Sankofa Pilgrimages
First UMC of San Diego has led yearly Sankofa Pilgrimages, beginning in 2023 with a journey through the South, including Charleston, South Carolina, and New Orleans, Louisiana, that delved into the Transatlantic Slave Trade and inhumane chattel slavery. (Courtesy Photo)

United Methodist Churches Journey in Many Directions to End Racism

by

Advocating Justice

A United Methodist Insight Exclusive | July 17, 2025

A popular proverb, attributed to African origin, says: “If you want to go fast, go alone. But if you want to go far, then go together.” For many United Methodist local churches, the journey to healing the sin of racism — especially where past oppression is still painfully present — comes through sharing journeys of body, mind and spirit.

The United Methodist Church’s five-year old “Dismantling Racism” campaign has been a journey encompassing many smaller journeys. Local churches, where ministry ideals become reality, have moved from candid dialogues to discussing books, videos and films, from enjoying cross-racial worship and pulpit exchanges to participating in anti-racism training events. Each journey proceeded toward a goal of becoming “the beloved community,” a concept initiated by mid-20th century theologian Howard Thurman and embraced by his student, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., as a uniting vision of social harmony.

A quest to find some exemplary United Methodist congregations — using online research and recommendations from conference leaders — produced encouraging results in all five U.S. jurisdictions.

First and St. Paul churches of San Diego, Calif., have since 2020 jointly awarded Racial Justice Grants to local nonprofits that serve Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) communities working to dismantle systematic racism across San Diego County. The grants, funded by their Racial Justice Endowment, amounted to $40,000 in 2024 and will provide $36,000 this year. They are part of a long-term commitment by the churches to anti-racism work throughout San Diego.

St. Luke's United Methodist Church in Indianapolis sees becoming anti-racist as “a journey, a life-long commitment to do justice.” Its resource-rich Becoming Anti-Racist web page explains, “We are not all starting from the same place or life experiences and that is okay. We are simply asking you to lean in and open yourself up to learning.”

The church is hosting its fourth Children’s Defense Fund Freedom School this summer, helping to improve children’s literacy, self-esteem, cultural awareness, socio-emotional skills, and learning abilities, while also employing young adults as teachers, role models and mentors.  

Meanwhile, the church’s annual Dream Keepers Panel convenes racial justice advocates to share their perspectives on current challenges and the influence of Dr. King’s values, while helping St. Luke’s white community to “deepen their understanding of the lived reality of their neighbors of color.” 

The church also participates in the Indiana Remembrance Coalition that engages church members in  community efforts to address Indianapolis’ history of racial discrimination, lynching and other Ku Klux Klan activities. The coalition’s goal is to seek healing for affected individuals and communities.

In 2023, two Western Pennsylvania Conference churches, primarily White Christ UMC in Bethel Park and primarily Black John Wesley UMC in Washington, changed the name of their biracial Anti-Racism Team, formed in 2018, to Christians Advancing Racial Equity. CARE meets monthly to discuss national and local concerns related to systemic racism and to pursue action steps, including political advocacy and field trips. “Our meetings help us to gain perspective, build relationships and understand one another better,” says Christ Church’s website. “Our work is driven and informed by that partnership.”

In the nearby Susquehanna Conference, Journey UMC in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, is an intentionally diverse, community-focused congregation that “emphasizes racial and social justice as a part of its Christian discipleship in worship and learning settings.” Their Justice Team, working toward “a more anti-racist community,” is currently advocating against pre-trial cash bail policies that unfairly affect many people of color.

West End UMC in Nashville, Tennessee,  invokes God’s unconditional love as a “bedrock belief” in its AntiRacism Covenant. While noting the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and “other People of Color killed at the hands of unjust people and policies” their manifesto calls for standing against racism and white supremacy, and it proclaims that “the lives of our Black siblings, neighbors, friends, colleagues, family and church members not only matter but are worthy, beautiful, valued, and beloved by God.”

West End names historical racial sins of the denomination and its own church as “a vital step in healing and moving forward.” It commits to maintaining relationships with local historically Black congregations and learning from the experiences and insights of People of Color.

The website offers a list of Black-owned businesses to support and an array of anti-racism resources, arranged in categories such as “Racial Reconciliation for Beginners,” “Mass Incarceration,” “First-Person Accounts,” “Deep Studies” and “Anti-Racism Resources for Youth.”

“West End UMC is committed to continuing to learn and take action to be anti-racist each day, and we have a long way still to go,” said the Rev. Stacey Harwell-Dye, pastor of mercy and justice ministries. A group read and discussed Jemar Tisby’s popular book The Color of Compromise, where he addresses the history of racism within the Church.

