A United Methodist Insight Exclusive
Almost a month after the controversial May 25, 2020, murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis, Minnesota, police officer, and amid a growing protest movement, the United Methodist Council of Bishops unveiled a new imperative for the 11-million-member worldwide denomination. They called it “Dismantling Racism.”
In the five years since, the campaign has built upon the widespread outrage and strategic responses that followed the high-profile 2020 police killings of Ahmad Aubrey, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, and more violence against people of color across the United States. While the outrage has diminished, the determination to respond has not. As a result, all 52 U.S. United Methodist annual conferences, along with denominational boards and agencies and many local churches, have engaged in a variety of “Dismantling Racism” efforts.
The Council of Bishops launched the churchwide Dismantling Racism campaign—first titled “United Methodists Stand Against Racism”—on a historic date: June 19, or Juneteenth, which commemorates the day in 1865 after the Civil War ended that enslaved Black people in South Texas finally learned they had been emancipated. In 2021 that date was celebrated as a new federal holiday.
The campaign came during what many considered a time of racial reckoning in America. But now many are asking what has changed, or is changing, in the church and in society.
The adoption of groundbreaking Diversity, Inclusion and Equity (DEI) anti-racism policies by governments, businesses and institutions has been one of many answers to that question. But this year is seeing a marked retrenchment in that historic racial progress, in the wake of the 2024 U.S. national elections. Meanwhile, other vexing national concerns—such as immigration and mass deportations, an ailing economy, and challenges to federal support for health care and education—may have nudged racism aside. Yet, the causes and consequences of racism remain germane to all these concerns and others.
Part 3 of a United Methodist Insight Exclusive Series
A question for United Methodists to consider now is what is happening in their own Dismantling Racism campaign after five years. What makes that question especially timely is a change proposed to the denomination’s constitution, in Paragraph 5, Article V, which annual conferences globally are debating and voting on this year, following the 2020/2024 General Conference’s approval.
If ratified by two-thirds of the conferences, the revision should strengthen the denomination’s longtime call for racial justice by explicitly recognizing its role in combating racism, racial inequity, colonialism, white privilege, and white supremacy both within the denomination and in broader society, according to the General Commission on Religion and Race.
The Council of Bishops will report the aggregate total votes of the amendment in late 2025. In at least one annual conference’s deliberations—and perhaps others—some discomfort was expressed over the terms “colonialism, white privilege, and white supremacy.” That may be unsurprising, since more American citizens have been grappling with those concepts over the past five years in the nation’s new awakening to the base causes and consequences of racial discrimination and oppression.
Here, on a general church level, is where the denomination’s Dismantling Racism campaign stands on its fifth anniversary. Subsequent articles will explore evidence of its development and status among conferences and local churches.
Council of Bishops
Bishop Tracy S. Malone
“As bishops of The United Methodist Church, we raise our collective voices to admonish President Donald Trump’s use of executive orders to broadly eliminate Diversity, Equity and Inclusion policies,” wrote Bishop Tracy S. Malone, Council of Bishops president, in a May 2025 pastoral letter. She described DEI policies as “restorative justice” and “essential as a means to correct past injustices in our church and society.”
The bishops’ DEI protest was one of four letters shared with the denomination to address “profound suffering, deep division, and urgent calls for justice and compassion,” following the council’s spring meeting. This letter also addressed another government trend of erasing and revising historical facts about the underreported role people of color have played in the na
“Telling the truth of a nation’s history is not only a moral imperative; it is necessary to avoid repeating the mistakes of an immoral past,” she wrote. “Any nation is weakened when its government willfully erases factual information describing the harm perpetrated by racism, oppression and systemic injustice.”
Bishop Malone, leader of the UMC’s Indiana Area, urged United Methodists to ask their congressional representatives to repeal federal removal of DEI policies and to affirm and advocate “for the rights of all marginalized communities.”
While that letter did not mention the five-year-old Dismantling Racism campaign, the council’s 2024 pre-General Conference meeting explored the sin of racism in a conversation focused on baptism. Members heard from their Anti-Racism Leadership Team chaired by Bishop LaTrelle Easterling, who leads the Baltimore-Washington and Peninsula-Delaware conferences. She said their work will continue until 2028.
Team member Bishop Tom Berlin, of the UMC’s Florida Area, described the anti-racism work as a “necessary journey of sanctification. This work is important … because doing this work is the only way to have our Lord bring us into the beloved community.”
The Dismantling Racism campaign launched in 2020 was intended to be coordinated among the council and several general agencies of the denomination. The agency general secretaries (top executives) issued a Statement on Racism at that time.
