Episcopal missioner's goal: Inspire racial healing in NC

The Rev. Lindsey Ardrey is the Episcopal Church's canon missioner for reparations and restitution in North Carolina.

The Rev. Lindsey Ardrey is leading the Episcopal Church’s initiative on racial healing in North Carolina.

Ardrey, the state diocese’s new canon missioner for diocesan reparations and restitution, is tasked with helping the diocese to formally acknowledge its legacy of slavery and white supremacy and empower the clergy and lay members of congregations to tell their stories while creating a path to justice, restitution, and healing. Before her appointment in May, Ardrey was chair for racial reconciliation commission as well as being children’s and youth minister in New Orleans. Her task is to bring people together from different communities to move both forward.

“My hope in this is to build and to imagine what bringing as many people within our diocese and within our communities that are installed into this conversation and telling our stories and learning about our history and applying that to where we can go in the future,” Ardrey said.

Although she grew up in Bowling Green, Kentucky, Ardrey has North Carolina connections: her father is from Charlotte and mother is from Raleigh, where she attended St. Ambrose Episcopal Church. Ardrey’s job emphasizes supporting the African American community and being a voice for progress in Black congregations.

“Ultimately I want to be centering, I want to be centering our black churches, I want to be centering the voices that have either been stifled or have been ignored,” she said. “I want to center that and get with the Black churches.”

The diocese, which at one point had 60 Black churches in mission, is down to 12. Ardrey had many questions about what caused the decline.

“My first question was what happened? What's the story behind all of this,” Ardrey said. “It could be easy to lump that in with the decline of church in general. But the percentage of it is pretty staggering. And then you put it next to ‘What were their story? What happened?’ and because we had that many churches, and they were surviving for a moment, because in the early 1900s during Reconstruction, we actually had an archdeacon.

“At the time, it was called for colored work, so they had a Black archdeacon who was overseeing all of that and they had the whole contingency that was looking out for the Black churches. And that’s always good to know, helping the churches come along. Then after he died, no one really took it over and then that’s really when we started to see a decline.”

Lois Johnson, a member of the North Carolina State Board of Episcopal Church Women and chairperson of the Charlotte Convocation, believes Ardrey will be able to right some of the church’s previous missteps.

“I have very high expectations, the fact that I know the selection committee, and they’re very well-respected people, and I just know they did a great job interviewing her,” said Johnson, a retired school administrator. “I just feel very strongly that she is really up to the job and I’m ready to move forward.”

Johnson adds that Ardrey won’t be alone in her efforts to better the diocese, especially when it comes to Black communities.

“We have Rev. Kathy Walker, who specifically is the missioner for Black churches, interested in making sure that they have all their needs, if they need a new director, helping them get a new director,” Johnson said. “Our bishop [Rt. Rev. Samuel Rodman] who’s over all of this, sees that these are very important positions in this diocese to improve the situations that many of our Black churches face.”

Ardrey praised Walker’s initiative to bring communities together.

“She has really, really been doing great hard work, and in being there for our Black congregations,” Ardrey said. So, I’m blessed to come a couple of years after … a lot of good hard work building those relationships so we can entertain them, and I can go into the congregation building off the work, that foundation that she laid down. She can tell me these are the current goings-on in this relationship that they have with each other, their leadership with the leadership of the diocese. That, so far, has been a really cool relationship for us.”

Johnson will host a reception for Ardrey Aug. 25 at 3601 Central Ave. from 6-8 p.m.

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