WUMC Implicit Bias Workshop 2020

I have picked up ten Black Lives Matter signs - and am happy to share them with anyone who wants one. Drop me an email pbohara@amherst.edu, or give me a call 413-687-5722.

Race and Racism Workshop Wesley United Methodist Church - Hadley Week 2 June 28, 2020 PART 1: (Re)Claiming the History of Resistance at Wesley UMC Consider this to be a work in progress. We are dedicating ourselves to collecting the stories of resistance of elders and others in the past at WUMC The Weley 9, a group of youth including the now grown children of Joyce and Lee Hines, Liz and Ron Bell, and Ginny Kilmer who filed a petition at the national youth conference of the UMC to bar membership in the church to individuals who were active participants in hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan.   Mary Wyatt - Martin Luther King breakfast for example Louise Minks and her paintings of local African Americans partnership with African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church Horace Boyer and his Gospel Music, writing the dedication for our new Sanctuary in 2008, suppor ot and participation with AAGC PART 2: Breakout Groups "All Change Starts At Home" - Adwoa Ampiah-Bonney Since WUMC  is ...

Welcome to the Restarted Race and Religion Workshop.  Our Lenten Series on Implicit Bias was designed using a curriculum from United Methodist Committee on Race and Religion.  Our intent was to spend three weeks with a guided self-examination - using scriptural references that highlighted the biases of the time of the apostles and Jesus' response to what he observed. These conversations were coupled with videos from Ted Talk about identifying, examining, and working to change white privilege in ourselves.  The workshops were to follow our traditional pattern: gathering Sundays after worship, with brunch. We got through our first Sunday of Lent, saw an inspiring TedTalk by neuroscientist Jerry Kang, had a good conversation, and then everything changed.   As you know, the church was forced to close and halt face to face meetings in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.  An unsuccessful effort to move the workshops to asynchronous on line content and online HW was, ...

The Jesus Prayer:  Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, Have mercy on us. First, Here is an audio recording by our own Cathy Bennett, of the hymn, Spirit of God, Descend Upon my Heart .  Listen to this to get you in the right spirit to consider this last installment of our Lenten Workshop on Implicit Bias This week, we will focus on how we will fight our implicit bias and be better followers of our lord and savior Jesus Christ.  We will listen to Melanie Funchess, whose TedTalk will urge us to a new form of Transformational Activism.     Our two Scripture readings for this week are ones I find quite challenging.  In the first, in Matthew 15: 21-28 we hear Jesus referring to a Canaanite woman in the most disparaging terms, and then later, again from Matthew 26: 6-13 , a defeatist vision of the poor as being always with us. What is it that Jesus - on the eve of Passion Week - and in the darkness that is about to befall him, telling us about triumphi...

OK, let's try this out.  I have created a form in Google to collect responses to some of the questions raised in WEEK 2 Implicit Bias. Click on this link or copy the URL and enter it into your browser: https://forms.gle/8R5LYmWuxV5ekJsA9 If you can fill out this form, I can share responses to you by next week.  Give it a try!

Dearest Lord,  Be our comfort and our strength.  This week has been hard for us.  It has been difficult to witness the spreading of  the pandemic caused by the newly hatched COVID-19 virus.  We worry about its high rates of infection and are concerned about the targeting of some of our most vulnerable population.  We have seen our President declare a National State of Emergency, schools and some businesses have shut down, and those of us who can have retreated to the safety of our homes for the near future. Still others don't have that luxury and are on the front lines as health care professionals, retailers who will keep us stocked and fed, and other critical personnel necessary to keep us afloat.  We pray you will keep them safe.   Yet, it is still Lent, and we still want to walk beside you on your Lenten journey.  Perhaps it will be a bit of a comfort to us to focus on the task of self reflection that we started in week 1.  Impl...