The General Commission on Religion and Race, Discipleship Ministries, United Women in Faith, the General Board of Church and Society and United Methodist Communications came together to wage the campaign from their various vantage points, resourcing conferences, churches and leaders in their efforts. The communications agency has been a steady source of published news, commentaries, graphics and educational resources to help keep the church informed and involved in the campaign at every level of the connection.
General Commission on Religion and Race
The Washington, D.C.-based General Commission on Religion and Race, the UMC’s monitor on racial inclusion since 1972, has addressed a range of U.S. racial injustice concerns through training, advocacy, consultation, promotion, educational resources and grant funding for programs. Their focus has included racial discrimination and violence against Black and Asian people, the lasting trauma of historic Native American boarding schools and other forms of American colonization, and how individuals and churches can become more culturally competent and anti-racist.
But Religion and Race has a dual focus now. One is interpreting and supporting the constitutional Article V amendment “as a vital step toward embedding racial justice more strongly into the fabric of our church’s values and law.” The other is the extreme federal tactics of arresting and deporting immigrants and migrants. Those tactics challenge United Methodists to advocate for justice, radical hospitality and compassion for those whom the Bible calls “sojourners,” in accordance with the denomination’s Social Principles.
The agency held an Immigration Summit in April that convened annual conference leaders, advocates, and community voices to strategize and resource the church’s growing quest for immigration justice. “We are continuing to work with annual conferences to equip local churches with tools for advocacy, accompaniment and education,” reported Jeehye Pak, Religion & Race’s Senior Director of Communications and Marketing. The agency is also examining federal travel bans recently issued against dozens of non-European countries, including countries where United Methodist churches are located.
This summer Religion and Race will focus U.S. grants from its CORR Action Fund on “deepening the UMC’s relationships with immigrant communities by supporting projects that address local immigration realities, foster direct engagement through community partnerships and promote education.”
The agency’s international Central Conference grants will support “initiatives that advance conflict resolution, educate communities about oppression and advocacy, build intercultural competency, and develop leadership among youth and young adults.”
The commission’s March 3 board meeting examined key issues shaping the church’s future, including immigration and migration, DEI, tribalism and ethnic conflict, white Christian nationalism and disability justice. The board also explored ways to engage and empower younger generations in the church’s racial justice and equity efforts.
Discipleship Ministries
Discipleship Ministries, based in Nashville, Tenn., offers Resources for Responding to Systemic Racism, including worship resources for racial-ethnic heritage months and special days like Juneteenth. A new 36-page booklet, Anti-Racism Discipleship: An Intentional Discipleship Pathway in the Face of Systemic Racism ($3.99), provides leaders with practical tools, scriptural grounding and ministry ideas to address racism personally, communally, and systemically. More items can be found on "Resources to Support Your Anti-racism Discipleship Journey," including "Anti-Racist Discipleship and Social Justice," published in 2021, and "Anti-Racism Resources from United Methodist General Agencies, published in 2020.
Praying for Change: Daily Prayers for Anti-Racism, prepared since 2020 by the Rev. Derek C. Weber of the agency’s worship team, provides meditations and prayers Monday through Friday to help subscribers remain centered on the quest to overcome the sin of racism from the inside out. Prayers can be used for personal and small group devotions, or in corporate worship, according to the instructions.
“While the headlines may have receded, the sin of racism continues to be seen and felt on both individual and systemic levels,” Weber wrote recently. “Dismantling racism is not a short-term task but a lifelong moving forward to perfection in love.”
Weber pledged that Discipleship Ministries and other denominational agencies will “continue to provide resources and guidance on how to become anti-racist.”
Discipleship Ministries’ newest, experimental Dismantling Racism ministry is the Antiracism Discipleship Connective. It is part of the agency’s efforts to help churches “make disciples who fully embrace working for justice and reconciliation as an integral part of intentional discipleship.”
“Antiracism, in this vision, is not a political stance but a discipleship pathway that calls us to confront sin, embody grace, and pursue the transformation of people and communities,” said the Rev. Bener Agtarap, who directs Community Engagement and Church Planting/Path1 and Connectional Mobilization at Discipleship Ministries.
The name, The Connective, combines the word “collective” with a reference to The United Methodist Church’s “connectional” nature. The monthly, evening gathering engages United Methodist leaders from across the denomination in online video chat sessions that encourage deep listening, learning and action plans to foster more loving, anti-racist lives in individuals and churches.
At the first session in May participants “initiated a journey that takes seriously the spiritual, historical, and systemic realities of racism and roots our response in Christian discipleship,” wrote Amania Drane, a project consultant for the Northern Illinois Annual Conference and part of the Connective.
The second session, June 12, focused on Native American history, identity, and the relationship between Indigenous peoples and the Methodist Church. Led by a pastor in the Oklahoma Indian Missionary Conference, participants listened and shared personal experiences and insights from reading articles and viewing videos that prepared them for the session.
