Episode 131: How Could Churches Respond to Incidents of National Racial Violence

Racial violence is, unfortunately, not a new phenomenon in the United States. But the media hasn’t always covered these incidents to the degree that they do now. With the advent of the cell-phone video cameras and social media, now everyday-citizens are able to record incidents of racial violence from their vantage point, and distribute the record of these events with ease to the broader public. This has two effects. On the one hand, these recordings educate the general public about the prevalence and seriousness of racist violence. On the other hand, people of color exposed to the footage often are traumatized by the images.

So how could churches respond? Recent studies show that the American church in general, and majority-white churches in particular, find this topic challenging. While many churches don’t’ talk about race at all, those that do still find it difficult to know how to respond where there are national incidents of racial violence such as the recent shooting of Asian women in Georgia, the rise hate crimes against the AAPI community in the past year, or the numerous racial protests over the past decade in response to the killing of unarmed Black men and women by the police.

Our team gathered around the mics to talk about how churches could respond to national incidents of violence against racialized communities.