Interfaith Alliance of Iowa has worked since our inception to challenge hate, bigotry, and violence. More recently, our country has seen a significant increase in extremists, including white supremacists and Christian Nationalists, with their messages of hate and actions of violence. People across the country and in Iowa have been targeted because of their religion, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, and country of origin.

Interfaith Alliance of Iowa has stood up and spoken out against these actions of hate and violence throughout our organization’s history empowering advocates to speak out and calling out hate publicly through the media and organizing or promoting petitions, rallies, and vigils.

faithful voices for racial justice

Faithful Voices for Racial Justice, a project of Interfaith Alliance of Iowa, was created to start conversations, promote learning, work together, and take action to address racism and systemic racial injustices.

Visit the FVRJ website here.

With the urgency and energy in this moment of our nation’s history, faith communities across Iowa are committed to engaging in addressing racism and engaging in antiracism and racial justice work. We do this with:

• Intentional focus on the racism that has uniquely impacted the Black community in our country for centuries. The work must be respectful of and in consultation with leaders and members of the Black community ensuring their voices are centered whenever possible.
• Knowing antiracism work focused on historical and present-day racism against the Black community does not diminish nor ignore the fact that other communities are impacted by racism. We must also work to understand and address all racism, including racism perpetrated against people and communities of color, Latinx, Hispanic, Indigenous, Asian, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, and other ethnic communities.
• Acknowledging the white community, in general, has much work to do in understanding and addressing racism, including the continued privilege it benefits from through systemic racism. The white Christian community, in particular, has specific work to do, including understanding its historical responsibility with racism.
• Collaborative work across racial and religious divides to build critical relationships and to garner the full power of faith and other communities across Iowa.

Faithful Voices for Racial Justice is a project of Interfaith Alliance of Iowa. If you would like more information or would like to join the work, please contact Connie Ryan.