Justice Work
Effective, targeted ways we partner with others to create a more just society
Justice work and reflection
Justice work is an important part of Christ Church, as we seek to build God’s kingdom in the world through addressing chronic issues that underpin our society, including racism, sexism, poverty, heterosexism, and educational inequity. At the same time, we seek to continue that work inside ourselves, growing in our own self-awareness.
The Antiracism and Social Justice Committee of the Vestry
The congregation of Christ Church has been working to understand exactly how our church has historically contributed to, and benefited from, the systems of racism. Such work is necessary for making good on our commitment that “no matter who you are, you are welcome here.”
Even as Christ Church has been a place of welcome and refuge, and has sponsored many efforts across its history to tend to those who suffer and address injustice, so too have we –like any predominantly white community, especially those with deep roots in American history –been involved with systems of racism, and have failed to resist them or to remove ourselves from them. Like many other institutions, we are working towards a more precise accounting of that history as the first step in transformational change.
A few of our ongoing efforts are:
Acknowledging the Weeping Time
The Weeping Time is the largest single sale of humans on U.S. soil, held in Savannah on March 2 and 3, 1859. 426 people, all part of the longstanding community of rice and cotton farmers, were authorized for sale by Pierce Mease Butler in order to pay his gambling debts. Butler is buried in the Butler family tomb in our North Garden, and the Butler family has historically been revered for their involvement in the founding of the U.S., even as Pierce Mease Butler’s actions were seen as reprehensible even in his own time.
Every year, near the anniversary of the Weeping Time Auction, we read the names of those enslaved people who were sold and deprived of their humanity. We read their names in the presence of the Butler tomb as a very small way to remember.
In the Fall of 2023, we published a research paper entitled: Christ Church’s Complicity with Slavery. For our Lenten Study that year, we studied that report as a part of our Christian call to repentance.
