Video: Leading Toward Justice: Intersections of Religion, Ethics, and Community Organizing

On February 10, 2023, The Leading Toward Justice webinar series featured a discussion of the critical importance of ethical practices and religious literacy in community organizing and advocacy fields. The Leading Toward Justice webinar series panel discussions spotlight alumni impact in the world and the ways alumni leverage their HDS training while working in secular or public professions. 

Full transcript

SPEAKER 1: Harvard Divinity School.

SPEAKER 2: Leading Toward Justice-- Intersections of Religion, Ethics, and Community Organizing. February 10, 2023.

SUSIE HAYWARD: It's great to be back for this fourth iteration of this series, where we're highlighting extraordinary alumnx who are working in different professions-- including in the past, we've hit up humanitarians, journalists, and policymakers. And today, we will be focusing on community organizing.

So as Chandra said, I'm with the Religion and Public Life Program at HDS. RPL, for those alumnx who are not aware, it's a newer program at HDS, just established in October of 2020, that seeks to advance the public understanding of religion in service of a just world at peace.

And more specifically, I'm with the Religious Literacy and Professions Initiative. And what this initiative seeks to do is to support professionals across a range of professional sectors that are often defined as secular, but where we know, as religion scholars, that religion has deep influences.

So RPL seeks to support professionals in better understanding and analyzing those religious influences-- religious influences that are both explicit and implicit-- to support their efforts to advance justice and nonviolence and to address the most urgent issues of our day-- issues like racial justice or climate collapse or economic inequality, for example.

And as well, our program also supports current HDS students who are studying religion here at the Divinity School, in preparation for going into these kinds of professions, like journalism and humanitarianism, or as our program focuses on today, community organizing.

We know that religion inevitably intersects with organizing efforts, methods, and outcomes in a vast range of ways, as both a force that intersects with political, economic, and other interests to drive unjust systems and practices that organizers are seeking to transform, as well as a multidimensional force that can shape and animate organizing efforts.

Certainly, when it comes to issues of justice related to reproductive and queer rights, racial climate, or economic justice, immigrant rights, just to name a few, we can see clear religious dimensions at play in these ambivalent ways, both for and against efforts to advance justice.

Or thinking more deeply, we can consider how particular religious worldviews shape how we even understand those issues and ethically respond to them, as well as the organizing tactics and methods we assume will be the most effective in creating the change that we hope to see.

So I am grateful today to have three wonderful Harvard alumnx with me who are all deeply committed and experienced community organizers. And they'll speak a bit about how the study of religion can be leveraged in the work of organizing to advance just peace. So Ryan, Erica, and Jasmine, please join me on the screen here.

We have Erica Williams, who is an organizer with the Poor People's Campaign and the Community Renewal Society, a fierce advocate for racial equity and socioeconomic justice. Jasmine Beach-Ferrara, who founded and leads the Campaign for Southern Equality, which advocates for queer rights. And Ryan Anderson, who's representing Canada today and the Calgary Alliance for the Common Good, a coalition of organizations working on issues that-- a range of issues, from things like Indigenous rights and mental health care among others.

So you can read far more in the links or the bios that have been put into the chat box. I encourage you to do that. But for the sake of time, we are just going to dig into it. And honestly, sometimes better than reading those professional bios is hearing directly from the person themselves about the work that they do and how they got there. So Jasmine, if I can turn to you to tell us a little bit about what you do and how you got there?

JASMINE BEACH-FERRARA: Absolutely. Let me begin just by saying hello to folks and thank you all so much for the opportunity to be in this conversation and to be in community with you all. It's always an amazing thing to get to reconnect with the HDS community.

Just by way of brief introduction, I am based in Asheville, North Carolina. I'm Jasmine Beach-Ferrara. My pronouns are she/her. I'm an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ and work as the executive director of the Campaign for Southern Equality.

And we work on both legal and lived equality for LGBTQ folks across the South, and do that at the intersections of other justice and civil rights issues, particularly around racial equity and economic justice issues. I also serve as a local elected official. I serve on County Commission here in Buncombe County, North Carolina.

