Disciple: Historic Foundations: How Did We Get Here?
The story of God, land and race at Holy Family, Chapel Hill
By the Rev. Sarah Ball-Damberg
One of the goals of the diocesan mission strategy’s priority of Racial Reckoning, Justice and Healing is to see historically white congregations research their histories with race. Two diocesan congregations began this work even before the goal was established, each having a desire to know its own history better and how the respective parishes came to be on the properties on which the churches stand.
For a number of years now, Holy Family, Chapel Hill, has been wrestling with the legacy of racism and white supremacy in the world, in our society and culture, and in our parish. Our effort to reckon with our history and ongoing participation in the sin of racism has led us on journeys as far away as the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama, and as near as the burial ground for enslaved people located right across the street from us.
[Pictured: As part of the church’s racial justice work, the congregation of Holy Family, Chapel Hill, the congregation of Holy Family took a pilgrimage to Stagville Plantation in Durham. Photo by Jan Yarborough]
We made a pilgrimage to Stagville Plantation in Durham, once the home of Duncan Cameron, the son of an Episcopal priest and enslaver of almost 1,000 people. Cameron was not only instrumental in the founding of this diocese, but he also served as a deputy to General Convention.
We traveled to Hillsborough, where Beverly Payne, a member of the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi People, told us the history of her tribe and its connection to the Eno River and the Great Trading Path. We walked up the street from the recreated Occeneechi Village to St. Matthew’s, where the Rev. Dr. Brooks Graebner, diocesan historiographer, shared the history of the church’s founding and construction. Some of the people buried at St. Matthew’s were active in the early years of the church and diocese and, simultaneously, active participants in the world of racial slavery and its legacy of white supremacy. Most recently, we visited the Chapel of the Cross, Chapel Hill, and the segregated Old Chapel Hill Cemetery on the University of North Carolina’s Chapel Hill campus to learn more about the history of the lands surrounding our parish.
In all of this, we have been asking how Holy Family came to be where it is. What is the history of this particular patch of God’s good earth? What people have lived on it, when and why? How has the land been worked, and by whom? What forces were at play in the formation of its town, neighborhood, buildings and people? How does all of this connect to what we know about systemic racism? And what do all those things tell us about our relationship with God?
[Pictured: In addition to a pilgrimage to Stagville Plantation in Durham, the congregation of Holy Family, Chapel Hill, took a pilgrimage to The National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery.]
TWO SIDES OF A COIN
Our interest in discovering the connections between race and place was prompted in particular by Dr. Ellen Davis, whose book Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture: An Agrarian Reading of Scripture is both accessible and revelatory, and by Dr. Willie Jennings, whose work, including The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race, is essential to understanding how race and land are connected in America and American Christianity.
Jennings says that race and private property are two sides of the same coin, and we wanted to know why. We began our formal investigations with a Lenten series in 2020, entitled “The Geography of Race.” The series began with Bread for the World’s Racial Wealth Gap simulation, an interactive tool that helps participants understand the connections between racial equity and poverty, as well as the ongoing policies and impact of structural inequality. Dr. Allan Parnell, vice president of the Cedar Grove Institute for Sustainable Communities and a Senior Fellow at the Kenan Institute at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, came to teach us about the ways in which local planning and land use policies (e.g. zoning and annexation) create and perpetuate racial inequalities in wealth and health. At that point, the pandemic derailed our original plans for the remainder of our Lenten series, but Graebner saved the day with a two-part Zoom series on “The Civil Rights Era in the Diocese of North Carolina, 1963-1973.” He led us through the profound changes in race relations in the Diocese, Chapel Hill and Holy Family that took place during that pivotal decade.
TURNING ATTENTION TO HOME
Our research into the specifics of our location began in earnest in Epiphanytide 2021 with a four-part Zoom series called, simply, “The History of Holy Family’s Place.” Because our work is and must remain anchored in our faith, we were keen to begin with some theological grounding for our research. Dr. Ellen Davis graciously agreed to start us off by talking with us about the covenantal triangle among God, land and God’s people in Holy Scripture.
