Justice Committee: STRIVING FOR JUSTICE AND PEACE

By Amy Hastings

 The Justice Committee meets on the 4th Monday of every month. We’re a new committee in the life of St. Stephen’s, having organized in early 2021. At the beginning of this year, we developed a framework to guide us in our work to share with the Vestry and with the congregation. Guided by a loving spirit of inquiry, we committed to the following.

I.              We seek to keep the work of God’s justice before the St. Stephen’s community and strive to be a lens that focuses our church on justice concerns to ensure these concerns are not overlooked. Justice is the ongoing work of the people of God as we affirm at our baptism and every time we renew our baptism in worship:

“Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?” To that question, we respond, “I will, with God’s help.”

II.              We acknowledge we live in an unjust society where its benefits -- economic, environmental, educational, and more – are not shared equally. We seek to increase awareness of these injustices and their historic roots in our society and in the church.

III.            We seek to shine light on the privileges that are ours as a predominately White congregation and as people who may have had the benefits of education, income security, food security, family stability, etc. By understanding those privileges, we can learn to use them positively to build a more just society, finding ways to act locally, regionally, and globally.

IV.            We recognize that this is a defining moment in the history of our country and our church as we grow in awareness of racial injustice, not only relating to people who are African American, but also Indigenous people, Latinos, and Asian-Americans, and others who have been marginalized in our society. For that reason, we feel an urgent call to heighten awareness and take visible actions for racial healing, justice, and reconciliation.

Over the past year, many of us at St. Stephen’s participated in Sacred Ground and in the recent Adult Education study of Canon Stephanie Speller’s book, THE CHURCH CRACKED OPEN. The Justice Committee draws on these resources and the discussions they stimulated to help guide us. These monthly Parishscope articles provide a way to report on what we’re doing and what we’re learning as we pursue truth-telling about our history and increase awareness of injustices, and to offer ways we each might make striving for justice and peace a more integral part of our daily lives.

We welcome new members to the Justice Committee or questions and suggestions about our work. Please contact Meg Vittum or Amy Hastings (contact info is in the directory).