“Knowing our historic legacy, we know that we have to sift through our tradition to see what needs to be unlearned and how that sinful way of thinking made its way into the church,” said Harwell-Dye. “We see the impact of racism in the ways and places that money gets spent or not spent, laws that are passed or not passed, and communities that continue to have to make a way out of no way. Anti-racism is part of our commitment to our baptismal vows to "resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves." 

The Rev. Carol Cavin Dillon, senior pastor, ensures that the church invites diverse guest preachers, usually Black pastors “because hearing the word preached and scripture interpreted through their lens is so very important to us having a richer picture of who God is in the world.”

A committee also introduces racially diverse art and artists to the congregation to help tell the story of God’s people because “we are shaped by what we see,” said Harwell-Dye. When the church commissioned artwork for its prayer chapel, it selected a watercolor painting depicting “a symphony of humanity” by Nashville artist Tin Nguyen. 

“We've committed to working on this at every age and stage. It's why in our children's area, you'll see an image of a Black Jesus offering communion, why our kids' Bibles have multiracial representations of people, and why we give families of newborns the book ‘God's Dream’ by Archbishop Desmond Tutu,” said Harwell-Dye.

Currently, members are focused on immigration concerns, she said, “seeking to walk alongside and build relationships with immigrants who have experienced great hardships because of their race or nationality.” That includes sharing funds, food and “a ministry of presence,” but also writing letters and speaking in person to oppose “harmful state legislation, particularly around allowing school districts to deny education to undocumented children,”  she said.

“Inclusivity is part of the DNA” of Matthews (North Carolina) United Methodist Church, located in a Charlotte suburb, says the Rev. David Christy, pastor. In fact, it’s in the church’s vision statement that’s carved in granite and displayed prominently in the narthex: to “become an all-inclusive Christian community which lifts high the cross and shares the love of Jesus.” 

Inclusivity is a core value of the Bridge Builders Fellowship, a group birthed by Matthews and Mount Moriah Missionary Baptist, one of the area’s oldest predominantly Black churches. It includes:

  • Monthly meetings where many of the 119 members from local churches gather for relationship-building, education and lively discussions focused on racial reconciliation, plus small groups that also meet monthly over supper.
  • Fifth-Sunday lunch gatherings at various churches to hear featured speakers, view films and explore past and present racial concerns together.
  • Biennial forums that engage church and community members in discussions and then action in pursuit of racial reconciliation. In February Matthews UMC hosted the 19th such forum since 2018. They explored the book Our Trespasses: White Churches and the Taking of American Neighborhoods, a story about urban redevelopment in Charlotte six decades ago and the displacement of a predominantly Black community.  Bridge Builders members have since brought the matter to Charlotte’s City Council for deliberation.
  • Participation in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Remembrance Project, a local initiative in partnership with the Equal Justice Initiative to confront history and seek healing from racial terror and lynching in Mecklenburg County.

At Wesley Park UMC in Wyoming, Michigan, a cross-racial pastoral appointment is also building bridges of friendship. In a video presented to the 2025 Michigan Annual Conference in May, the Rev. Gregory Kendrick shared how he and members are “on an intentional journey to become a welcoming, inclusive, beloved community.”  

All forms of diversity—including age, race, ethnicity and socio-economic background—are celebrated. “We are a divergent people coming from divergent backgrounds,” said Kendrick. “When beloved community happens, where all are loved and welcomed with a place here at the table, what a day of rejoicing that will be.”  Watch the Building Beloved Community video.

Taking Journeys to Understand and End Racism

Taking pilgrimages to learn about sites of past racial oppression and civil rights history has become a popular and effective tool for local churches’ anti-racism efforts.

West End UMC members joined members of Black United Methodist churches in the Nashville area on pilgrimages to several Civil Rights Movement venues. One tour guide, the late Earnest "Rip" Patton, a Freedom Rider while in college who protested segregation during lunch counter sit-ins, narrated their trek through Alabama to Selma, Anniston, Montgomery and Birmingham.

Aided by a grant and anti-bias training resources from the General Commission on Religion and Race, West End subsequently engaged four churches in a pilgrimage enhanced by “before and after” meetings and assignments to prepare for and respond to the journey. Participants were encouraged to work on specific racial justice issues. Guest speakers educated and mobilized the group to advocate for voters’ rights and voting participation, immigrant and refugee rights, and common-sense gun reform laws.

Matthews UMC members were among 50 Bridge Builders who took a day trip in March 2025 to tour the International Civil Rights Center and Museum and other racial history sites in nearby Greensboro, North Carolina. For a “lunch and learn” session they visited the Magnolia House, listed in the historic  Negro Motorist Green Book where Black travelers could find lodging before racial segregation was outlawed. 

