Detroit Friends are grateful to Friends of Color who have invited us to reflect on how we have been affected by the pervasive and insidious cancer of racism. Detroit Friends have actively responded to their epistle. Out of our thoughtful discussion we have been refreshed in our unity around our commitment to continued discernment where the spirit is leading us. Our early steps on this path have already helped many of us to breathe a little better.
The first concrete fruit of our discernment has been to hereby minute the Detroit Friends Meeting’s commitment to becoming an antiracist community of faith and action. We realize that we are undertaking a Spirit-led process and not merely a project. We know that we will not be transformed by our opinions but only by our actions. Many years ago, Detroit Friends made a commitment to always see the City of Detroit as a home, a holy ground if you will. Detroit Friends today are planning the building of a new house, but we renew the earlier Friends’ vow to remain in our real home and to make holy the ground on which we build, to be good neighbors and faithful Friends. Likewise, our commitment to becoming an antiracist faith community will be a foundational heritage to future Detroit Friends. As we build for a future not our own, we enrich our own days in the process. We echo the intention of a weighty Friend before America was a nation and yet already stained by genocide and racist ideology: “Let us try what love can do.”
As we are moving into a new meeting house, we are confident that we will witness that of God’s Light in all of our neighbors and trust we may embody that Light to them as well. Our commitment is to a faithful participation in a process of self-discovery, coming to terms with the history of the neighborhood, and our renewal as an anti- racist faith community.
To bring our intentions to life in ourselves and among our neighbors and the larger community we have com- piled a set of ideas and considerations reflecting several worshipful discussions among Detroit Friends on specific ways in which we can bring this commitment to life. They are intended as an initial basis for continued discernment by the Meeting moving forward. We see our antiracist commitment to be an opportunity for a deeper inner awareness of both the shadow as well as the Light within us as individuals and as a Meeting.
Hebrews 10:24 “We must consider how to rouse one another to love and good works.”