Focus Area – Racial Justice

EHF advances racial justice work to support health equity, with the goals of increasing inclusion and exchange among diverse groups, reducing discrimination, increasing solidarity, and acting to address racism across the diocese.

EHF is committed to partner with congregations to build bridges of health and wholeness into communities and recognize that change requires addressing interpersonal, institutional and structural racism.

Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself? Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?

In February 2020, Bishop Andrew Doyle presented the Missionary Vision for a Racial Justice Initiative. This initiative seeks to support people and communities of color across the diocese by providing training for ministry and scholarships.

EHF’s racial justice work walks alongside congregations in this missionary vision to deepen knowledge, create dialogue, and foster trust. As EHF and its partners work to improve community health — especially among low-income and under-resourced populations — EHF recognizes the role of racial justice work to reduce health disparities.

The connection between adverse health outcomes and discriminatory acts against racial and ethnic minorities is explained in the EHF Issue Brief: Exploring the Linkage Between Racism and Health

EHF’s Congregational Engagement team connects churches with congregational leaders and consultants to create a pathway to open courageous spaces for dialog and to develop localized strategies for congregational and community training.

Support for Deeper Community Partnerships

EHF’s Congregational Engagement Team can partner with your church and their work in supporting racial justice by:

– Offering trainings on racial justice and reconciliation for congregational leaders

– Helping enable leaders to lead transformative racial justice education in their congregations and connecting them with partners and resources like One Human Race, The Episcopal Diocese of Texas’ Office of Intercultural Development, and the Traces of the Trade documentary film and dialogue series

– Bringing together congregations across the diocese to share best practices, learn, and have community

– Working with Project Curate to develop congregation and community wide initiatives and by partnering with community leaders

Additional Resources

The resources below are agencies and community organizations we have gathered from locally, statewide, and nationally. We currently work alongside these organizations and are familiar with the value of their work.

Baylor Collaborative
The Baylor Collaborative on Hunger and Poverty conducts university-based research to determine what anti-hunger efforts are effective and provides the support and expertise to coordinate work in communities—finding solutions to food insecurity that are greater than the sum of their parts.
East Texas Human Needs Network (ETHNN)
ETHNN are improving understanding of poverty which leads to improved relationships and outcomes across all sectors.