{"id":28816,"date":"2021-02-10T13:08:05","date_gmt":"2021-02-10T18:08:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/?p=28816"},"modified":"2021-02-10T13:08:05","modified_gmt":"2021-02-10T18:08:05","slug":"anti-racism-and-equity-officer-rethinks-darkness-and-light","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/anti-racism-and-equity-officer-rethinks-darkness-and-light\/","title":{"rendered":"Anti-racism and equity officer rethinks darkness and light"},"content":{"rendered":"

The United Church\u2019s anti-racism and equity officer, Adele Halliday, is unhappy with our thinking of sins or evil as black or dark, and goodness as white or light. It hurts and is damaging to the soul. The Bible is full of such imagery, of course, but we should try to read such passages \u201cthrough an anti-racist or racial justice lens\u201d, and we must remember that “Biblical writers themselves had their own biases.\u201d As I am sure you realise by now, Adele Halliday has no bias at all.<\/p>\n

I have been going through my well-worn copy of Lord of the Rings and replacing “Dark Lord” with “D**k Lord”. I like to do my bit.<\/p>\n

Read it all here<\/a>. I should warn you, gentle reader, that the article does assume Adele\u2019s gender and repeatedly refers to zir has \u201cshe\u201d and \u201cher\u201d. Upsetting I know: please write to The Anglican Journal to voice your complaint.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"Adele Halliday still remembers conversations from a church she attended years ago. The congregation constantly associated whiteness with purity and goodness, and darkness with evil. They talked about people being \u201cwashed white\u201d from the blackness of sin.<\/span><\/p>\n

Language is an important part of Christian worship traditions, whether in Scripture, song, liturgy or prayer. But when this language is unexamined, the result can be alienating\u2014or worse, perpetuate longstanding prejudices, Halliday says.<\/span><\/p>\n

At the time, Halliday says, \u201cI didn\u2019t feel I had enough personal power to speak up and say, \u2018Can you please stop saying this, it is hurting me, it is damaging to my soul.\u2019\u201d Eventually she \u201cvoted with [her] feet\u201d by leaving and joining another worshipping community. \u201cBut for some people it means leaving [church] completely.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Halliday is the anti-racism and equity officer for the United Church of Canada, and has been working at the United Church\u2019s national office since 2004 in various capacities, though always related to anti-racism or inter-cultural work.<\/span><\/p>\n

The United Church\u2019s work on these language issues is based in its anti-racism policy, developed in 2000, Halliday says. One major focus is discouraging the use of \u201cdark\u201d or \u201cblack\u201d as synonyms for evil, and words like \u201clight\u201d or \u201cwhite\u201d as equivalent to goodness.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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The United Church\u2019s anti-racism and equity officer, Adele Halliday, is unhappy with our thinking of sins or evil as black or dark, and goodness as white or light. It hurts and is damaging to the soul. The Bible is full … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[319],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-united-church"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28816"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28816\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}