Do Justice: Diverse & Reforming

On Do Justice, we’re all about creating space.

Space to ask hard questions. Space to wrestle with the implications of the Church’s call to do justice in the places where we live, today. Space to struggle with what it means to be the Body of Christ, where the eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you” and where the foot cannot say to the head, “I don’t need you.”

This year we’ve worked to be more intentional about creating space, particularly for people who do not always have a seat at the table.

This has always been our goal, but this year we’ve worked to be more intentional about creating space, particularly for the voices and perspectives of people of color, young people, and women, people who do not always have a seat at the table. The Christian Reformed Church also recognizes the significant gifts of diversity by selecting ethnic and women advisors and young adult representatives to attend Synod.

We recognize too that people who haven’t traditionally had seats at the leadership tables of church and society tend to be most impacted by injustice. As we wrestle with the call to do justice, it’s important that the voices of those who are most affected be at the centre of the conversation.

This year, more than 33% of our writers were people of color.

So this year, we decided to make our diversity goals public, and to track them transparently. We’re excited to share that we surpassed our goal of 25% representation of people of color among our writers--this year, more than 33% of our writers were people of color. We also met our goal of gender representation; just over 50% of our writers were women. And while churches across the continent worry about losing young people, young people make up the largest portion of our Do Justice audience: almost ⅓ of our readers are under the age of 34, and almost 50% are under 44. 

The Reformed family is a diverse family. At Do Justice, we work to make sure we all have a seat at the discussion table. As we wrote in “Diversity and Discernment” in June:

“God is big. His ways and his thoughts are so far beyond our own. Each culture has its own blind spots and idols that must be discerned—when we take part in diverse theological conversations, the blind spots of one culture can be challenged or brought to light by the strengths of another culture, by the work of the Holy Spirit....When we discern well and stay attentive to the Spirit, our understanding of this beyond-all-human-comprehension God can be enriched by the insights of Jesus-followers from various cultures. Diversity is a gift!

Your support for the Office of Social Justice and the Christian Reformed Centre for Public Dialogue this Giving Tuesday is a vote of confidence for Do Justice and investment in this vision.

Here are some of the things we’re celebrating about Do Justice this year:

• Launching Do Justice columnists, creating a community of leaders from across the continent who are discerning the call to do justice in their own contexts.
• Partnering with Professor Matthew Tuininga of Calvin Seminary to provide theologically rich reflections on pressing justice questions of our day.
• Supporting hundreds of people as they practiced the disciplines of confession, lament, and doing justice using our Lenten resource.
• Inviting pastors to participate in the Creation Care Preaching Challenge and the Canada 150 Preaching Challenge.
• Hosting an article from Professor Roy Berkenbosch of The King’s University about his friendship with Omar Khadr.
• Helping parents to reflect on how to talk with their children about privilege by sharing two new Christian resources for parents.

Celebrate with us! Watch our Facebook pages and other communications channels for our Giving Tuesday giving campaign on November 28, or give today: 

Christian Reformed Centre for Public Dialogue

Office of Social Justice

We need each other. We are diverse and reforming.  

Leaning into Revelation 7:9,

The Do Justice editorial team (Danielle, Kate, and Paola)