Richmond, USA - The Episcopal Church has, like many faiths, gradually has more blacks and whites sitting shoulder to shoulder in pews. But when it comes to leading the flock, some church activists say minorities remain in the shadows.
For example, only a few blacks have been ordained diocesan bishops in roughly 130 years, showing evidence of white privilege, activist Satoshi Ito says.
Mr. Ito will help lead the Episcopal Diocese of Southern Virginia in addressing the subject through anti-racism training sessions this fall and winter.
The sessions are part of a national push requiring race-sensitive training as the denomination buckles down on "the sin of racism."
Participants will use group activities, work sheets and face-to-face conversations to highlight such topics as minority stereotypes and how they impact attitudes throughout the diocese.
"We have widespread segregation — where people live, where people go to school, where people go to church," said Mr. Ito, who's organizing the sessions through the diocesan Anti-Racism Commission. "The church is kind of a natural place for change to begin."
Denominations increasingly have confronted the issue of race, organizing efforts to diversify single-race congregations and making amends for their own histories of discrimination.
Recent coverage of racially charged subjects, including the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, has further prodded churches to examine their role in promoting equality, said Susan Glisson, of the William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation, at the University of Mississippi.
"There continue to be inequalities in health care, in housing and education," she said. "Traditionally, those are social-justice issues that churches are deeply concerned about."
The Episcopal Church has mandated anti-racism training for national lay and clergy leaders.
A national team trains diocesan leaders, and the team later may share its knowledge with church members in voluntary, multiracial sessions like those being held in southern Virginia.
The sessions are planned in each of the nine convocations in the diocese, which stretches from the south side of the James River at Richmond to the North Carolina border.
In one exercise, participants sit face-to-face and share their first experiences with race. One woman recalled being steered away from people "like them" — blacks and other minorities, Mr. Ito said.
"What this [woman], now in her sixties, kind of remembers is black people and white people are very different," Mr. Ito said. "What's planted at an early age in that kind of teaching moment, so to speak, affects her for the rest of her life."
However, in the church, uneasy feelings do not often become blatant bigotry.
"The real challenge that faces the trainers is to deal with what we refer to as white privilege," Mr. Ito said.
It's a term that organizers say can encompass everything from a white person's feelings of guaranteed fairness in the workplace to a black person's sense of limited opportunities compared to their white counterparts.
Activists point to church leadership to illustrate the concept.
There have been 38 black bishops consecrated in the Episcopal Church in the past century — a low number even in a denomination where 89.9 percent of congregations are predominantly white.
A diocesan bishop is elected by the diocese to serve until he or she retires or dies.
Only one minority person, an American-Indian woman, has risen to the role of bishop in southern Virginia in recent memory, according to the diocese. The diocese doesn't compile how many minorities are rectors — the Episcopal equivalent of a pastor — though officials say the majority are white.
When it comes to the annual convention where diocesan mandates are issued, "it was being conducted by the white leaders of the diocese, as recently as two years ago," commission member David Benedict said.
The dormant commission reformed a few years ago, in part to help conduct anti-racism workshops.
"The [Episcopal] Diocese of Southern Virginia had become a very sleepy diocese and just wasn't thinking much about that race really made much difference," said Mr. Benedict, who thought the diocese's current search for a new bishop offered an opportunity to show diversity goals in action.
In the 1990s, the Episcopal Church officially declared racism a sin but saw little change in congregational attitudes, said the Rev. Jayne Oasin, social justice officer for the Episcopal Church.
"We had passed the resolution, but nobody really was talking about it," he said.
The church later created a five-level training program that examines forms of oppression.
Officials have used "Seeing the Face of God in Each Other" to train leaders in more than half of the 111 dioceses across the country and to prepare those leaders to host their own training sessions.
Still, church leaders face an uphill struggle in addressing an emotionally charged subject, with few ways to determine when and if they've made progress.
Not everyone is convinced that it can be done.
The Rev. Lynne Washington spent seven years helping organize racial sensitivity training for the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia.
She said the same dozen people repeatedly showed up to the sessions. Miss Washington eventually left to lead a community center.
"The whole notion of race relations training makes people uncomfortable," she said. "The general public does not accept the fact that it's their problem, not black people's problem."