10.10.2023

Involved in Pain, Involved in Healing

To get into difficult and sometimes painful topics...

...a strong community is vital.

Photos by: UEM

This October, an international group of pastors and educational workers met in Cape Town, South Africa, to learn about racism and the church. Coming from different perspectives on racism, they exchanged views on the meaning of racism in their respective contexts, reflected on definitions and effects of racism, looked at their own learning path and considered together what the learning and experience could mean for the respective work contexts.

The team leading the seminar consisted of Sarah Vecera and Julian Elf (both UEM), Claudette Williams (URCSA*) and Quinton Ceasar (formerly URCSA, now Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Hanover, Germany). From the very beginning it was part of the Seminar to take experiences of racism seriously and to protect people negatively effected by it, while at the same time carefully accompanying processes of learning and unlearning with regard to racist patterns of thought.

The participants met with different people in the Western Cape who would share with them their knowledge and history regarding racism, apartheid and the fight against it:

Rev. Father Michael Lapsley introduced them to the Institute for the Healing of Memories. It was founded in South Africa for the South African context and now holds international workshops worldwide on reconciliation and healing regarding xenophobia. Their approach centers around the healing of people, both from what they did to others and what was done to them by others.

The seminar was not just a special experience of opening and learning for the participants, but also important for the UEM as an international Communion: Here, too, healing and learning is necessary, and will be necessary in the future. This seminar explored ways of how this can happen.

UEM Education Coordinator Sarah Vecera sums it up like this: “All in all, the pastoral encounter seminar was very intensive, moving and will keep us all (team and participants) busy for a long time to come. It became clear to everyone again and again how deep and painful the effects of the colonial era are and how closely the church is involved in it. It is not all good and it is not all bad and there are heavy contradictions that have to be endured.”

We wish all the participants and the team all the best moving forward with what they learned in the Seminar about each other, about themselves, about racism, church and God’s power to heal.

*URCSA = Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa