We Are God's Family: Personal Encounters with Racism

We Are One Family: Personal Encournters with Racism is a series of commentaries of personal experience with racism and the intersection of faith and justice. Hands image by truthseeker08 courtesy of Pixabay; graphic by Laurens Glass, UM News.

Our personal stories have the power to build awareness and understanding, to bridge divides and bring healing. 

UM News is inviting people to share their own personal stories about encounters with racism, as well as hopes and ideas for combating it. This forum is designed to foster dialogue and identify solutions to the problem.

Racism affects every person, regardless of background. It underlies issues such as poverty, hunger, discrimination, mass incarceration, and disparities in education, health care, income, job status and access to resources.

The United Methodist Church condemns racism as a sin and believes all people are of sacred worth. “[A]ll peoples and individuals constitute one human family, rich in diversity,” the church states in its Social Principles. 

Commentaries can be up to 900 words long and should be written from a first-person, personal point of view.

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The Rev. Margret Powell. Photo courtesy of the author

Whether in school or the workplace, the Rev. Margret Powell experienced hostility and ridicule as a person of color, but she persevered.

The Rev. Janet L. Wolf. Photo by Mike DuBose, UM News.

"Rip" Patton, who died Aug. 24 at age 81, was a Freedom Rider in the 1960s and never stopped challenging people to build a better world.

The Rev. Chongho James Kim. Photo courtesy of the author.

In the midst of a rise in violence toward the Asian community, one Korean pastor writes that agape love is “the ultimate way for us to overcome hate.”

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