of little power, elevated into ministry people overlooked by society, and embraced the full humanity of every person in His path. We challenge ourselves to do no less.

 

Therefore, we at Flossmoor Community Church will:

  • Learn about racism. Acknowledge and turn away from our part in it.

  • Replace old habits with new. Embrace discomfort. Be willing to err and try again.

  • Hold our own culture lightly; be open to authentic relationships with others.

  • Acknowledge what we have gained and lost by being an institution of privilege.

  • Question how our environment and practices exclude others. Modify to include.

  • Build a new identity inclusive of our full community – and, therefore, our full humanity.

 

Ending racism also requires that we act beyond our walls, because silence in the face of injustice is not an option. We will:

  • Support and engage with others working to end racism.

  • Become a haven for community discussion, relationship-building, and problem-solving. Dispute lovingly.

  • Invest with others where there has been disinvestment.

  • Learn about policies, structures and practices that unfairly impact non-dominant groups.

  • Learn about policies, structures and practices that might repair damage left by racism.

  • Equip ourselves to act individually, then do so.

  • Discern how and when we are called to act as a group, then do so.

 

We seek God’s guidance. We thank God for this opportunity to love each other as we are loved – unconditionally, fiercely, and tenderly. We will stumble and fall, but we will learn and rise again. May our children say that in this place God’s will was done on earth as it is in Heaven. Amen.

Joe Hoereth

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