Advocacy

Interfaith Movement for Immigrant Justice

Creator members work toward justice for our immigrant brothers and sisters in our community and throughout the region through IMIrJ. Working toward understanding and equal justice for those newly come to this country, the members of Creator work to accompany our brothers and sisters throughout the community as they need help and protection navigating the system.

Creator and the World

Creator partners with Lutheran World Relief to provide aid for global efforts. Lutheran World Relief Disaster Relief teams are on the ground where disasters strike in the U.S. and worldwide.

Creator Local Efforts and Resources

Click here for Local Learning and Resources

Local Efforts and Resources for Racial Reckoning & Advocacy

In 2019 the ELCA Churchwide Assembly, adopted a resolution designating June 17 as a commemoration of the martyrdom of the Emanuel 9—the nine people shot and killed on June 17, 2015, during a Bible study at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C. 

We held a commemoration service with other churches and organizations in the area. This led  to Listen, Pray, Act ; a monthly group of Oregon churches that supported the peaceful protesters of George Floyd.

Days earlier there was a BLM march past our church. Some of our members marched and we passed water and snacks to the march participants.

Click here for Local Learning and Resources

The 66th Synod Fund

This fund is devoted  to equitably help elderly Black ministers supplement their retirement plans after years of serving congregations without the wherewithal to have adequately paid their pastors over their careers of service.

African-American Lutherans have been in America for more than 350 years, longer than many European immigrants whom we generally think of as being Lutheran. In 1832 an African-American Lutheran preacher named Jehu Jones formed St. Paul’s Colored Lutheran Church in Philadelphia which lasted until 1849. With no support from the Pennsylvania ministerium. St Paul's ministry ultimately failed. Jehu Jones was never paid for his work.

After the Civil War, most of the African-American Lutherans in the South left the white congregations, where they had generally been second-class citizens. In response, various Southern Lutheran synods began sporadic efforts to evangelize the newly-freed African Americans, and to establish separate Lutheran congregations. Starting in 1868, the Lutheran synods in Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia began to license African-American preachers to preach the gospel and gather in congregations.

These efforts were poorly funded at best, and in 1889 (out of desperation) African-American preachers in the North Carolina Synod formed the Alpha Synod, the first African-American Lutheran church organization. This little synod, and the other African-American Lutheran congregations in the South, struggled for survival through the end of the 19th century.

Today the ELCA Lutheran church has 65 synods. The 66th Synod Fund is named in memory of the Alpha Synod and Jehu Jones and this endowment is led by a Board of Black women in the ELCA.

For Black History Month Reconciling in Christ is selling, for a few days, a Lutherans for Black Lives Tee Shirt. All proceeds go to the 66th Synod Fund.  Follow this link for more info.

Click on the following link to make a contribution through Immanuel Lutheran Church in Seattle to the 66th Synod fund.

Reckoning with Racism

The organizers of The Common Table of Oregon invite people of faith across the state into a deliberate process of dismantling racism inside your faith community or institution and out in the public square.

Together we will be:

• LEARNING: We will learn more about Oregon’s legacy of racism, and how this history continues as a tradition of systemic silencing and violence toward people of color.
• LISTENING: We will center the voices and stories of Black, Brown, Asian, Indigenous, and other communities of color as we build bridges of reciprocity, dismantling those patterns within our institutions that keep us asleep, silent, and perpetuating subtle and blatant forms of racism.
• ENGAGING: We will work alongside other faith communities and leaders, creating cohort “containers” for mutual accountability and action as we discern what it means to dismantle racism in our local context.
  
  

Though dates are subject to change, the plan is to meet on the 2nd and 4th Tuesdays of each month (3/23, 4/13, 4/27, 5/11, 5/25, 6/8, & 6/22).

A number of Creator members are now attending the sessions. Fill out the form on the right if you want to participate.