Racial Justice Audit Task Force
Presentation to the 114th Convention of the Diocese of Olympia
Bishop LaBelle, members of the head table, delegates to convention, and guests, greetings. I am the Rev. Carla Robinson, Canon for Multicultural Ministries and Community Transformation. And I’m here today in my role as member of the Diocese of Olympia Racial Justice Audit Task Force. The other members of that task force are Roberta Newell, Vinh Do, Kerry Allman, Josh Hornbeck, Adrienne Elliott, and the Rev. Bonnie Malone.
From 2018 to 2020, the Episcopal Church surveyed members of the church’s key leadership bodies. That included the House of Bishops, the House of Deputies, the Executive Council and the Episcopal Church Center/churchwide staff. It also included leadership at the diocesan level: Bishops’ staffs, Diocesan Councils, Standing Committees, Commissions on Ministry, Boards of Directors or equivalent bodies. The goal of the survey was to gather data about people’s experiences of racism, racial identity, and power in the life of the church. A representative sample was drawn from 28 of the 99 dioceses in the Episcopal Church and from all nine provinces.
This data was published in January 2021 in a report entitled The Racial Justice Audit of Episcopal Leadership.
The Diocese of Olympia was not one of the dioceses which were surveyed. In 2021, Bishop Rickel called together a Task Force to:
- Encourage people to read the Racial Justice Audit and
- Help people reflect on the experience of our diocese in the light of the experience of the larger church.
In its first year the task force requested that churches read and discuss the audit alongside five questions that we developed. Participants were asked to submit their church’s responses to the Office of the Canon for Multicultural Ministries and Community Transformation by the end of June 2023 so that we could report our findings at this Convention.
We received responses from two out of our 90+ churches. This led the task force to reevaluate its work and to seek other ways of getting the Audit before the churches of our diocese.
During this same time period our diocese assessed who we are and what our priorities are. This process happened under the leadership of the Most Rev. Melissa Skelton, our Bishop Provisional. Again and again in this process, the diocese expressed its commitment to advancing racial justice and equity. The most concrete sign of this support being the continued strong presence of the Circles of Color and the broad support for the office of Multicultural Ministries and Community Transformation.
The Racial Justice Audit Task Force sees its work as congruent with that of the Circles of Color and the office of Multicultural Ministries and Community Transformation. Therefore, the Task Force joined the Circles and the Canon Carla’s office in creating and distributing a survey of racial justice and advocacy efforts in our diocese. That survey went out at the end of 2023. The survey asked congregations about the audit, Sacred Ground, anti-racism training, advocacy and more. This survey response was excellent and helped the Multicultural Ministries office better understand what churches have engaged in and how it can best support those racial justice efforts.
Among other things this survey suggested that a more permanent stand-alone presentation might be a better way of helping people engage with the Audit. The previous planned video project has been paused. It is now being re-imagined and reframed to respond to the new information from the survey.
The task force plans to release this video in early 2025. This video will become part of an extensive set of resources for congregations doing racial justice work. It will be available through the office of Multicultural Ministry and Community Transformation.
Once this video project is completed the task force will submit its final report to the bishop’s office.
Some of you in this room will be asked to take part in that video project. I hope that you will gladly say yes.
Faithfully submitted by the Racial Justice Audit Task Force,
Roberta Newell, Josh Hornbeck, Kerry Allman, Vinh Do, Adrienne Elliott, The Rev. Bonnie Malone, and The Rev. Canon Carla Robinson