Church & Society at Gary Church

The Church and Society ministry at Gary United Methodist Church in Wheaton, IL has embraced the vision statement of The General Board of Church and Society, “Living Faith, Seeking Justice, Pursuing Peace.” Under the guidance of this vision, Church and Society works to fulfill the mandate of: 

  • Relating the gospel of Jesus Christ to the church, communities and the world in which they live.
  • Bringing the whole of human life into conformity with the will of God.
  • Showing that reconciliation involves personal, social and civic righteousness.
  • Providing educational resources, sustaining relational connections and mobilizing networks to engage in social advocacy and action. 

Go to the website of The General Board of Church and Society, umcjustice.org, to learn more about their work. Together we can make a change.


Summer Clean & Green Volunteer Day

Wednesday, Aug. 19, carpool from Gary Church at 12:30 p.m., return in evening

Join members of Gary Church’s Anti-Racist Book Club as we return to the Hermitage Street Community Garden. We will work alongside our Englewood neighbors to help with gardening and other projects. Contact Judy Selby through the Church Office to RSVP.


Picnic with Pride and Juneteenth

For the past few years, we've participated in Wheaton Ally Collective's Picnic with Pride LGBTQ+ family event in June. We invite you to help stuff goodie bags ahead of the event in our Commons, and then help create and volunteer for the lawn games station at Memorial Park.


On June 19, we participate in Wheaton's Juneteenth celebration in Memorial Park. The event, which celebrates the end of slavery in the United States, includes live music, kids activities, entertainers and more. 


Check back for details of the 2027 celebrations!

Christian Nationalism Today

Dangerous Ideas, Dangerous Leaders, and Dangerous Agendas

led by Dr. Matthew D. Taylor


Learn about the rapidly changing landscape of American Christian nationalism and Christian extremism.

Matthew D. Taylor is the senior Christian scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian and Jewish Studies in Baltimore, where he specializes in American Christianity, American Islam, Christian extremism and religious politics. He wrote the books The Violent Take It by Force: The Christian Movement that is Threatening Our Democracy and Scripture People: Salafi Muslims in Evangelical Christians' America.


Resources for Racial Justice

from Gary's Church and Society Committee

We at Gary United Methodist Church in Wheaton, IL, affirm The United Methodist position that racism is a sin and is incompatible with Christian teachings. As Christians who stand against racism, we offer these resources as a way to understand systemic racism in the United States of America, explore our biblical and theological roots for racial justice, and discern how we can take faithful action towards racial justice and the equal treatment of all God’s image bearers. 


It is worth noting, that these are resources mostly directed at discrimination against African Americans. The structures and experiences of racism by Latina/os, Native Americans, Asian Americans and others will be distinct from, though entangled with, the ones listed here. As members of Christ’s body, we are committed to combating all forms of racism, and we will be seeking opportunities to provide additional resources in the future.


Gary Church's Anti-Racist Book Club meets monthly, September-May. Sign up here to be part of the discussion. 


Anti-Racist Book Club | Rest Is Resistance
Wednesdays, Sept. 23 & Oct. 28, 7 p.m., discussion led by Carey Williams Bebar
In Rest Is Resistance, author Tricia Hersey, aka the Nap Bishop, casts an illuminating light on our troubled relationship with rest and how to imagine and dream our way to a future where rest is exalted. Our worth does not reside in how much we produce, especially not for a system that exploits and dehumanizes us. Rest, in its simplest form, becomes an act of resistance and a reclaiming of power because it asserts our most basic humanity. We are enough. The systems cannot have us.


Anti-Racist Book Club | When Trees Testify
Wednesday, Nov. 18, 7 p.m., discussion led by Elaine McCluskey
In When Trees Testify, plant biologist Beronda L. Montgomery weaves together science, personal memoir, and African American history to argue that trees are living witnesses to Black American life. She explores seven tree species and the cotton shrub, highlighting both the trauma and resilience interwoven with them.



Discussion calendar of books and films




  •   

    Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates 
    *National Book Award Winner and Pulitzer Prize Finalist

  •   

    Nobody: Casualties of America's War on the Vulnerable, from Ferguson to Flint and Beyondby Marc Lamont Hill 
    *Nautilus Award Winner

  •   

    How To Be Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi 
    *New York Times Bestseller **This works well as an intermediate book, as a follow-up for instance once readers have been introduced to the depth and breadth of racism in American political, economic and social structures.


  •   

    Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas In America by Ibram X. Kendi 
    *National Book Award Winner
    **This is an intellectual history. For a social history that brings together ideas with social, economic and political practices that built racist structures in the US, see Race in North America: Origin and Evolution of a Worldviewby Audrey and Brian Smedley.

  •   

    The South Side: A Portrait of Chicago and American Segregation by Natalie Moore 
    *A focused look at segregation in Chicago.

  •   

    The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America by Khalil Gibran Muhammad 
    *A scholarly book featured in Gary’s Anti-Racist Book Club.

  •   

    White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo 
    *New York Times Bestseller

  •   

    So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo 


  • Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson


  • Racism without Racists: Colorblind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America by Eduardo Bonilla Silva 
    *A very good introductory book.


  • Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight Against Medical Discrimination by Alondra Nelson


  • The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story by Nikole Hannah-Jones

Resources for Exploring Systemic Racism and the Church




  • This Side of Heaven: Race, Ethnicity and Christian Faith Eds. Robert Priest and Alvaro Nieves


  • The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism by Jemar Tisby

  •   

    The Roadmap to Reconciliation 2.0: Moving Communities into Unity, Wholeness and Justice by Brenda Salter McNeill 
    *Missio Alliance Essential Reading List of 2015


  • White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity by Robert P. Jones

  •   

    Rediscipling the White Church: From Cheap Diversity to True Solidarity by David Swanson


  • One Mississippi, Two Mississippi: Methodists, Murder, and the Struggle for Racial Justice in Neshoba County by Carol V. R. George


  • The Methodist Unification: Christianity and the Politics of Race in the Jim Crow Era by Morris L. Davis


Mindful Entertainment

  

  

NPR’s Throughline Podcast: Mass Incarceration


Listen Here

  

  

  

13th, a documentary from director Ava DuVerna


Watch Here

  

Get Out, directed by Jordan Peele


Watch Here

  

The Atlantic, “The Case for Reparations,” article by Ta-Nahesi Coates available via audio


Listen Here

  

NPR’s Throughline Podcast: American Police


Listen Here


Black Panther, directed by Ryan Coogler


Watch Here

  

The Hate U Give, directed by George Tillman, Jr


Watch Here

Resources for Racial Justice for Youth and Children

  

  •   

    This Book is Anti-Racist: 20 Lessons on How to Wake Up, Take Action, and Do the Work, by Tiffany Jewell (Middle School/High School)


  • MLK Talks 'New Phase' Of Civil Rights Struggle, 11 Months Before His Assassination  (Middle School/High School)


  • Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race, by Margot Lee Shetterly (Young Adult)


  • Well-Read Black Girl: Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves, by Glory Edim (Young Adult)

  •   

    March (Trilogy Slipcase Set) by John Lewis and Andrew Aydin (Young Adult) 


  • This Is the Rope: A Story from the Great Migration, by Jacqueline Woodson (Children)


  • My Daddy, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. by Martin Luther King III.

  •   

    The Hate You Give by Angie Thomas

  •   

    How to Fight Racism Young Reader’s Edition by Jemar Tisby

  •   

    Let’s Talk About Race, by Julius Lester, illustrated by Karen Barbour (Children)

  •   

    Seeds of Change: Planting a Path to Peace, by Jen Johnson, illustrated by Sonia Sadler (Children)