Racial Equity Plan

ReconcilingWorks is committed to welcoming, including, and celebrating LGBTQIA+ people. As an organization we strive to center the most marginalized of the LGBTQIA+ community, which is transgender women of color. Which means for us to do this holy work, it must be intersectional.

ReconcilingWorks is making a public commitment to increase our intersectional work dedicated to anti-racism and racial equity. ReconcilingWorks Board of Directors along with staff will be working to create a Racial Equity Plan of how we will examine the Four Dimensions of Racism as defined by Raceforward, and how they impact our organization’s racist actions and behaviors.

In 2016, at the Churchwide Assembly, the ELCA passed the "Repudiation of the Doctrine of Discovery" resolution, acknowledging the complicit evils of colonialism, and the impact that it has had on Native Peoples. On Indigenous Peoples’ Day in 2022, the ELCA published “A Declaration of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America to American Indian and Alaska Native People,” in which the church confesses its sins toward Indigenous peoples and lists the commitments it will begin working toward as it responds to its original “Repudiation of the Doctrine of Discovery” from 2016. As ReconcilingWorks continues to engage in its anti-racist work, we acknowledge our national office resides on the original and ancestral homelands of the Wahpekute, Anishinabewaki, and Očeti Šakówiŋ (Sioux) people[s], and give thanks for their presence here since time immemorial. We also wish to recognize and honor all our Indigenous siblings who have and continue to call this land their home.

While the national office of ReconcilingWorks resides in one location we understand the people we accompany through our ministry gather across all parts of Turtle Island, and so it is important and a necessity for us to acknowledge the land and original Indigenous peoples whose creation stories are rooted in these places and who have lived on these lands throughout Turtle Island since time immemorial.

As all land is Indigenous land, ReconcilingWorks invites you and your faith community to enter into a time of learning and deepening hospitality by committing to begin the practice of land acknowledgments. For support in determining whose land you presently occupy, visit http://www.native-land.ca/.

Internalized racism lies within individuals. These are private beliefs about race that reside inside our minds.
Interpersonal racism occurs between individuals. Once we bring our private beliefs about race into our interactions with others, we are now in the interpersonal realm.
Institutional racism occurs within institutions. It involves the discriminatory treatment, unfair policies and practices, and inequitable opportunities and impacts, based on race.
Structural racism is racial bias across institutions and society. It’s the cumulative compounded effects of an array of factors that systematically privilege white people and disadvantaged people of color.

Strategy Toward Authentic Diversity Booklet
“The manifold communities of the ELCA are called to exhibit authentic diversity— demographically matching the ethnic and racial composition of their respective contexts, as stated in the ELCA constitution (5.01.A16.). They are likewise called to recognize that race and ethnicity intersect with other marginalizing traits (including gender, sexuality, and ability) and that people in these groups are also vulnerable.”

Declaration of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America to American Indian and Alaska Native People
We understand that no document, no matter how carefully crafted, will accomplish the actions of truth and the work of justice as it relates to our American Indian and Alaska Native siblings. We also understand that what has developed over hundreds of years will take enduring commitment to address. We are becoming increasingly aware of the ongoing evils of the Doctrine of Discovery, and by the actions we commit ourselves to herein, we now declare our allegiance to the work of undoing those evils, building right relationships with Native nations and Native peoples, and remaining faithful to our shared journeys toward truth and healing.

Declaration of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America to people of African Decent
The ELCA acknowledges that slavery created and perpetuated racism, a truth this nation and this church have yet to fully embrace. The enslavement of Africans was based on a false narrative of the racial inferiority and the demonization of black people by the majority culture. Slavery was supported by white religious, legal, political, and scientific leaders and institutions for social, political, and economic gain. During the 246-year transatlantic slave trade, which began in 1619, an estimated 12 million people from Africa were stolen from their native lands, separated from their families, torn from their culture, killed for seeking freedom, tortured through inhumane forms of punishment, and subjected to lifetimes of captivity. While the white church stood silently by, people of African descent resisted through acts of rebellion, created new expressions of spirituality and Christian practice rooted in African traditions, and organized movements for freedom.

Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI)®
ReconcilingWorks staff are Qualified Administrators of the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI)®. “The Intercultural Development Inventory® (IDI) is a theory-based assessment of intercultural competence - the capability to shift cultural perspective and appropriately adapt behavior to cultural differences and commonalities - which allows individuals and groups to see their progression along the Intercultural Development Continuum® (IDC).”

ReconcilingWorks Board of Directors has taken an IDI® Assessment and is working through their organizational and individual results. The leadership of the organization will work to create a plan that will build and strengthen the organization's capacity and awareness of Intercultural Competence, Culture, Diversity, and Inclusion.

What will this look like?

Creation of Individual Intercultural Development Plans
Creation of organizational goals for policy, practices, and structural changes
Training sessions on Racial Justice and Racial Equity
Building capacity in intercultural competency

If you or your community would like to have ReconcilingWorks lead you through the IDI, learn more here.

Equity in the Center Trainings
ReconcilingWorks staff and select Board Members will be attending the following trainings as a part of our ongoing commitment to anti-racism.

More than Fragility: A Deep Dive into Understanding & Dismantling Whiteness
This is a learning experience designed for white leaders to explore how their identity connects to their capacity to lead and engage in racial justice work.While the history of White people’s use of fragility as a tool for deflection, denial, and erasure of whiteness is important to understand, there are other deeply fixed dynamics in play regarding white engagement with racial issues that must be understood if we are to achieve racial justice. Knowing that Whiteness resides in the mind, body, and spirit, it follows that Whiteness must be understood and dismantled on all of those levels. And, while many White people have been open to addressing the “mind” aspect of this work, very few have been willing to make the turn into the somatic and the “spirit” levels of racial justice work. This session examines Whiteness in this holistic manner, and through this lens offers touchpoints for more embodied, liberatory action on the part of White participants.
The session is best suited to those who already have a solid knowledge of race, racism and whiteness, and asks that participants come ready to engage and lean hard into racial justice work.
Intersectional Allyship for Racial Justice: A Workshop for White Allies
What does it mean for white people to be effective allies to people of color in our work for racial equity and collective liberation? Whitney Parnell, executive director and co-founder of Service Never Sleeps (SNS), will lead an intensive, fast-paced webinar series designed to explore how white folks use individual and collective areas of privilege to advance racial justice in an intersectional context. Using SNS’ CLAIM framework (Care, Learn, Act, Influence, Maintain), this workshop will explore what it means to adopt an allyship lifestyle as a white person.

As an organization, we are committed to living into our values. ReconcilingWorks is committed to supporting and accompanying RIC Partners to recognize this journey is ongoing, and an invitation to continually ask, “How is the Spirit moving us today in the work of welcome, inclusion, celebration, and advocacy?” For this reason, we are asking our RIC partners and those in their journey of discernment into more expansive commitments.

The purpose of the RIC Program is to ensure the welcome, inclusion, celebration, and advocacy for people of all sexual orientations, gender identities, and gender expressions; work for racial equity and commit to anti-racist work and support the national program.

RIC Partners Public Commitments:

Your community explicitly states a welcome to people of “all sexual orientations, gender identities, and gender expressions” or “LGBTQIA+” and names its commitment to "racial equity" or "anti-racism" in its welcome statement.
Your community is open to calling an LGBTQIA+ and Black, Brown, Indigenous, Person of Color (BIPOC) Rostered Leader.
Your community will allow community space/sanctuary to be used for LGBTQIA+ weddings and blessings.
Your community will make a meaningful contribution annually to support the national RIC program.

It is ReconcilingWorks' goal to have 100% participation from all of our Reconciling in Christ partners by 2025, including using the updated RIC logo. This will be a momentous task and one we look forward to achieving with you.

Knowing that representation matters ReconcilingWorks has redesigned the Reconciling in Christ (RIC) logo! Inspired by the Progressive Pride Flag design, these updates to the RIC logo include the colors blue, pink, and white to represent our transgender siblings, as well as a black and brown stripe, to represent the fullness of our Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) Community brings to the queer community.

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