The theme for the third session, July 3, will be “What we All Share: Exploring the Nuances of Racism within Minority Groups.” Contact Amania Drane to learn more and register. Also, read her article about the Connective, "It’s Not a Moment – It’s a Movement: Equipping United Methodists for Spirit-Led, Justice-Rooted Discipleship.
United Women in Faith
United Women in Faith (formerly United Methodist Women) adopted its Charter of Racial Policies in 1952 and updated it in 1962. The global women’s mission organization persuaded the 1980 General Conference to include the Charter for Racial Justice in The Book of Resolutions in 1980; and it has been updated and readopted regularly at General Conferences since then, including in 2024.
UWFaith also submitted to General Conference in 2024 a call for action against Environmental Racism in the US. And it announced that its 2026 Women’s Assembly, May 15-17, 2026, in Indianapolis, Indiana, will issue “a strong call to eliminate institutional racism.”
Author, activist and deaconess Garlinda Burton addressed that topic in a speech to the organization in March, urging members to become more active on the front lines of overcoming racism.
“The time for talking has passed. The time to act is now,” she said. “And I’m specifically speaking to my White sisters…. What are we willing to do in this fraught and dangerous time?”
A longtime United Methodist journalist and former top executive of the General Commission on Status and Role of Women, Burton said, “Women of color are still doing most of the heavy lifting when it comes to confronting, naming and acting to expel institutional racism and its enabler, white supremacy. After all our book studies, our talking groups, our meeting groups, our supper clubs, our prayer vigils, we still see a disproportionate amount of the work being laid on women of color to fight the battle of racism.”
She called on White women to educate their children about racism, to support businesses owned by people of color, and to vote and advocate for racial justice and reparations, DEI policies and immigrants’ rights.
General Board of Church and Society
The General Board of Church and Society in Washington, D.C., took an early stand in support of the Black Lives Matter protest movement against systemic racism, which began in 2013 following the acquittal of George Zimmerman, who was charged with killing teenager Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida. The social justice advocacy agency has called for an end to racial profiling by law enforcement; for humane treatment and restorative justice for formerly incarcerated persons; for an end to the “culture of hate and hate crimes” in America; and for accountability among “majority-White local churches to confront their white privilege.”
“We recommit ourselves to challenging privilege, power, and unjust access,” wrote the board. “As our Social Principles remind us, racism is sin.” Retired Bishop Julius C. Trimble, who took the reins as general secretary in 2024, has addressed racism in several statements and commentaries.
In February Bishop Trimble joined the Rev. Giovanni Arroyo, Religion and Race general secretary, at the denomination’s quadrennial leadership training event in Houston, Texas. Together they called for stronger advocacy to support migrants, immigrants and refugees facing extreme federal arrest and deportation policies. The two also urged leaders to advocate for a stop to “Criminalizing Communities of Color in the United States” (Book of Resolutions 3331).
Last September both agencies condemned “flagrant lies and hate perpetrated against Haitian migrants” by Republican candidates and supporters who, in 2024 national election campaigns, falsely accused Haitian migrants in Ohio of eating dogs and cats.
Racial and Ethnic Plans and Initiatives
The denomination sponsors six racial-ethnic/language ministry plans and initiatives, also known as the U.S. “national plans.” All the plans were established before the Dismantling Racism campaign was initiated, showing the UMC’s longtime denominational support for racial-ethnic inclusion. Each was approved for continued support by General Conference in 2024, although at decreased funding levels because of declines in membership and giving. The General Board of Global Ministries administers four plans that serve Hispanic/Latino, Asian American, Korean American and Pacific Islander churches and communities.
The Asian American Language Ministry assists in developing new ministries and strengthening existing ones in Asian American communities through funding, technical assistance and consultation. AALM represents 12 Asian American subethnic groups with 15 different languages. And it reaches second, third and fourth generations confronting obstacles they find in U.S. society.
The Plan for Hispanic/Latino Ministry, the Korean Ministry Plan and the Pacific Islanders Ministry Plan, established in 1992, 2000 and 2012 respectively, support training, consultation and funding for development of leadership, discipleship ministries and congregations. They also emphasize programs to serve the needs and interests of youth, young adults and families, including first, second and third generation members in the U.S.
Discipleship Ministries administers two other plans approved by General Conference: the Native American Comprehensive Plan (NACP) and Strengthening the Black Church for the 21st Century (SBC21).
Next: Annual Conferences’ efforts form the heart of Dismantling Racism.
John W. Coleman
Courtesy Photo
The Rev. John W. Coleman serves as Editor-at-Large of United Methodist Insight.