Racial Equity Advocacy Committee calls on the 227th GA to review a 2022 report, create a special committee and more
GA’s Racial Justice Committee to consider four overtures during its online meetings starting June 22
When the 227th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) begins online committee meetings June 22-24, its Racial Justice Committee will convene to discuss four overtures of varying topics. The Rev. Patricia Bligen Jones of Charleston Atlantic Presbytery will be moderating the committee, with the Rev. Dr. Steve Watts of Inland Northwest Presbytery serving as vice-moderator.
RAC-01 suggests that the assembly establish a Special Committee on African American Ecclesiastical Repair. The recommendation, brought to REAC by the National Black Presbyterian Caucus, stems from the Caucus’s observation “that historic and ongoing harms experienced by African American Presbyterians continue to shape congregational life, leadership pathways, and inter-communal relationships” within the church.
RAC-01 recommends that the newly formed committee “shall consist of African American members … representing congregational, mid council, and related ministry leadership … and reflecting geographic, generational, and ministry diversity,” and that the committee work closely with the Center for the Repair of Historic Harms “as theological partner and implementation collaborator rather than sole locus of authority.”
This overture has the support of the General Assembly Committee on Representation (GACOR), the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy (ACSWP), the Advocacy Committee on LGBTQIA+ Equity (ACQ+E), and the Advocacy Committee for Women and Gender Justice (ACWGJ).
ACWGJ, in a note to the General Assembly advising it approve RAC-01, wrote that “There is an urgent need for the denomination to live into its Matthew 25 commitment by investigating, naming and addressing historic and current harms caused by institutionalized white supremacy to African Americans at the congregational, mid council, and General Assembly levels.”
ACQ+E also suggests that the overture be approved, adding that it hopes “that part of the studying and reparation will focus on the present-day and historic harm queer and trans African American have faced in the PC(USA).”
RAC-02 brings up an overture from a General Assembly past — RGJ-13, Report from the Disparities Experienced by Black Women and Girls Task Force, which was approved by the 225th GA in 2022 following “years of organizing, testimony, and painful delay,” REAC wrote in the rationale. The deferral of the original presentation, which had been intended for the 2020 meeting of the 224th General Assembly but was disrupted by the pandemic, “caused significant harm and communicated to many that the concerns of Black women and girls were not urgent within the life of the church,” the committee said. Now, in 2026 — four years after the approval of the initial report — REAC is requesting that the General Assembly direct each of the various entities of the PC(USA) to submit a separate written report to the 228th General Assembly (2028) detailing the ways they have implemented RGJ-13.
In the rationale, REAC states that it “has been unable to identify clear, comprehensive, and consistent reporting from all entities directed to take action.” As for the scope and substance of RGJ-13, the committee writes that the report “did not offer abstract policy suggestions … It called the Church not only to awareness but to justice-praxis and demonstrable, embodied repair, asking the Church to choose transformation over comfort … When such work is received with affirmation but without clear, visible, and traceable evidence of sustained institutional effort, the imbalance becomes difficult to assess, and trust is strained.”
The General Assembly Committee on Representation (GACOR) affirms the review request put forth by REAC, adding that “this sort of non-anxious but clear accountability practice may be a model as we continue to shift our institutional systems and structures in ways that enhance our common commitment to repair, justice and wholeness.”
The Unification Commission both confessed to and apologized for the lack of report on the work of RGJ-13 in the past and offered a handful of current agency efforts that align with the report, including the hosting of retreats for Black queer clergy and the distribution of education grants to Black women leaders. The UC also said that “a new PL&W staff position has been created to implement a consistent and reliable system that will prevent such oversight in the future.”
RAC-03 deals with the Liberia Project 180, which REAC noted “emerged from a 2023 encounter between the Center for the Repair of Historic Harms and leaders of the Liberia Council of Churches. That encounter invited renewed reflection on the Presbyterian Church’s historical involvement in the American Colonization Society (ACS) and the long-term consequences of that involvement for the people of Liberia.” This overture is being brought forward by a team of organizations: REAC, the Center for the Repair of Historic Harms, the Youth Desk at the Liberia Council of Churches, the Presbyterian Church of Liberia, Princeton Theological Seminary’s Betsey Stockton Center for Black Church Studies, and Response Initiatives in Monrovia, Liberia, came together to advocate for the continuation of the assembly’s prior commitments to racial repair work.
Specifically, the overture requests that the assembly undertake an exploratory study and planning process toward establishing a permanent transatlantic society for Christian youth of African descent, as well as a partnership for mutual theological learning and repair.
Additionally, RAC-03 asks the assembly to “direct Presbyterian Life & Witness, in partnership with the Presbyterian Church in Liberia and the National Black Presbyterian Caucus, to develop a culturally, theologically, and historically appropriate acknowledgment of and apology for the legacy of Presbyterian involvement in and support of the American Colonization Society, to the extent that this legacy contributed to patterns of hierarchy, exclusion, and coercion whose long-term consequences were borne by the Liberian people, including in the civil wars of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.”
The Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy (ACWP) concurs with RAC-03, commenting that the three directives presented by the overture “fall squarely within the trajectory ACSWP has helped shape and that the General Assembly has repeatedly affirmed.” ACWP pointed to previous GA movements that serve to bulwark this suggestion, including RGJ-10 “Race, Reparative Justice, and the PC(USA),” the 2004 Task Force to Study Reparations, and the Belhar Confession. The Unification Commission’s comment calls this recommendation “an ambitious, multi-dimensional and worth undertaking,” and further invites commissioners and delegate to “consider referring this significant project to PL&W to collaborate with REAC.”
Information on streaming and viewing links will be available through the General Assembly website.
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