Charter for Racial Justice

Because we believe:

  1. That God is the Creator of all people, and all are God’s children in one family;

  2. That racism is a rejection of the teachings of Jesus Christ;

  3. That racism denies the redemption and reconciliation of Jesus Christ;

  4. That racism robs all human beings of their wholeness and is used as a justification for social, economic, environmental and political exploitation;

  5. That we must declare before God and before one another that we have sinned against our sister and brothers of other races in thought, in word and in deed;

  6. That in our common humanity in creation, all women and men are made in God’s image, and all persons are equally valuable in the sight of God;

  7. That our strength lies in our racial and cultural diversity and that we must work toward a world in which each person’s value is respected and nurtured;

  8. That our struggle for justice must be based on new attitudes, new understandings and new relationships, and must be reflected in the laws, policies, structures and practices of both church and state;

We commit ourselves as individuals and as a community to follow Jesus Christ in word and in deed, and to struggle for the rights and the self-determination of every person and group of persons.

Therefore,

as United Methodists in every place across the land, we will unite our efforts within the church to take the following actions:

  1. Eliminate all forms of institutional racism in the total ministry of the church, giving special attention to those institutions that we support, beginning with their employment policies, purchasing practices, environmental policies and availability of services and facilities.

  2. Create opportunities in local churches to deal honestly with the existing racist attitudes and social distance between members, deepening the Christian commitment to be the church where all racial groups and economic classes come together.

  3. Increase efforts to recruit people of all races into the membership of The United Methodist Church and provide leadership development opportunities without discrimination.

  4. Establish workshops and seminars in local churches to study, understand and appreciate the historical and cultural contributions of each race to the church and community.

  5. Raise local churches’ awareness of the continuing needs for equal education, housing, employment, medical care and environmental justice for all members of the community, and to create opportunities to work for these things across racial lines.

  6. Work for the development and implementation of national and international policies to protect the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights of all people such as through support of the ratification of United Nations covenants on human rights.

  7. Support and participate in the worldwide struggle for liberation in church and community.

  8. Facilitate nomination and election processes that include all racial groups by employing a system that prioritizes leadership opportunities of people from communities that are disproportionately impacted by the ongoing legacy of racial injustice, and use measures to align our vision for racial justice with actions that accelerate racial equality.