Being a racial minority has come with challenges for Reverend Brian Tillman, tasked with ensuring diversity and inclusion at the United Methodist Church (UMC) in Atlanta, Georgia.

Written by Yazeed Kamaldien

The brutal history of slavery and its after-effects of racial oppression against black people in the United States are documented at The Legacy Museum and The National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama. Photos by Yazeed Kamaldien

Tillman’s work unfolds amidst tense conversations about racial justice across the United States, under closer scrutiny globally via Black Lives Matters (BLM) protests of 2020.

Tillman is a black man, among 14% of black congregants that worship alongside white congregants at 85% of the UMC’s North Georgia Conference.

The remaining 3% of congregants are defined in the churches’ demographics list as Asian, First Native, Latino, multi-racial and Pacific Islander, bringing its members to 339,259 people.

Services, worship and community events are led by 1,331 clergy, closely matching membership demographics, at 710 churches.

Tillman points out though that when it comes to talking about racial justice, diversity and inclusion, “we still have individual congregations who don’t want to do it but we are encouraging our pastors to do this work”.

Tillman has developed a Racial Healing Framework that congregations can use towards acknowledging the country’s injustices, existing wounds and ultimately working towards racial reconciliation.

BLM protests have spurred UMC and numerous other churches to speak up against systemic racism in the United States, that has largely criminalised, jailed and ensured black Americans remain disadvantaged.

Among bold church responses was the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States that pledged to raise US$100-million for racial reconciliation in March 2021.

It established a Descendants Truth & Reconciliation Foundation to pursue “racial justice and racial healing” over a five-year period.

The foundation’s acting president is Joe Stewart reportedly said that their objective was “dismantling the continuing legacy of slavery” and the “way to get there is bring the whole nation along and face the truth about that history”.

The National Association of Evangelicals, headquartered in Washington, D.C., said in July 2019 it wants to confront the country’s “tragic history of genocide against Native Americans, the cruel practice of enslaving Africans, and the unjust segregation and exploitation of immigrants and the descendants of slaves”.

It said: “We believe Christians should support well-conceived efforts that foster dignity and responsibility and rectify the effects of our racist history, including the disproportionate impact of poverty, incarceration and educational inequity.”

“We confess and repent of the Church’s role in justifying or ignoring racism and racial injustice, and call on Christians of all races to reject white supremacy. We lament their continued existence within the Church and in society, and we resolve to pursue healing and reconciliation.”

The Episcopal Church meanwhile referenced deceased civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr’s “vision of Becoming Beloved Community” when it talked about its “long-term commitment to racial justice, healing and reconciliation”.

Tillman says they do not “expect to change some of our deeply held challenges and wounds overnight. We are trying to make essential steps towards the Beloved Community”.

The push forward inevitably is met with resistance, says Tillman.

“We continue to push for changes in how we are inclusive of people of colour in our congregation. I am convinced that most people in power, particular white folks in my context, are really good people who do not intend to inflict racial wounds or maintain systems that do so,” says Tillman.

“The reality is that they see things one way and they have never been trained to see the other ways that are also true. They need to view things differently.

“We also have to dispel myths or origins that are shared and passed on about our past. Most times, that is not based on fact.”

Tillman says reconciliation is not easy work for blacks nor whites.

“The story of the hunt is often different when it is told from the perspective of the hunted. That is what I am trying to expose to the white folk in our conference,” he says.

“It means we need to uncover some of the atrocities and wounds still carried by our people of colour. We also need to look at the stories of how institutions and churches were founded.

“We go back to the enslavement of black people and white folk say, ‘That is not me. I did not enslave anyone. I have no responsibility to the people who were enslaved’.

“That just does not hold any water. Enslavement did not just require people to work on plantations. It was the lifeblood of the foundation of this country. Black people built this country. The wealth of this country is directly linked to the enslavement of black people.”

Coupled to developing the Racial Healing Framework, Tillman also created the Justice and Healing Academy which “includes workshops, tours and trips to understand racial trauma”.

“People need to be clear where the racial wounds are. We teach them to see where it occurred and then we talk about how the church had done nothing when these things happened. Things that are against what we believe,” says Tillman.

“We have a reparations task force that is digging through the racial history of the North Georgia Conference and how it was founded. We know that it was founded some time after the removal of Native Americans from this land about 200 years ago. We are on stolen land.

“The reparations task force is looking for ways to repair and reconstruct where we can. We are looking at not repeating the past injustices and the church being silent.”

Tillman says all of their work is ultimately based on Christian principles of “an obligation to be good neighbours”.

“If we do not care about people outside our church we will not be good neighbours. Behind our push is not to shame or guilt trip. People might feel that but it’s not our intent. We are intent on healing. And that comes with pain.”