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The conference, held 16-18 September, explored the theme "Nation, Race, Religion,” and focused on how nation, race, and religion function as boundary-making concepts that drive both social inclusion and exclusion.
During the panel discussion, Charlene van de Walt, from the Church of Sweden, opened the dialogue by noting that religion and faith are not somehow outside of the process in which race and racialisation are produced.
“Religious tradition, institutions, texts, and practices have all been implicated in racialized exclusion,” she said. “We have witnessed this; we have experienced and navigated the consequences of this, the reality of this, in different ways.”
Dr Masiiwa Gunda, World Council of Churches programme executive and Ecumenical Institute at Bossey adjunct professor, offered the story of his personal background, and then described his role at the WCC.
“We want to understand how the WCC as an institution and as a fellowship is grappling with these issues,” he said. “The creative deployment of the epistemology of ignorance is one of the biggest challenges that we have to deal with.”
Rt. Rev. Dr Anderson Jeremiah, bishop of Edmonton in London and the first Dalit Christian to serve as a bishop in the Church of England, talked about his advocacy for racial justice, environmental justice, and social literacy.
“I have to talk about my racial life as a person of color living in a predominantly white space,” he said. “What am I doing here? But then you have to negotiate the reality that actually, no, I am in the right place, and I need to actually find my voice within that space, not for myself, but for all the community that has shaped me up until this point in time, so that I can speak on behalf of those communities which are constantly theologically and ethically excluded from this conversation.”
