Start With the Truth
06-01-2022
McCormick’s Center for Reparatory Justice, Transformation, and Remediation is situating faith, theology, and ministry in public discourses about reparatory justice.
“The way to right wrongs,” said journalist and anti-lynching activist Ida B. Wells, “is to turn the light of truth upon them.” McCormick’s Center for Reparatory Justice, Transformation, and Remediation (CRJTR) is one such light.
In partnership with the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference, Inc., McCormick, in 2020, began groundbreaking efforts to bring the justice and prophetic traditions of the Christian church into conversations about the human rights of people of African descent across the world as well as other groups who have been subjected to racial and other injustices.
“The faith position is unique in conversations around reparatory justice and repairing harm,” says Dr. Iva Carruthers, “because it starts with a revolution of values…a transformation of heart and mind.”
The general secretary of the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference and executive director of CRJTR, Dr. Carruthers sees the need for individuals and nations to have a truthful understanding of the harm done by myths of superiority and racialized systems of domination that spread within countries and across the globe. Speaking to the Virginia Commission to Study Slavery and Subsequent De Jure and De Facto Racial and Economic Discrimination Against African Americans, Dr. Carruthers said, “This commission is as much for the needs of white America to rid itself of the systemic racism and misplaced notions of superiority as it is for Black America to be healed from the harm done.”
While CRJTR’s work has been grounded in truth-telling initiatives in the U.S., Dr. Carruthers sees the issue of reparatory justice as a global one. CRJTR has been working with theologians like South Africa’s Rev. Dr. Allan Boesak, who was instrumental in the dismantling of apartheid in Africa. Together, Dr. Boesak, professor of Theology and Ethics at Pretoria University, and CRJTR are assessing ways for students to have international and interdisciplinary exchanges to expand the study of laws, theology, and media that have had a critical role in the perpetuation of racialized systems of domination worldwide.
“We want to expand the landscape of seminary education and ministry practice to give students networks that help them address justice issues from a global perspective,” says Dr. Carruthers. “The fact that the World Council of Churches, Caribbean and African nations, European denominations, and faith leaders around the world are starting to lean into truth-telling conversations is a hopeful sign. We cannot change what we do not truthfully recognize.”
Rev. Dr. Iva Carruthers, executive director, Center for Reparatory Justice, Transformation, and Remediation
“The faith position is unique in conversations around reparatory justice and repairing harm because it starts with a revolution of values…a transformation of heart and mind.”
Dr. Iva Carruthers