PRAR

WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION

This workshop invites participants to examine how racism is constructed, sustained, and experienced within personal, communal, and institutional life. Through readings, reflection, and interactive learning, participants will explore power, identity, and systems of oppression while engaging theological perspectives that affirm human dignity and God’s image. Together we will begin developing faithful practices for recognizing, resisting, and repairing the harms of racism in our communities.

PRESUPPOSITIONS

This workshop is intentionally designed around the following presuppositions. While participants may arrive with different experiences or perspectives, these shared assumptions provide the common foundation that allows us to engage the material, reflect together, and focus our conversation on the work of anti-racism rather than on establishing its basic premises.

• Racism is a lived and ongoing reality that shapes individual lives, institutions, and communities.

• Privilege, both in general and white privilege in particular, is real and experienced in ways that advantage some while disadvantaging others.

• These realities disrupt justice, undermine human dignity, and distort our shared life together.

• We bear responsibility, individually and collectively, to name, resist, and seek repair for the historic and ongoing harm caused by oppression.

• Anti-racism work is inherently intersectional. We recognize that race does not operate in isolation, and that other forms of oppression shape lived experience. These intersections will be evident in our content and conversations; however, our primary focus and intention remain addressing racism.

GOALS

• Analyze how power dynamics shape the construction of race and persistence of racism.

• Articulate a theological grounding that names racism as contrary to the image of God and incompatible with human dignity and justice.

• Recognize how racism operates structurally and systemically to sustain oppression along racialized lines.

• Examine how racism distorts both communal and personal identity.

• Begin developing faithful practices and tools for embodying antiracism and pursuing reconciliation.

STRUCTURE

This workshop is centered on a one-day, in-person gathering where participants will engage in facilitated conversations, personal reflection, and interactive exercises. To ensure a common foundation for our work together, participants will complete a brief reading assignment and an online pre-workshop activity in advance.