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By David Paulsen
Posted Feb 18, 2021
People push a car free after it spun out in the snow Feb. 15 in Waco, Texas. A winter storm brought snow, ice and plunging temperatures across the southern Plains and caused a power emergency in Texas. Photo: Associated Press
[Episcopal News Service] A combination of low temperatures and rare snowstorms have created a winter weather emergency across the South, with Texas facing some of the region’s direst conditions, from widespread power outages to a deadly traffic pile-up.
The cold-weather crisis also has disrupted parish life for many Episcopal congregations as church leaders and members respond to the sudden needs of people in their community who are suffering through the unforeseen disaster.
If anything underscores how far mainline Christian churches in this country have strayed from their mission, it is their embrace of demands by racial activists for monetary reparations for black slavery. Episcopalians, as befits their guilt-ridden souls, once again have taken the lead in this misguided mission.
On Sunday, January 24, the members of Memorial Episcopal Church in Baltimore’s Bolton Hill area voted to set aside $500,000 over the next five years for “justice-centered work” as atonement for the church role in slavery and related injustices. Designated community organizations would spend the money pretty much as they please. The initiative was the brainchild of the church rector, Rev. Grey Maggiano, who led an internal probe of his church’s connections to slavery. The investigation widened after a deacon, Natalie Conway, who is black, learned that some of her ancestors were slaves of founding pastor Charles Ridgley Howard. The report concluded, “Racism is interwo
Church established by slave owners creates reparations fund
by The Associated Press
Last Updated Jan 29, 2021 at 6:26 pm EDT
BALTIMORE A Baltimore Episcopal church founded by slaveholders in the 1860s said it will spend $500,000 over the next five years to establish a fund intended as reparations for slavery.
Members of Memorial Episcopal Church in Bolton Hill voted Sunday to set aside $100,000 to donate in the next year to community organizations doing what it termed “justice-centred work,” The Baltimore Sun reported Friday.
The fund is targeting race-based inequalities that have proliferated for generations in the church and in the community at large. A church advisory group will choose beneficiaries whose work focuses on issues of housing, education, environmental justice or civic engagement.
“It’s a welcome and positive step, because it’s an acknowledgment of and an effort to correct a long-lingering wrong,” Little said. “I think it’s a great conversation starter for the church community at large about how the church can play a leadership role at this moment, in this country and in the world, about eliminating structural inequities.”
Memorial Episcopal Church in Baltimore (via Facebook)
The decision makes Memorial the first parish in the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland, and among the first religious institutions in the state, to establish a fund dedicated to reparations for slavery.
Several Episcopal dioceses including ones in New York and Texas have launched reparations programs within the past two years. The Diocese of Texas has allocated $13 million toward long-term programs aimed at benefiting Blacks.