So particularly, in that arena of doing queer advocacy and queer rights work across the south. And engaged, on a daily basis, in exactly the kind of questions that we are talking about today. So just really looking forward to diving into this conversation with Erica and Ryan and Susie and all of you.

SUSIE HAYWARD: Thanks, Jasmine. Erica, let's hear from you.

ERICA WILLIAMS: Well, hello, everyone. Great to be with you all today. And if I'm going to introduce myself, I must say who I come from. So I must give honor to my beloved ancestors-- my great-grandmother, Bernice, and my grandmother, Willie G. Morris, and also to the ancestors, Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth and Fannie Lou Hamer, because I come in the lineage of strong Black women who have stood against the empire in their time.

And so I am Erica Williams. I am ordained through the Disciples of Christ denomination. My pronouns are she/her. And I hail from the city of Saginaw, Michigan. And I am a follower of that brown-skinned Palestinian Jew when he stepped on the sea and he said the spirit of the Lord is upon me.

For he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor, to heal the broken hearted, to set the captive free, and to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord now, which meant the Jubilee. And when he closed the book, he said, today, the scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.

And that was meaning-- he was saying I'm here to set it off. I'm here to do what the spirit and the ancestors sent me here to do, and that is why I'm here today. I am the founder of Sett it Off movement and I am also working with the Poor People's Campaign. And I am here to do just that-- to set the captive free through the areas of economic justice and racial justice. And thank you for having me today.

SUSIE HAYWARD: Thank you so much, Erica. And I also just want to note that Erica is a graduate from the Masters of Religion and Public Life Program, which is our new one-year degree program for experienced professionals. Ryan, over to you.

RYAN ANDERSON: Yeah. So my name is Ryan Anderson. I'm the Lead Organizer for the Calgary Alliance for the Common Good. I'm also an Associate Supervisor with the Industrial Areas Foundation Canada, looking after the affiliates here in Canada.

Yeah. My background was-- actually, when I left Harvard because I've taken some clear stances on LGBTQ+ issues, basically I couldn't get a job, at least not in the churches here in Alberta. And so I ended up working for the National Bishop for a while, where I got to actually play with integrating, organizing, and religious life.

And was a part of creating what is now called the Canadian Interfaith Conversation and what had been the 2010 Interfaith gathering of religious leaders from around the world, which was lots of fun. I think we got about a billion and a half dollars for maternal and child health around the world from Canada, at least, and [INAUDIBLE] from others.

And then after that, I worked as a parish pastor for a while, and where we did something called In From the Cold, which was having poor people sleep on our church floor, or homeless people sleep on our church floor. And we quickly realized that that was causing post-traumatic stress.

And also, in Canada, it costs $40,000 to give someone supportive housing and $100,000 to keep them on the street in the shelter systems. The only thing that keeps people on the streets is politics. So when an organizer approached me about building the Calgary Alliance, I was-- I said yes.

I think the worst one-and-one I've ever done because I didn't care anything on the personal stuff-- it's like let's just build something. And then I was fortunate to work with some really incredible leaders in building the Calgary Alliance, which now has about 30,000 members and about 30-some organizations. And so far, we're at about $5.3 billion of victories so far, so it's been-- I like winning, and it's been fun to win.

SUSIE HAYWARD: Wonderful. Thanks, Ryan. I'm glad to hear that you all have been able to make some great successes there. So I want to dig in to how your academic study of religion has shaped and affected the kind of work that you are doing in these organizing spaces. Erica, I wonder if I could start with you.

You've actually studied religion a couple of different times in your life. So feel free to speak to both, as well as in this latest iteration, thinking about the critical study of religion and how it supports the organizing work that you want to do on racial equity and socioeconomic justice.

ERICA WILLIAMS: Yeah. So I was raised by my grandparents, Write and Willie Morris, who were sharecroppers in Dothan, Alabama. And so I often tell people they were my first theologians because they never went to any seminary. They only had eighth-grade education, but they had PhDs in common sense.