In March 2023, Bridge Builders took 45 adults from four area churches on a Civil Rights Lenten Pilgrimage to Selma and Montgomery, Alabama. They toured sites including the Rosa Parks Museum, Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, the Freedom Rides Museum, the Legacy Museum, the National Memorial for Peace and Justice and the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Both journeys inspired reflections in later Matthews UMC gatherings, in the pastor’s blog and in Sunday worship services.

First UMC of San Diego has led yearly Sankofa Pilgrimages, beginning in 2023 with a journey through the South, including Charleston, South Carolina, and New Orleans, Louisiana, that delved into the Transatlantic Slave Trade and inhumane chattel slavery. The tour touched on the U.S. Reconstruction period, lynchings and the loss of voting rights during the Jim Crow era, and today’s law enforcement abuses and mass incarceration described by many scholars as “the new Jim Crow era.”

The word “Sankofa,” from the Akan language of Ghana, means “It is not wrong to go back and get that which you have forgotten.”

The church's 2024 10-day pilgrimage traveled northeast to Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, Washington D.C. and Virginia to visit racial history sites there. In June 2025, the five-day “Midwest Migration: A Movement Towards Justice” tour took pilgrims to St. Louis, Missouri; Springfield, Illinois; and Chicago, Illinois.

Their itinerary included the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, the DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center, and the home and burial site of Emmett Till, the Black teen whose brutal lynching in Mississippi in 1955 galvanized widespread support for the Civil Rights movement. 

First UMC San Diego plans to offer five Sankofa Pilgrimages in total, and each begins with an intensive three-week preliminary course. The 2026 journey will focus on racism in the West, specifically in California, during a series of weekend explorations.

The fifth pilgrimage will visit Ghana in West Africa to learn about the cultures of those who became enslaved and to experience the Cape Coast Castle’s “door of no return,” one of many portals through which slaves were forced to depart their homelands.

“We knew combatting racism would be a long-term endeavor,” said the Rev. Trudy Robinson. “These pilgrimages are not just learning experiences; they are evidence of that commitment.”

Asbury UMC, the first black Methodist church in Washington, DC, emerged in 1836 when African American members of historic Foundry UMC left due to racist mistreatment. Desiring even more independence, some Asbury members left there in 1849 to establish John Wesley African Methodist Episcopal Church.

The three Methodist churches — less than a mile apart from each other — had little contact with each other for nearly two centuries. That is, until Foundry prepared to celebrate its bicentennial in 2014 and reached out to Asbury to mend ties with its daughter church. The two began exploring their common and divergent histories, sharing in worship services, meetings and special events, and even collaborating to produce a joint video about their historic and resurgent relationship.

While most Asbury members were aware of the historic connection, most Foundry members were not. Eventually, they reconnected with John Wesley AMEZ Church to complete the trinity knot. Pastors of the three churches led members in racial reconciliation encounters, including conversations and book studies, recalled Asbury’s former pastor, the Rev. Ianther Mills.

The COVID pandemic in 2020 temporarily halted those encounters, but by early 2024 the three pastors began meeting again via Zoom. That’s when John Wesley AMEZ’s pastor, the Rev. Christopher Zachariah, suggested their members embark on a “civil rights pilgrimage” together to the deep South.

Mills warned them that it could become an emotionally challenging experience for some, recalling the self-guided tour she and her husband had taken of historic civil rights sites in Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee in 2019.

“I told them we should prepare for it educationally, psychologically and spiritually. It’s not entirely a happy experience to visit those legacy museums. And then you have to ask, ‘Why are we doing this, what do we hope to get out of it, and what will we do next with what we learn?’” she said.

The group began its planning in April 2024 and its serious preparations, including required study and meetings, in the fall. Forty-six members, ages 14-86, arrived in Atlanta and set out by bus June 16 on the five-day journey to historic sites in Alabama. Most were from Foundry and about a dozen came from Asbury.

Mills is now a district superintendent for the second time in the Baltimore-Washington Conference. She described the pilgrimage as deeply moving — especially crossing the storied Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, where peaceful civil rights marchers were mercilessly attacked by police in 1965, elevating the civil rights struggle’s visibility and public support and ultimately leading to passage of the Voting Rights Act that year.

Also meaningful on the tour was visiting historic Birmingham Baptist churches that were bombed, including the 16th Avenue Baptist Church where four girls were tragically killed, and Bethel Baptist where the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth served as a pastor and iconic local civil rights leader. 

While the Asbury members were familiar with some of the history, not many Foundry members were, Mills recalled. But all will have a chance to share what they learned, how it affected them and what they hope to do in response to the pilgrimage when members of the three churches gather at Foundry to hear their reflections on Sunday, August 10.

