Rev. Peter Jarrett-Schell is rector of Calvary Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C., chair of the Reparations Task Force for the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, and author of Reparations, A Plan for Churches.
Rev. Pat Jackson (he/him/his – Interwoven Congregations): Thank you Rev. Peter Jarrett-Schell for joining me for this conversation about reparations. What led you to decide to focus on reparations as a means to promote racial justice and healing?
Rev. Peter Jarrett-Schell (he/him/his): I got involved with the work of reparations from my ministry context at Calvary Episcopal Church. Calvary is a historically, predominantly black church in a neighborhood in Washington, D.C. that is gentrifying rapidly. We started to
attract some white members, good folk, but many of them were showing up with the white habits like a presumption of being heard and being given deference to. So we hosted a reading group of Robin DiAngelo's book White Fragility. When we came to the end of that study, a member of the group asked, “What are we going to do about it?”
Around this time, Georgetown University became one of the first institutions in this country to say that they wanted to acknowledge their racial history. There was a time when Georgetown was failing and they sold off a large number of people that they had enslaved to protect the university. The university said they wanted to make it right, but there wasn't much follow through. So the Student Government passed legislation that the students would tax themselves $25 per student every semester, and those funds would go into a reparations fund.
Hearing that news, one of our study group participants said: “What if, as a next step, we started to investigate the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, D.C. around its participation in anti-black racism and pushed for reparations?” I agreed and was drafted to be the chair of this informal group. I began to really read and talk to black community leaders; and I became convicted that reparations were a necessity. When you look at the black-white wealth gap, there's just an enormous pile of plundered wealth by white individuals, white families and white institutions like our churches.
Money doesn't fix all problems. But wealth conditions every single problem in this nation – such as health outcomes, quality of life, and education. So there's no plausible way as a moral matter to say let's fix this racial inequality but we'd like to keep the plunder. You're never going to get to racial justice without reparations, but reparations alone won't get the job done.
I think many of the solutions that we propose to these problems are perpetually trying to “clever our way” out of the problems. Education is a clear example. Disparities in education are heavily racialized and there are tons of clever solutions. But you're never going to deal with inequality where one school district, based on property taxes, gets $8,000 a year per student compared with another school district that receives $40,000 a year per student. There's no way to rectify that which doesn't deal with that inequality head on. We're trying to clever our way out of it because we're desperate to find some way that we can resolve the problem without having to let go of the plunder, and it just doesn't exist.
Pat: In your book, Reparations: A Plan for Churches, you offer a roadmap for congregations that would like to do racial justice through reparations. I'm not going to ask you to lay out the whole program from your book, but could you lift up the key ingredients for, say, a predominantly white congregation that is interested in engaging in this path?
Peter: The first real piece is to identify a core team that's going to carry this through because it's going to take a while. That core team needs a stiff resolve because it's going to get messy and uncomfortable. So that's the first piece – get a team, other members of the congregation who are willing to help move the needle with you.
Once you’ve got that team, you’ll need to get some level of initial buy-in from the decision making body of your community, whether that’s the pastor, or executive committee, or the parish council. You want to get authorization to explore the question, with fairly broad parameters. Let them know you’re coming in with the assumption that the congregation does have some amount of plundered assets that we want to return and we’re determined to do that. We don't know what it looks like yet. We don't know to whom we have to offer these things. But we're determined to make this happen.
And then begin building relationships with the people to whom you guess that you owe these reparations. If you're looking at the question of anti-black racism, it's going to be the black community in and around your church. A lot of times people say, “But there are no black people in our community” -- to which I say, “Look a little harder.” Like most places in the country, just look a little harder and you will not only find that there is a black community but also within that black community, there are institutions and organizations that are doing this work. We want to be sure that we are being accountable to black people. So identify a black person – a friend, or Jim, who sits in the front row of the congregation. They may not want to talk about it. These are traumatic and painful things, and they have absolutely every right to say, “I don't want to talk about that.” But as white people, we don't have the right to ignore the question.
The benefit of going to black-led organizations that are working on the question of racial justice is that you'll be dealing with people who have already made the decision that they do want to address this publicly. So approach them with your core team and say: “We're looking to do repair. This is the kind of history that we're trying to make amends for. This is the scale we're looking at. We're determined to see this done and are looking to find partners that are willing to work with us on this.”
Expect that there will be skepticism. Expect that you may hear “no” from people. Thank them for their time; and then move on to find someone else. You will eventually find someone in the community who's going to work with you, And when you find that person, because you do need a community doing this, then the most essential thing is to ask, “Who else should I talk to?” because they'll have recommendations. Once you have built those relationships, both internally within your congregation, and externally to the people to whom you feel you owe these reparations, then begin asking the next question: “What is it specifically that we are apologizing for and making amends?” And that process again will be uncomfortable. I think that's where you begin the process of bringing the congregation at large on board with it.
Be curious. Accept that you're in it for the long haul. Accept that the story, as you think you know the details, is not the whole story, that there's more that needs to be heard and more that needs to be told.