And my grandparents taught me at a young age about the work of ministry and the work of faith and justice. And so when I was young, I had just the honor of being with my grandparents, going around Michigan with the Black revolutionary workers and different groups, doing work of faith and justice. So I was raised in a home that really sought to do their faith in the public square.

And so as time has gone on, as you said, Susie, I've gone to Howard University School of Divinity, the great HU, and had an opportunity to study with some of the greatest scholars, from Dr. Cain Hope Fielder and other folks who helped to give more shape to this call that I had, concerning this work of liberation and racial justice and economic justice.

And so after I left Howard in 2016, got a chance to work with the Poor People's Campaign, a national, call for more revival, and to work with repairers of the breach. And I was so grateful to be able to do that because when I left everything in Michigan, in 2013, to go to Divinity School, I asked the spirit of the ancestors to let me do the work that I was created to do, which was to do this justice work.

And so doing the Poor People's Campaign, doing all this work, in 2020, when we hit the pandemic, I said there's time for something else. This time for another iteration of this work of justice. And that's why I came to Harvard Divinity School. If I want to take on the systems and the empire, I must come to the place where the greatest of leaders are equipped to do this work.

And so I'm grateful to have been picked to be a part of the inaugural cohort of the Religion and Public Life Program to learn from some amazing scholars and students to do this work. And so I say all of that in the context of, throughout my life, the spirit has been shaping me to do this. And I'm very clear, after I left Harvard, that it was even more clear for me to take on these systems of empire, and I've been equipped to do that through the spirit and through the ancestors.

SUSIE HAYWARD: Thank you, Erica. Ryan, over to you. How's your academic study of religion impacted your work in this space?

RYAN ANDERSON: Yeah. Well, what I think about is not just academic-- I think about my experience at Harvard, there are really three things that really shaped me. The first was actually a field placement I did. So I come from a Lutheran-- like small town Lutheran, where most people look like me. And I'd also done church social justice stuff before. And I would also describe myself as-- we were very good at being really ineffective.

And then I walked into Resurrection Lutheran Church in Roxbury, and here was this African-American Lutheran parish that was thriving. And I was like, what is going on here? And I got to work underneath someone named John Heinemeir and really discovered, first of all, how organizing can revitalize religious communities.

But then I went to my first action, where there was like 2000 people. And there was the city-- the mayor of Boston's up on stage, and they were like, we want this piece of land for affordable housing. And the mayor was going, yes, we'll get it for you. And I was hooked.

And then I think the other was actually a contrast. So I was at Harvard-- my second week in the United States-- living in the United States and my first week of Harvard was 9/11. And when I-- interesting about being at Harvard was being around all these people who knew the issues really well, like being around people in the military, people who understood the Middle East, people who understood Islam.

And it was clear that the war in Iraq was completely unjust. It was a crime against humanity and was based on lies. And even though that was absolutely clear, what I often experienced was progressives fighting amongst themselves more. And then watch George W. Bush get reelected, and I went, what the hell?

And what really taught me the question of, so how do we actually-- actually, the experience in Roxbury taught me, is how do we actually build to bring people together instead of just attacking each other? How do we build for power and how do we actually build to actually win on issues, and so we don't let the other side win?

And the Iraq war killed half a million people. There's major consequences. And the other-- the third thing that actually really shaped me was the people. I think about some of the professors that were there at the time-- Jose Mikas Benigno, Emily Towns, Sarah Coakley, but also many of the students I was with. I think about Brent and Susan and [INAUDIBLE].

Those are a list of other people who really exemplified the coming together of deep spirituality, deep thoughtfulness, and it committed to public engagement, and often at the interfaith level. And I think that, for me, at least, those people modeled the type of person that I wanted to become. So those--

SUSIE HAYWARD: Thank you, Ryan. Jasmine, can you share with us?

JASMINE BEACH-FERRARA: Yeah. Well, when I arrived at HDS, I had a still fairly cloudy sense of a lot of parts of what my call was going to be, but I did know that it was into doing sort of a ministry in the public square and in the south.

