Rev. Grey Maggiano, Rector of Bolton Hill Memorial Episcopal Church in Baltimore, Maryland, walked his church through a process of taking a hard and honest look at the church’s racist beginnings. The church was founded by slave holders. That origin story led to tendrils of injustice that reached down through the years to the church’s current life. After years of work, his congregation established a reparations fund and began to take action. He will tell their story and help us think about how to tell hard truths for the sake of liberation.

The church’s website asks, “Why, in a city that is more than 60% African-American, in a neighborhood that is almost 50% African-American, is our congregation predominantly white?” While acknowledging that the roots of this are multi-faceted and complicated, we also recognize that our parish’s role as a leader in the segregation of our church, neighborhood and city for more than 100 years is a significant part of the answer.”

Most of north Seattle was developed in a series of intersecting restrictive covenants and practiced redlining. Christian congregations were often directly involved in the creation of neighborhoods. They have certainly been implicated in and affected by these histories.

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