We plan to engage with the timeline over the coming year in our adult and youth formation, reflecting on the story it tells us and adding in both historical and personal dates and events in the life of the Cathedral and our neighborhood. Viewing history in this linear way helps to make connections between events - for example, WWI and the loss of white male workers, the beginning of the Great Migration, and then racial unrest in South Philadelphia in the early part of the last century, all of which led to the gradual loss of our congregation to the Main Line suburbs.
We hope to also juxtapose the story of the timeline with our own personal histories, looking at our lives of faith through the lens of the larger story of race in our city. Images that clearly show the tension between police and the Black community, the destruction of Black neighborhoods for "urban renewal," the abandonment of our inner city churches... as we see these events (which all seemed normative at the time) one after another on the timeline, we hope to see our own lives in a new way. We've seen some spontaneous and informal sharing as people encounter the timeline, sharing about their own lives in the city and how the timeline offers new insights. This structured and unstructured reflection is what the timeline is about.
By reflecting on our shared history as we strive to become beloved community, we are better able to see ourselves as others see us and reach out in understanding.
For more information about the Timeline Project, contact Meredith Wiggins, Director of Children and Family Ministries at the Cathedral (mwiggins@philadelphiacathedral.org). Ms. Wiggins teaches the US history component of the Dismantling Racism youth curriculum of our diocese and can show you how to create your own online timeline.
The Cathedral would like to thank the talented graphic designer Roger Allen from Fresh Artists, who volunteered his time to print the timeline and install it for us - a huge job.
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