Our updated COVID-19 Protocols for Worship Services at City Hope. These are effective August 8, 2021.
In 2020 we are continuing to struggle against a very real and dangerous problem. White supremacy and the racist policies, ideas, and hate that flow from it has plagued the world for far too long. This has come at great costs. It has cost black people and other people of color their physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health, their well-being, their opportunities, their livelihoods, their prosperity, their peace, and their very lives. It has gone on not only because of the evil intent of the vocal and active proponents of white supremacy, but also because of the silence and complicity of white people. The silence and complicity of pursuing the status quo, of voting into power those who have created or maintained racist policies, of not challenging policies and decisions, of not being “our brother’s keeper,” and of concerning ourselves with only that which promotes our flourishing rather than actively pursuing an equitable society in which everyone flourishes and in particular those who are marginalized.
Racial and ethnic divide has plagued our country throughout history, and it continues today. I believe strongly that one of the best ways forward is to look backward in history and understand the forces at work in key moments so that we can see what things we missed. It is through this understanding that we can be equipped to not miss those moments again. One of those moments in Presbyterian church history centers around a man named George Bourne.
