The Southern New England Conference will offer materials for a special online worship for churches to use the Sunday after Christmas (Dec. 27). The worship will be available on Vimeo beginning Dec. 16 in a video format that can be streamed or downloaded for use by any Conference church.
 

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“Children’s books feature a plethora of white, often male, characters leading the way. In fact, in 2018, 50% of children’s books featured white characters, 27% animals and 10% black characters. Asians and Native Americans even less.” Rev. Kelly Jane Caesar, pastor of the First Congregational Church of East Hartford, preached over zoom on July 19, 2020, citing an article by the Huffington Post.

She encouraged the congregation to, “imagine the liberation that can be had if children and adults learned more about the resistance both blacks and whites took to overcome slavery and racism through the centuries. Children of color see themselves as strong and brave. White children see that they can have a place of love and compassion in the fight for racial equity. All are inspired to act for justice and real, deep, everlasting peace.”

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From an address given by Rev. Kelly Gallagher for the Oct. 18 event 400 Years: Truth & Healing for the Next Seven Generations

I stand in what is called today Northampton, the historic land of the Nipmuc and Pocumtuc peoples. I am here two generations on my father’s side and five generations on my mother’s side from European ancestors of Irish descent. I come also as a spiritual descendant of framers of the Doctrine of Discovery, as well as the Pilgrim and Puritan communities who took this land as their own in the name of their Christian institution and with the blessing and belief of the Doctrine of Discovery.

I acknowledge, and call all who have settled and colonized this land to acknowledge that in the last 400 years – and for hundreds of years before the landing of the Pilgrims – that a driving force behind the colonization, devastation and genocide of the original peoples of this land was and continues to be the institutional Christian church, its doctrines and core beliefs.

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