Reaching the Champions of Social Justice

Since the formation of the World Council of Churches (WCC) in 1948, the ecumenical voice against social injustice in the church and society has been strengthening. As one expression of unity among the fellowship, the WCC embarked in 2013 on a Pilgrimage of Justice and Peace to work, pray, and walk together for life-affirming economies, climate change, nonviolent peace building, and reconciliation and human dignity. Champions of these issues exist within the ecumenical movement. Yet one also finds that champions of one theme are pushing back on another theme. Sometimes it is due to diversity of contexts and biblical and theological interpretations. At other times it is due to unconscious bias about the holistic nature of God's mission of justice for all God's people and creation. This paper grapples with this question: Why are people who are so alive to economic and ecological injustice sometimes blind to racial and gender injustice? To answer this, I explore the existence of conscious and unconscious bias despite the many powerful ecumenical statements that have been issued on racial justice.     

COVID-19 and Religious Ethics

The editors of the JRE solicited short essays on the COVID-19 pandemic from a group of scholars of religious ethics that reflected on how the field might help them make sense of the complex religious, cultural, ethical, and political implications of the pandemic, and on how the pandemic might shape the future of religious ethics.     

Adjusting To a New Racial Climate: Maintenance of Personal Integrity

This paper will focus on the writer’s experience as a native New Yorker relocating to Montgomery, Alabama. The writer will share how he adjusted and coped with overt discrimination and racism in the context of the high school in which he attended there-a majority white high school on the “other” side of town. The writer will share how he employed the following coping mechanisms as methods of adjusting to his new environment: translating emotional experiences into words (relaxation and talk therapy), involvement with other black positive peers, careful assessment before acting, withdrawal and avoidance, and consuming African-American literature.     

Disordered Eating in Women of Color: Some Counseling Considerations

There is little attention devoted to studying eating disorder symptoms in racially and ethnically diverse groups despite the fact that the prevalence rates among women of color for eating disorder symptoms are similar to those of European American women. This article reviews research related to eating disorders in women of color, including a discussion of sociocultural factors that could influence the manifestation of eating disorders in women of color. Considerations for counseling practice and research are provided.     

The effect of Obama saliency on individual-level racial bias: Silver bullet or smokescreen?

President Obama's election has been construed as a potentially positive force for intergroup relations, but this issue has not been previously addressed experimentally. In experiment 1, conducted 4-5 months after the election, White participants were primed with either President Obama or nature before completing a variety of race-related measures. Results indicated that priming Obama did not influence implicit racial bias or internal motivation to control prejudice. However, consistent with exemplar and symbolic racism theories, participants primed with President Obama expressed greater agreement with the tenets of symbolic racism and were more reluctant to accept the possibility that they personally harbored subtle racial bias. Experiment 2, conducted 21 months after the election, replicated the Obama effects from experiment 1 and showed that priming another Black exemplar (Oprah) also increased symbolic racism. Results suggest that highly successful Black exemplars currently serve as a smokescreen for symbolic and subtle racial biases.     

To Love or Hate Thy Neighbor: The Role of Authoritarianism and Traditionalism in Explaining the Link Between Fundamentalism and Racial Prejudice

Fundamentalism is consistently related to racial prejudice (Hall, Matz, & Wood, 2010), yet the mechanisms for this relationship are unclear. We identify two core values of fundamentalism, authoritarianism and traditionalism, that independently contribute to the fundamentalism‐racial prejudice relationship. We also contextualize the fundamentalism‐racial prejudice relationship by suggesting that fundamentalists may show prejudice based on conceptions of African Americans as violating values but show tolerance when prejudice is less justifiable. These ideas are tested and confirmed using three data sets from the American National Election Studies. Across all three samples, fundamentalism is related to increases in symbolic racism but decreases in negative affect towards African Americans, and these relationships are mediated by both authoritarianism and traditionalism.     

Intersection of race,gender, and nationality in teaching about race and racism

Teaching about race and racism is important in social work education, yet at times it can present perplexing experiences for some faculty members. Using the concept of intersectionality, this paper presents a narrative on my experience of teaching race and racism as a Black, female professor from the Caribbean. Examples of my pedagogical responses during these experiences are presented.     

Psychology,community, and the recovering racist

This study adds to the tradition of studying race talk in the context of a flash point in biculturalism in Aotearoa New Zealand. The research examined constructions of the Mayor of New Plymouth (Andrew Judd) following his advocacy for extended Māori representation on the New Plymouth District Council. Data comprised reports, editorials, opinion pieces, and letters to the local newspaper immediately after Judd's appearance on a nationally broadcast current affairs television show when he announced the end of his mayoralty. The analysis considered constructions of Judd as both hero and anti‐hero, with complimentary constructions of the local community as racist, or not. In subscribing to the view for extended representation on the grounds of cultural constituency, Judd was variously positioned as culturally and politically naïve, as a hero for the cause for greater political representation for Māori, and an anti‐hero responsible for letting his own community down and bringing negative publicity to the town he was meant to serve. Judd was the target of abuse that prompted him to end his mayoralty, and this abuse stimulated constructions of widespread community racism. The discussion includes an interrogation of what it means to be a recovering racist, and finally, it is argued that the analysis provides further evidence of the sinuousness of racism.     

Discerning the Signs of the Times

This article offers a close reading of the six reports from the 4th Assembly of the WCC in Uppsala 1968. The assembly was keenly in tune with the worldwide upheavals of the year. It indeed sought to discern the signs of the time and produced a number of creative suggestions, for example by emphasizing the aspect of inclusiveness in catholicity, by stressing the multilateral dimension of mission, and not least by highlighting the churches' inherent responsibility to be agents of justice and peace in a fractured world. Uppsala 1968 proved to name in a prophetic way crucial issues that remain on the agenda for worldwide Christianity: class, economy, isolationism, racism, the arms race. But today the churches are also confronted with new and renewed issues such as post‐colonialism, migration, ecology, gender, and a theological grounding of the church‐s existence in the world. The article concludes by proposing table fellowship as a possibility for such theological grounding.