Left: Members of the Diocesan Reparations Committee: Rev. Creamilda Yoda, Rev. Peter Jarrett-Schell, Rudy Logan and Aungelic Nelson (2023) Right: The Rev. Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas addresses the Diocesan Symposium on Reparations (2022)
The last thing I would say is prepare for handling conflict early on. Expect it will come up. What happens when there's conflict between the core team that's made this commitment and the larger congregation that doesn't want to hear that? What are we going to do when conflict comes up between the core team and the external accountability -- the people to whom we say we owe reparations. When they say “We're not happy with the way we're doing it, it's falling short” -- how are we going to process that and move forward? All of those pieces will prepare you so that when you hit those roadblocks, when you hit conflict, you will have gone in with the expectation that this is part of what it looks like and it is still possible to move forward. I think those are essential pieces.
Pat: What do you think is the biggest challenge for such a reparations project to go forward?
Peter: This is not my insight, but other people doing this work for a long time note that there is a cyclical element to it. You engage, you act, you do justice work and then you have to reflect and educate yourself and then you go back and you do more in the same way. It's not a linear process. Then I would guess that for most congregations, there's two places that you're going to predictably hit major roadblocks. The first one will simply be in the act of the apology -- of actually taking the time to find the truth as far as you can find it, to hear the stories directly from folks when possible, and to acknowledge it very, very publicly without shifting or making excuses. Then we get to the piece about what assets are we actually going to surrender? What's the scope of it? That's another place where we’re going to hit a roadblock because people can agree with the principle. But then it actually comes to asking, “What are we willing to let go of?”
A further concern is that while I absolutely do believe that reparations are necessary for any project of racial justice, they can become a very easy deflection. We've seen this where institutions pay something that they determined randomly. It's not really at the level it should be and then they say, “We did it. We don't want to hear about it anymore.” That's partly why I frame this work as cyclical.
Pat: Do you have any suggestions for how congregations can deal with these challenges and roadblocks?
Peter: The work of reparations is not plausibly, at least in this lifetime, something that we're ever going to have arrived at and say we did it and it's done. So having that long term perspective is really essential. Two people that I interview in my book, Lindsay Ayers and Rev. Grey Maggiano, Pastor of Memorial Episcopal Church, both suggested that we should be thinking about adopting reparations partly as an identity statement, similarly to the way that we lift up discipleship. “That is the people we are choosing to be. We are choosing to be a repairing people.”
I think another partial remedy is actually getting the scale right at the beginning. That’s partly why I argue for a reparations assessment of about 15% of total assets, including real estate. To get to a place where an institution is actually surrendering 15% of the total assets, including real estate, requires a lot of cajoling and conversation along the way. I think that any institution that actually got to that level would have gone through a long process of internal repentance and reform to be able to achieve that, adopting through the process a sense of a repairing identity so that it wouldn't become a one-and-done thing. That's partly theoretical because no institution has actually done it at that level.
Pat: You draw significantly in your book from Professor William Darity, Jr. and Kirsten Mullens’ text From Here to Equality. What do you think of Darity and Mullens’ argument that only the federal government should undertake reparations?
Peter: My perspective of what reparation should look like is very much informed by Darity and Mullens’ work. But clearly we have a point of disagreement, which is that they are laser focused on pressuring the U.S. federal government to take action on this. They’re 100% correct that to carry out any plan of reparations for the black community in this country on the level and scale that it needs to be done, the federal government is the only institution that has both the resources and the authority to actually coerce participation at a level that would be necessary to do what needs to be done. Also as a moral matter, the federal government, since the inception of this country, has condoned, legislated and facilitated so many of these acts of racialized plunder that we see from the period of chattel slavery, through Jim Crow to redlining, to predatory lending and the subprime housing crisis.
Pat: It was official policy.
Peter: -- all of it. So morally, the federal government needs to make amends. Darity and Mullens’ assessment is that all of our attention and efforts should be pressed towards getting the federal government to take action and that anything else, like the program that I propose for congregations, is essentially a distraction. While I respect where they’re coming from, I think the calculus for churches is a little bit different for three reasons.
First, the assets of religious institutions in this country, culturally and as a matter of policy, have always been sequestered to a certain extent from the involvement of the federal government as non-profit institutions. Because of that, any program of reparations that was carried out at the governmental level likely would continue to preserve that exemption from religious institutions. You could say that the right course of action is to make sure that the federal government removed that sequestering and apply the same authority to churches. But that would be another hurdle that you'd have to get through. So one way or another, white religious institutions that have benefited from this plunder must be held accountable.
The second reason I think it’s necessary for churches to do reparations is to lobby and pressure the federal government to take action. Churches are still perceived as the stewards of an ethical tradition in the U.S. that has some weight. And moral authorities lead by example. If the Episcopal Church at the denominational level did a full assessment of all of our congregations in assets and then did turn over 15% of those assets as a piece of making this right, that would give them a real moral bully pulpit to go to the federal government and say, “We did the sacrifice. We expect you to do it too.”
