news article
CCORR Celebrates Preaching to Dismantle Racism
May 11, 2021 / By Conference Commission on Religion & Race
In early 2020, a team of CCORR members invited submissions for a juried Preaching Contest. Designed to elicit and share creative excellence in our collective struggle to uproot racism from our church, this contest yielded some wonderful submissions.
We are pleased to announce that Rev. Ewart Morris won the contest with his entry “Unity is God’s Idea.” Beginning with 
the intimate words of the apostle Paul, “Anyone united with the Lord becomes one spirit with him,” Rev. Morris described the divine starting point for our shared purpose in community (1 Corinthians 6:17). Building to an insightful mountaintop moment, his sermon releases the insight, “We cannot begin to imagine no racism until we are remade in the image of God and in the likeness of God and learn to love as God and as Christ loves.”
CCORR had originally planned to share selections from Rev. Ewart’s sermon at our 2020 Annual Conference, but because of the changes to the Conference's schedule, you'll now see it at this year's Annual Conference. In addition, you'll also see a promotional video for the ministry of Rev. Ewart's choice. CCORR's hope is that as we celebrate the power of this sermon, all of us will be encouraged to preach more sermons that bring the Gospel of Jesus Christ to bear on the sin of racism. Click here to listen to the sermon and click here for information on our panel of judges.
This spring and summer, we plan to continue the work of imagining no racism by collecting Upper New York Conference sermons about dismantling racism into an on-line library. We also hope you will join us in the fall as we expand the celebration of anti-racist preaching with our first Festival of Anti-Racist Preaching. Stay tuned!