By Simon Gonzalez
Staff Writer
Judging by a preliminary meeting held at St. Andrew’s On-the-Sound Episcopal Church on Friday, January 8, an upcoming webcast dealing with the topic of race relations promises to be lively, thought provoking and even a little controversial.
The webcast offers an opportunity to participate in the Trinity Institute’s annual theological conference, held at Trinity Church Wall Street, an Episcopal parish in New York City. This year’s symposium is titled “Listen for a Change: Sacred Conversation for Racial Justice.”
The conference website states, “Racial justice is a matter of life or death; we can’t afford to stay silent and tacitly accept the (mostly) invisible systems that support inequalities, create suffering, and deny human dignity. Rather, we need to have an open dialogue — a process that starts with listening.”
Local residents can participate in the conference via the webcast at St. James Parish in downtown Wilmington Thursday, Jan. 28-Sunday, Jan. 30.
“These are deep issues that exist,” said Ginny Woodruff, one of the local organizers. “The hope with this conference is we come up with things to do about the things we learn about, and come up with new relationships.”
Organizers from the host organizations, including St. James, St. Mark’s, St. Paul’s, YWCA Lower Cape Fear and Cape Fear Museum, invited community leaders to a luncheon at St. Andrew’s to discuss participation in the webcast, and to hold preliminary discussions on the topic.
“We invited black leaders in the community to this meeting, and to participate,” Woodruff said at the luncheon. “We’re hoping you’ll help us get the word out. I feel like it’s a unique opportunity. We’ll try to respect each other’s views, to speak honestly, and listen. We want to honor each other deeply, and listen and share. That’s why we’re calling it sacred conversations.”
The conversations at the luncheon touched on topics that included racism and opportunity in Wilmington, what has been dubbed white privilege, the black lives matter movement, seeking common ground, and moving beyond conversation to action.
“A lot of people say we need to co-exist, but they want a relationship without truth,” said Vance Williams, who works with at-risk youth and is building a social resource center on Dock Street, across from New Hanover High School. “For us to be truthful and make a real impact on our youth, we have to speak freely and we have to speak candidly. There is extreme disenfranchisement in our community, and we have to accept that, and we have to acknowledge that. We can sit here all day long and talk about the different tiers of racism, the different tiers of social injustice, the different tiers of economic disparity, we can talk about those things, but we have to formulate a plan of action.”
Lenny Simpson grew up in a segregated Wilmington. His ticket out was tennis. After a successful career he settled in Knoxville, Tennessee, to open a racket club. He returned home in 2013 to found One Love Tennis, an organization to provide instruction, academic support and character development.
“It’s all about the opportunity,” he said. “If you don’t have the opportunity, it’s hard to take yourself out of that cesspool. This conference might be the crossroads, to really look each other in the face. I believe in taking the bull by the horns. You have to go out and do something.”
Keynote speakers for the conference in New York include Nicholas Kristof, columnist for The New York Times; Anna Deavere Smith, actress, professor at New York University and founding director of the Institute on the Arts and Civic Dialogue; and Michael Curry, bishop of Diocese of North Carolina before being elected presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church in June 2015.
For more information about attending the conference at St. James Parish, visit www.stjamesp.org/ti2016. For more information about Trinity Institute, visit TI2016.org
