Relevant Religion Series

But t hose most violently targeted have always called out and organized for liberation where all could thrive, be honored, be safe ; and our faiths have always included prophetic leadership .  Like the  tectonic  pressures internal to our globe, the work for liberation is always present and sometimes surfacing like an earthquake or volcanic eruption.  But the forces  have been multiplied exponentially, crafting an atmosphere ready for a more cataclysmic shift, like when the land mass of Pangea separated into the continental bodies that we know today.  All of the socio-cultural fault lines are quaking, calling for a reckoning and the building of a new world. We can feel it as we witness:  

• Those native to this land fight both for their Sacred sites and for the protection of the water and resources that are necessary for us all to live.
• Millions insist that Black Lives Matter, something that  shouldn’t  even have to be stated, as a push back to s tate violence  demonstrated through  police shootings and a prison and detention syste m that decimates  black communities and  destroys the families of those seeking asylum and shelter. 
• A pandemic  that  lays bare the  violent  impacts of an economic system that determines human worth iness of health and home  through pay  and corporate bottom lines.
• The growing refusal to allow sexual violence, in all its forms, to go unnamed, covered up, and used as a tool of control and enforcement. 

As all of this and more requires that we face the g lobal impact of the  U nited  State ’s   Settler- Colonialist history of genocide and enslavement ; and the collaboration of the Christian Church therein. 

This  is a time of uncovering the violence of our institutions and relationships; it is time to build toward structures and practices that serve all of God’s creation and perpetuate justice. To build a liberated world requires prophetic protest and strategic organizing,  institutional reimagining and   relational  change . And all of this depends upon a spiritual revolution—a complete reimagining of our ethics, our faithfulness,  our values, and our call. 

Through this series of monthly talks and popular education workshops, each of VDS’s co-curricular programs will  facilitate conversations and workshops that will deepen and shift our spiritual practices to equip us for the hard, joyous work of building a thriving world for all.

This series has been  visioned  by the Cal Turner Program in Moral Leadership; the Carpenter Program in Religion, Gender, and Sexuality; the Kelly Miller Smith Institute on Black Church Studies; the Public Theology and Racial Justice  Collaborative ; the Religion  in the  Arts and Contemporary Culture Program; and the  Wendland -Cook Program in Religion and Justice. We are so grateful to be in the work with you.