We seek to make our organization a space where BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Color) folks can truly belong as beloved members of the Body of God created in the divine image. We acknowledge our limitations as an organization led by white / European-descended women. We are listening and we are learning.
We acknowledge that we live and do ministry on the ancestral lands of the Osage Nation, Missouria, and those whose names we do not know who were removed unjustly. We honor these peoples and we seek to be in right relationship with them.
We acknowledge white body supremacy and all of its insidious forms – including how it has shaped us individually, culturally, collectively, both in the present and historically/ancestrally. We acknowledge the unique and prominent role that Christianity has played historically and currently to colonize the world and create and maintain white body supremacy and racialized capitalism. We believe this to be a distortion of the true teachings of Sophia Christ. We seek to understand this distortion clearly, heal its toxins in ourselves and our communities, and recover the liberating medicine that persists in our tradition despite millenia of distortion.
As a religious organization, we claim the spiritual nature of this work. In the witness of Jesus, we are re-learning how to be anthropos ~ fully human in community. We understand that we have a specific role to play as white women in working with other white folks. We seek to heal patterns of whiteness in ourselves, each other, our ancestral lines, our theology and spiritual practice, and the wider culture.
We value embodiment and acknowledge that white supremacy and colonialism live in our bodies. We believe that any approach to healing whiteness and colonialism needs to involve not just our minds but our bodies, our emotions, our ancestors, and our souls.
We continue learning from womanists, indigenous women, Latinx women, Asian women, queer and trans folks, post-colonialists and other BIPOC voices. This learning is lifelong. We seek ways for this learning to be reciprocally beneficial, including financial compensation when appropriate.
We acknowledge that no one person or organization can take on all aspects of this work and be healthy or sustainable. Rather, we seek to show up well for the work that is truly ours to do – and practice discernment about what that work is.
We believe that one of the strongest antidotes to a white supremacist, capitalist, colonizing culture is the creation of a healthy culture rooted in love, belonging, and Earth-connection. We believe that an intersectional ecofeminist ministry is uniquely poised to offer practices that can create this healthy culture, such as song, dance, and embodied ritual. These practices of wholeness can help create community that offers true belonging for a multicultural world. This is who we seek to be and the work we are called to do.
Sophia Rising 