Finally, as a pastor, I'm concerned with the care of souls. The work of surrendering the assets that we plundered is spiritual work. It is important for the care of the souls that make up the Episcopal Church or any faith tradition.
Pat: You include an interview in your book with Dr. Catherine Meeks who argues that any money transfers should go to the black community at large rather than individual people. How do you reflect on that critique?
Peter: Dr. Meeks’ critique is a commitment to a communal ethic. The harm was done to a whole community; the solution has to be communal as well. I've counseled churches that are actually thinking about this that they should reach out to black-led organizations in their community that are working on the economic empowerment of the black community and to transfer their assets to those folks. The wealth of churches is communal wealth that is held by a particular community for its benefit, and so the transfer needs to another communal organization that's holding it for the benefit of that community. I think that's partly the answer.
But I think there's no one picture or package of what reparations should look like. The federal government I would argue would be the right body to transfer at least some portion of assets to individuals. It acknowledges and recognizes that there are people who have been harmed in the midst of this. It also respects the autonomy and the capacity of black people to make good decisions about assets that have come into their lives. I want to be real clear – this is not where Catherine Meeks comes into the question about reparations to individuals. There is a whole lot of anti-black paternalism that shows up, a basic sense of distrust whether black people are going to make good choices about it, which is racist. Morally, that doesn't make good sense. If I stole your car, and you came back to me and said, “You stole my car!” and I said, “Well, I'm only going to give it back to you if I have the confidence that you're going to make good use of it” -- that's a morally specious argument. So I don't want to discount both as a matter of sensible moral calculus and also as a matter of trusting black people to make decisions about their lives that make sense -- that direct trade cash payments could sensibly be part of it.
My concern as a pastor in terms of bringing people on board is to make sure that when we acknowledge that advancing a program of reparations is a real challenge and there are difficult questions that have to be worked out, that we are engaging them as actual problems to be solved rather than excuses for not getting started. But we can do that.
One other piece that Catherine Meeks raises is this really heartrending question about the death of her brother which happened because of medical negligence and because he was black. Catherine asks, “How can you possibly pay for that?” Darity and Mullens offer an answer which is essentially to say that reparations aren't for that. You can't pay for it and it would be insulting to suggest that you could. Financial reparations are to address the ongoing wealth gap. I think that's really important, because it honors the actual hurt and trauma which you can't pay off, while still reckoning that you have to do something about the plundered wealth.
Pat: We are updating our conversation now in February of 2025. Can you give me an update on the Diocese’s reparations efforts?
Peter: In January of 2025, the Episcopal Diocese of Washington voted to establish an ongoing Reparations Committee. This will be a majority Black committee that does three things. It will review and make recommendations about how the Diocese can continue the process of uncovering and sharing the history of our ongoing participation in anti-Black racism. It will suggest specific policy initiatives (with the understanding that changing policy is what repentance looks like at the institutional level) to stop the Diocese’s ongoing participation in anti-Black harms. And it will decide how to disperse $5 million in reparations funding over the next ten years.
The Diocesan commitment to those funds is firm, and we are careful to put in writing that the disbursement of those funds, in part or in full, shall not be considered the completion of our reparations process. For me, that statement, along with the establishment of the Reparations Committee as a standing body in our Diocese, are the most important outcomes we’ve achieved, because it commits that this is not a one-and-done process, but a new identify for us as a community. We will be a repairing Diocese.
Pat: What impact do you think the second Trump administration may have on the Diocese’s reparations efforts going forward – or for any other faith communities that might be seeking to advance racial justice through reparations?
Peter: I really can’t say. This administration has demonstrated a general disdain for accepted mores and standards. In the past, I would be tempted to say that the federal government has taken a very hands-off approach to churches. So that, even if the federal government is putting hard breaks on its (minimal) efforts toward considering reparations via consideration of legislation like H.R. 40, churches would still be free to follow the conviction of their conscience without reprisal. Now, I’m not so sure. I don’t think it’s outside the realm of possibility that Trump’s administration would direct the IRS to investigate the tax-exempt status of faith communities that are taking public action on reparations. In which case, it will be a question of how strong is our resolve to take risky action for the sake of the Gospel? I think Jesus has opinions about how we should respond, if that comes up.
Likewise, in terms of the will of our folks to do the work, I’m uncertain. I think there may be some who respond defiantly to the administration’s efforts at rolling back whatever gains towards racial justice we have achieved. So there may be some galvanizing effect for reparations. I think we saw a bit of that here with our Diocese. We voted on our financial commitment less than a week after the inauguration. I had expected significant resistance once we put hard-number financial commitments on the table, but it passed almost unanimously. On the other hand, I think we’ll probably see some folks who were quiet on the issue before, who now feel emboldened by the administration to criticize and denounce any effort toward reparations. I don’t want to be overly dramatic, but I think this will be a moment when the wheat will be separated from the chaff.