The meeting will also include a prayer walk past some of the city’s historical sites related to slavery.
The inaugural National Unity Weekend, happening June 10-11, grew out of an event at the National Museum of African American History and Culture last September, when white, Black and Asian American evangelical leaders toured the museum together to raise awareness of systemic racism. The tour was organized by Let’s Talk, founded in 2021 by Bishop Derek Grier, pastor of a nondenominational church in Dumfries, Virginia.
For the past two years, Let’s Talk has sponsored first monthly and now quarterly Zoom calls for dozens of Asian, African American, Hispanic and white evangelical leaders. “We began to talk heart to heart — we wanted to listen as well as be heard,” said Grier. “And as important as conversation was, we recognized nothing changes without action.”
Over the weekend, more than 130 churches and ministries who have committed to help their communities will perform local volunteer service, with some distributing food boxes at sites run by Pat Robertson’s Operation Blessing. On Sunday, the clergy of many of those same congregations will give sermons about racial healing based on the same verse from the New Testament’s Letter to the Galatians: “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
“It’s vital that we not only preach it and teach it, but we also demonstrate it,” Grier said of the combination of community and worship services focused on racial unity that he hopes will become annual activities. “Folks will no longer just be informed by CNN or MSNBC or Fox News. They would have heard from their pastor what the Scripture says, what Jesus teaches about these very, very important issues.”
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This article originally appeared on ReligionNews.com.
