Progressive Church Apologizes Over Calendar Depicting White Child on Cover

A progressive Christian church apologized for offending churchgoers with a calendar that displayed ‘the subtleties of racism’ by featuring a blonde child on its cover.

United Church of Christ President Rev. John C. Dorhauer apologized profusely in a letter to members posted on the UCC website on May 23. Addressing complaints, he said the new desk calendar “failed to live up to our commitments to be an antiracist body.”

The 2024 desk calendar is currently being sold on the UCC website. The cover features a drawing of children and at least one adult with gray hair holding hands in a circle. Children of various skin colors are displayed in the graphic, but it appears some UCC members were upset that a White child with blonde hair was towards the top of the image.

Rev. Dorhauer suggested they should have rotated the image slightly so a more racially diverse person was at the top instead.

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“Seeing how the image on the cover is plainly focused on the blonde-haired person makes it clear to me that there are still ways in which the centering of whiteness remains instantiated in our language, our art and our culture,” he wrote. “This is a reminder of the kind of diligence required to fully overcome the ravages of white privilege still embedded in our system, our psyche and our culture.”

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