“I feel like this Civil Rights Pilgrimage was God’s divine intervention,” said Mills. “The planning and preparation and the full experience has been a source of hope in these times of erasure of Black people’s history, the rolling back of civil rights, and attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion.

“We witnessed the resilience of our people,” she explained. “We have been here before and have overcome. If our fore parents could withstand and overcome Jim Crow, then certainly we can overcome the seemingly devastating impact of these present challenges,” she said.

Arapaho UMC, Richardson, Texas, hosts Journey Toward Racial Justice monthly lunch meetings after worship with its sister congregation, historically Black Hamilton Park UMC. Discussions and programs focus on learning about “our call to end racism in all forms.” They also meet up to attend relevant museum exhibits, cultural events and more.

The two churches came together in early 2023 to learn about the hidden history of racism in Dallas. Ninety-one people, about half from each church, journeyed together on buses through downtown and Southern Dallas to tour racially historic sites. Then they discussed what they learned over lunch at a Black-owned barbecue restaurant.

“Sharing the Hidden Dallas Tour with Arapaho UMC fleshed out what it means to have racial understanding,” said the Rev. Sheron Patterson, then-pastor of Hamilton Park. “The Arapaho UMC members learned about our history, as we learned about our history too. The dual learning created understanding.”  

"Hearing the stories from our tour guides, followed by first-hand experiences shared by Hamilton Park members — those stories made the history real and more relevant for those who were not alive or present at the time," said the Rev. Cathy Sweeney, Arapaho’s pastor. Arapaho member Kenton Self wrote about his own journey toward racial justice after the tour.

The relationship-building began in 2021 when Hamilton Park's building was damaged in an ice storm and the congregation worshipped in Arapaho's sanctuary on Sunday afternoons. Then Arapaho launched its conference-supported Journey Toward Racial Justice program, led by Sweeney and aided by Hamilton Park member Fred Marsh.

Since then, the two churches have joined in Together We Dine events and attended Hamilton Park's production of “Simon of Cyrene” in April 2022. Hamilton Park also invited Arapaho to help with their "Path to Nourishment" monthly food distribution, which has helped to build friendships among the groups.

The two churches continue to share in collaborative learning events, such as recent theater productions that celebrated Black history, culture and creativity. They also engage one another in “vital conversations that expand intercultural competence and address the need for institutional equity after years of inequity from systems that negatively impact persons of color,” said Sweeney. In 2024 they participated in a facilitated racial healing circle and attended a workshop on microaggressions. 

Sweeney reported on two other recent journeys Arapaho organized for its community neighbors.

In 2024, they led a group to visit the U.S.-Mexico border through a program called "Courts & Ports," sponsored by Texas Impact, a nonprofit public policy organization based in Austin, Texas. They spent a day learning about the immigration process, including visiting and observing court proceedings, meeting with legal aid groups, and visiting nonprofits serving new immigrants in Brownsville and McAllen, Texas.

“The second day, we visited with Border Patrol officials, learning more about their challenges, and we went across the border into Mexico to understand more about what brings people in general — not just Mexican people — to the United States,” she recalled. “We visited an encampment and talked with several individuals about their journey. This trip was one that built empathy and understanding of the immigrant population and their stories.”

The church took another group to Oklahoma for three days to learn about Black Wall Street and the Greenwood Community in Tulsa. In Oklahoma City they visited the museum that honors victims of the 1995 federal building bombing there and visited the new First Americans Museum to learn about the lives of Native Americans and the oppression endured by those who were forced to relocate to the Oklahoma Territory. They also worshiped at the Native American United Methodist Church in Norman. “This was the best part of the trip for me,” said Sweeney, “because of the congregation's hospitality, patience, and willingness to share their stories and faith with us.”

Trinity United Methodist Church in Warner Robins, Georgia, emphasizes community engagement, especially celebrating connections among cultures and building relationships with neighbors. 

Trinity members Janee Dranberg and Margaret Mathews organized a Justice Walk on June 19 that gathered over 30 walkers to recognize Juneteenth as a day to commemorate the emancipation of enslaved African Americans in the United States and reflect on freedom, justice and equality.

“Participants learned about the history of Juneteenth and shared stories and traditions related to faith and culture,” said the Rev. Abra Lattany-Reed, director of diversity and justice ministries for the South Georgia Conference. “They focused on gospel truths relevant to today's social justice concerns. Youth participants were also given outreach opportunities."

”The event’s purpose was to “stand with those who too often feel unseen, unheard or looked down upon because of race,” said the Rev. Jeff Cook, senior pastor and now also a district superintendent. “I think of the vision of Martin Luther King Jr., who yearned for a time when people are judged by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin.  We want to do our part as followers of Christ to help make that dream a reality. “ 

The Rev. John W. Coleman serves as Editor-at-large for United Methodist Insight.