Pilgrimage Mennonite Fellowship unequivocally condemns and denounces the killing of George Floyd by members of the Minneapolis Police Department. We further condemn the centuries of racial terror inflicted upon generations of Black people in service of a system designed to benefit, enrich, protect, and promote generations of white people. We condemn, as well, the terror inflicted upon non-Black people of color and Indigenous people in service of the same white supremacist ends. And we affirm, in the strongest possible terms, a core theological truth so obvious it should not need to be said but evidently must be said: Black lives matter more than profits or property.

In the face of such overwhelming and constant racial terror, silence and complicity are acts of evil. To fail to resist racism and white supremacy is to make oneself an opponent of God, and an obstacle to God's purposes for the world. Therefore, our Fellowship commits ourselves to the following practices:

  1. We will seek out and complete, within six months of resuming in-person meetings, a churchwide training on alternatives to calling the police;
  2. When spending church funds, we will actively seek out opportunities to contract with businesses owned by Black business owners, Indigenous business owners, and business owners who are non-Black people of color;
  3. We will use only those worship, spiritual formation, and religious education resources that support anti-racist commitment and action;
  4. We will regularly undertake outside audits of our worship, spiritual formation, and religious education resources by racial justice organizations led by people of color;
  5. We will follow the leadership of people of color in racial justice movement work.

Passed by consensus, 5/30/2020