Dear friends,

On this anniversary of the tragic massacre in the holy space of Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston last year, we reaffirm the commitment we made as a congregation to fight against racism and seek reconciliation and healing in all the work we do in this city. Here is a portion from the letter First Presbyterian Church sent last year to our sisters and brothers at Mother Emanuel:

In response to this act of evil, we renew our promise to be an agent of reconciliation and healing in our own city; we promise to promote dialogue and action to improve relationships across differences in our community. This is what the Gospel demands. We renew our commitment to translate words to action, to preach hope for “new sight” to those blinded by racism and bigotry, and to practice what we preach and thus welcome and celebrate the diversity of the Body of Christ.

With heavy hearts, we extend to you our prayer, our compassion, and our pledge to you that we will work in our community and in this nation to create effective ongoing action to make our family of faith an effective sign of Christ’s love, justice and openness.

Let us continue to work tirelessly in our lives and community for racial justice and the reconciliation of all people.

Grace and peace,
Mindy

The picture on this post was taken from the Talking Stuff blog, and specifically from this post from a year ago by LadyRayne.