Institutional Equity

Building Systems, policies and processes that level the playing field for all.

General Commission on Religion and Race (GCORR) is critically examining expressions of racial and cultural injustice in local and global contexts: setting goals for overcoming them, intentionally measuring progress and resourcing culturally competent leaders (lay and clergy) to promote and sustain institutional equity within the world-wide United Methodist Connection

To this end, GCORR continues to collaborate with leaders to evaluate programs, mission, staffing, budgetary priorities, and leadership pipelines to insure that the Church is reaching, serving and bringing into full participation a membership of younger people and more diverse people.

General Commission on Religion and Race (GCORR) is initiating and modeling holy conversations throughout the Church about race, cultural diversity, and institutional equity. We gather and share learnings from these conversations to help grow a movement that honors all of God’s creation.

GCORR sponsors and encourages frank, respectful and holy conversations on how the Church can better challenge racial/ethnic and cultural bias and institutional injustice. GCORR believes we must talk about what divides us as well as how people of Christian faith can build bridges based on the uniting Love of Jesus and a commitment to institutional equity. GCORR continues to create an arena and a framework for these important conversations and shares what is learned so that United Methodists are tenaciously engaged in transforming the Church and the world.

Understanding one’s own culture and those of others, and the ability to worship, work and live effectively and in harmony with diverse persons are critical to those called to follow Christ. So are called to develop intercultural competence, “a set of cognitive, affective, and behavioral skills and characteristics that support effective and appropriate interaction in a variety of cultural contexts,” according to Janet M. Bennett, co-director of the Intercultural Communications Institution.

Broader definitions of “culture” may be far more complex than racial/ethnic/national identity. Gender, language, age, ability, heritage, socio-economic status, sexual orientation, immigration status, region, relationship status and level of formal education all inform one’s “culture.”

However, the history of Church and society – particularly in the last half of this millennium – have been marked by world-altering warring, colonialism and exploitation based on skin color prejudice, notions of “manifest destiny,” racism and xenophobia, which have divided the human family of God, including the Church. For this reason, the United Methodist Church has assigned to the General Commission on Religion and Race issues of race-ethnicity, national, language and tribe as its primary focus.

GCORR’s work on intercultural competency is inspired by the words of our Savior Jesus Christ – who bids us “go make of all disciples” and to make tangible the Great Commission to love God and love other people as we love ourselves. Our work is also informed by the teachings of United Methodism’s founder John Wesley, who embraced the whole of God’s world as his parish.

GCORR develops training, resources and networking to help United Methodists build intercultural –and self – awareness, openness to and appreciation for other realities and experiences, empathy and bridge-building relationship skills. GCORR’s goal in fostering intercultural competency is to raise up a new generation of clergy and laity in church leadership who, fired by the grace of Jesus Christ, will engage in discipleship and spiritual formation that is effectively contextual to the cultural realities of those seeking to walk with God.

In this way, GCORR’s work is critical to the United Methodist Church’s mission to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.