Not every student will be a Naya Bakaes.
By that I mean, not every student in an Episcopal school will start a robust peer mentoring program, as Naya did, before graduating from high school. That said, at Christ Church Episcopal School (CCES), in Greenville, South Carolina, where since 2018 I’ve served as Senior Chaplain, and at Episcopal schools across the country, students are consistently invited, encouraged, even urged, we could say, to claim their unique part in helping this world be more the way God intends the world to be.
Periodically, in the Chapel of the Good Shepherd, at the heart of our campus, I’ll homilize on how the liturgy, our worship, trains us for the world. At the Eucharist, there is room for everyone at the holy table. No one is turned away. We exchange peace. Beauty elevates—beauty in faces, in spirit, in glass, in song. We are in harmony. We give thanks, we celebrate. We are mindful of God’s presence and of the worth and dignity of all gathered. And then we take all of that out into the world with us, as a vision of what God wants for the whole human family: welcome, kindness, belonging, peace, joy, and love. It’s what we’re talking about in the post-communion prayer, just before we head out the Chapel doors when we speak of the work God has given us to do. It’s what Jesus was talking about when he taught us to pray, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” It’s what Dr. King was talking about when he spoke of the Beloved Community. It’s what we mean when we say Social Justice. Making the world more the way God intends the world to be.
And at CCES, as at countless other Episcopal schools, we don’t just preach about Social Justice, of course. We aim to live it, to embody it. Through simple acts of kindness and welcome each day. Through a student body that over time mirrors still more fully the people of upstate South Carolina. Through steadily working to help everyone at CCES have a true sense of belonging. Through financial aid opportunities. Through having honest if sometimes uncomfortable conversations about how things are versus how things should be. Through service learning experiences across the greater Greenville-Spartanburg area.
Last week, in honor of Dr. King, we sent our 438 upper schoolers out to spend a morning serving around Greenville. A colleague and I were with a group of our seniors at Greenville’s Triune Mercy Center, where we packed bags with food items for an upcoming distribution. While there, we talked with one of the Triune pastors, the Reverend Jennifer Fouse Sheorn, about what it’s like to live on the streets of the city. In particular, Jennifer helped us think about just how hard, if not downright impossible, it is for a person who is unhoused in Greenville to find a place to use the restroom. And, in turn, just how easy it is to end up getting arrested for relieving oneself in, say, an alley. And how such arrests can all too easily stack up. And how getting such arrests expunged from one’s record is impossibly expensive. Pastor Jennifer also spoke about the whole array of ministries Triune has for and with the homeless of Greenville: meals; medical and legal aid; addiction and mental health counseling; and social services. All of these, of course, have the aim of helping men, women, and children who are unhoused find their way out of homelessness and into stability and, ultimately, into a flourishing worthy of their dignity as beloved children of God.
At CCES, our hope is that in part through experiences like the one our students had last week at Triune Mercy Center, each of our students will find, as Naya Bakaes did in her years with us, those special ways to play a part in making the world a kinder, more humane, more welcoming, more peaceful place. Inevitably we will have different ideas about what Social Justice looks like. And given how language easily becomes freighted with distracting associations, there are students and families at Episcopal schools who think of what they do, not as “Social Justice,” but simply as living out their faith, or perhaps as just being a good neighbor.
The Reverend Wallace Adams-Riley is Senior Chaplain at Christ Church Episcopal School in Greenville, South Carolina. NAES invited Father Wallace to write a post on Social Justice, one of the Four Pillars of Episcopal Identity.