Our Power Together: A Clergy Community Action Group in Greenville

After the massacre at Emanuel AME in Charleston last year, a number of clergy in the Greenville area found ourselves jarred by the realization that we did not know each other well enough to do transformative social justice work together. We did not know each other’s stories of oppression, we did not know the ways that our faith commitments informed us and sometimes inhibited us, and we did not know how our own blindspots about one another’s religious communities affected our risk-taking together. Using silence, story telling, and our collective power, we have been meeting once a month for day-long sessions guided by Speaking Down Barriers. I’ll share some reflections on what we’re learning so far.