Worthy Now Pen Pal Partnership
By Rev. Peggy Clarke
The Community Church of New York is so excited to be part of the Worthy Now Ministry Team! We have a long and proud history of justice work and this feels like the right next step in our mission to put Love at the Center of Everything.
Rev. John Haynes Holmes, who led the Community Church as Senior Minister from 1906 until 1949, was co-founder of the NAACP and the ACLU. He was a critical part of the labor movement in the first half of the 20th century, and was intertwined in both city and national political circles his whole life. His welcoming spirit spurred him to integrate the Church in 1910, a reality that has served us well since, allowing us to be a truly multiracial, multicultural congregation. The work of racial justice continued with his successor, who organized and marched and fought for civil rights in the middle of the century, and with the church’s leadership in the South African anti-Apartheid movement, the culmination of which was a visit by Nelson Mandela for a public, official “thank you”.
In the 21st century, racial justice has to include prison abolition. One in five Black men in the United States are likely to be imprisoned in their lifetime. At this moment, nearly half a million Black people are incarcerated in the U.S., making up nearly 40% of the entire prison population. A Black person is five times as likely to be stopped without just cause by the police, 24% less likely to receive a sentence of probation instead of prison, and their prison sentence will be nearly 14% longer than that of a white person convicted for the same offense. With American policing rooted historically in “slave patrols” founded to ensure Black people did not find their way to freedom, justice-based churches like Community Church are compelled to work toward the dismantling of this system.
In the meantime, while so many people are subject to the inherent violence of incarceration, Community Church is grateful for the opportunity to help those imprisoned to find kindness and connection through their faith. The experience of being seen, of being heard, of knowing you are not lost, is critical in the fight for human dignity and is necessary from those of us who recognize an equality of human worth, regardless of circumstance. Church of the Larger Fellowship has found a way to reach people, even as the system has done all it can to make them unreachable, to make them anonymous, to pull them out of our sight and out of our minds. Through the Worthy Now program, they can be seen and remembered.
Community Church of New York is taking on the administration of the Worthy Now Pen Pal Program. Letters that are sent from or to incarcerated people arrive first at Community Church, where Br. Zachary Stevens-Walter, our Chaplain for Pastoral Care, and a team of volunteers open the letters and ensure they reach their intended recipients, wherever they are. It has become part of our justice work, part of our heart work, part of how we put Love at the Center.
To learn more about this partnership, see our announcement here: https://www.ccny.org/community-connections/worthy-now-pen-pal-ministry-partnership