We wanted to learn as much as possible about who had occupied the land on which Holy Family is built, so we turned to the office of the Orange County Register of Deeds. Orange County is particularly blessed in its Register of Deeds, Mark Chilton, who is a passionate geographer and historian. In the second and third sessions of our Epiphanytide Zoom study, Chilton told us about the indigenous people who originally occupied the land around us, how the land was claimed by British colonizers on behalf of the Crown, granted to the Earl of Granville, and eventually made over to a man named Hardy Morgan. Chilton showed us Morgan’s will, which included two enslaved people listed as property. Those two people worked the ground on which Holy Family now stands.
Holy Family parishioner Bryan Dougan concluded our series by sharing oral histories he conducted with longtime parishioners and with Holy Family’s former rector, the Rev. Timothy Kimbrough. Those histories included stories about the town, the neighborhood and the church in the 1950s, when Holy Family was founded.
In Eastertide that same year, parishioners Jan Kowal and Sheryl Forbis led conversations about, respectively, Jemar Tisby’s The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism and Richard Rothstein’s The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. We learned about zoning and town planning and how those were shaped to keep Black people from owning property in places where white people were building new neighborhoods. We already knew that one of those new neighborhoods was Glen Lennox, the neighborhood in which Holy Family is located on a piece of property the developer reserved in the early 1950s for a church. Holy Family is a direct beneficiary of the racist zoning and town planning described in The Color of Law.
In the spring of 2021, the vestry of Holy Family appointed a Steering Committee to guide the renovation of the church’s backyard and parish house. In light of all the parish had learned, the Steering Committee convened a group, now known as the Racial Equity and Land (REAL) Committee, to continue exploring and educating Holy Family about the deep connections between racism and the land on which the church is built. In 2022 the REAL Committee sponsored a five-week Lenten series called “How did we get here? God, people, and place.” In that series, we examined why land is a matter of faith; the history of local indigenous people, colonizers and land; and the difference in understanding between “land” and “property” and what that implies, including why the former is biblical and the latter may not be. We made our pilgrimage to Hillsborough and read and discussed the research on the Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina’s history of institutional racism from its founding until the 1960s, conducted by the Rev. Dr. Rhonda Lee on behalf of the Diocese.
[Pictured: In addition to their pilgrimage to Alabama, the congregation of Holy Family took a pilgrimage to the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery. Photo by Jan Yarborough]
APPLYING WHAT WE LEARNED
As we prepare for our upcoming work on our backyard and parish house, we continue to ask how what we know about our ensnarement in the systems of racial inequality might shape that renovation. How might our new space and our existing space serve our commitment to repentance and restitution? Can encountering the hard truths about racism and white supremacy help us create a space and become a people who are more hospitable, welcoming, just and faithful?
In asking the questions—who occupied this land; how has it been claimed and worked and to what end; how does its history of ownership and development reflect the history of ownership and development in the surrounding area; and how and when did zoning, racial covenants and red-lining come into play—it has become clear to us that learning the history of a particular place is a compelling way to understand and narrate a congregation’s entanglement with race and racism. The work is hard, as can be the answers found. Holy Family commends this work to all its sister parishes and missions, and members of the REAL Committee will be glad to help those ready to begin the search for their own answers to the crucial questions of land, race and place.
We still have much to learn and much to discern. We are still trying to discover how we are called to include our land and place in our proclamation of the Gospel. We pray that the Holy Spirit will lead us. We pray that God, in God’s mercy, will grant us the grace to learn what we must do to better inhabit God’s beloved community and for the strength and courage to do it.
LEARN MORE
Learn more about Bread for the World’s Racial Wealth Gap simulation at bit.ly/BreadSimulation.
The Rev. Sarah Ball-Damberg is the associate rector at Holy Family, Chapel Hill.
Tags: North Carolina Disciple / Racial Reckoning, Justice & Healing