And as I look back on the time that was spent at HDS, it really was a combination of field placements and academic work, and then relationships running through all of that, at the intersections of pastoral issues, academic study of religion, and organizing-- that helped me get really clear about what my call would be into launching the Campaign for Southern Equality.

But also that really started building the toolbox that I need to draw on, on a daily basis to be understanding the communities and landscape that we're working in, that I'm working in, to understand my position as a white Southern person who's queer-identified in those spaces, bringing mixes of privilege and being part of targeted groups in a lot of spaces.

And in really specific ways, understanding, at everything from the systemic and structural levels, the deep entanglement of religiosity and politics in the south and the specific issues that there was a chance in coursework to dive into around historical structures at play and contemporary structures at play, in terms of how religion is deployed and often weaponized in our politics.

And related to all of that-- and I think that's something we're going to get into with Erica and Ryan, talking about, related to all of that, a mix of the pastoral and ethical questions of how we show up to this work, how we support community engaging in this work. And having that kind of tool set, toolkit related to just some of the historical understanding and analysis, particularly around religion is something I draw on in, one way or another, probably every day, every week of the work we're doing here.

SUSIE HAYWARD: Thank you all. I'm really resonating with both the examples of people who you encountered, who through their example of what they were doing and how they were thinking, shaped you and directed you into this work, as well as both the intellectual and the hard work that you were invited into at HDS.

I sometimes say, that as an alumna myself, that some of the most-- some of what I took out of my experience as a student was not necessarily the substance of what I learned, though I learned a lot of great stuff in my classes, but how I learned to look at the world and think about how to move within it.

Speaking to what you were just speaking to, Jasmine, with thinking about communities and how best to engage them, understanding their worldviews, and your own positionality, and how power is operating in all of that, and how to move ethically through those spaces and intentionally through those spaces.

So thank you. I'm going to-- for the next question, what I would love is to hear like a story time, for you to share an anecdote from your career, of an issue or a campaign that you've been involved in, where you've been able to really draw on your study of religion or your own religious or spiritual practices and traditions, or however you want to draw on-- your relationship to religious studies and religious practice-- to navigate a strategic response to it, ways to engage communities as part of it. And so Ryan, I wonder if I could start with you to tell us a story. You're still muted, Ryan.

RYAN ANDERSON: Of course, it's a Zoom call. Someone has to do it. So I thought I'd share with you the story of our very first action. So we were just forming and really getting near the end of forming the Calgary Alliance, and we weren't quite ready for action.

But then in the middle of summer, there was basically this Astroturf campaign led by some business people to cut about $60 million from community services and turn that into a tax cut for them. And we had people who really knew the impact that would have on our communities, and they're like, we just can't let this happen.

And it was-- yeah, these amazing leaders just stepped up. And we had-- there was like six-- we brought 600 people to the City Hall. So 300 people packed the actual chambers, with 300 people outside. And our first demand was that we could even speak to Council because the business community got to. And basically, City Council said, no, you don't even get to speak. And everyone, en masse, marched out, and of course, all the media cameras marched out following us. And we raised hell for the City Council.

And it was actually-- it's comical to read the transcript afterwards because the City Council had no idea what to do with this and just tripped over themselves. And the cuts still happened but none of them fell on any of the social services. They basically pulled it out of reserve. And then several months later, they tried again to do this, this time with about an $85 million cut. And we mobilized again and stopped it.

And years later, I was talking with the mayor. He said, your actions changed the political culture of our community. And where the hell did this come from? It was what we were wondering. And that question of where does it come from, I think is what's really-- was actually what's important, where the lesson is, is that where it came from was actually approaching religion and religious leaders not often-- like we live in--

At least here, there's a lot of critique of religion and criticism, but from this view of the scene, every religious tradition and religious leaders and communities, there's profound goodness, there's deep values, there's real human experiences, and there's really important community leaders. And when you can actually see that goodness and invite people into that. And then the practical skills of organizing about how do you actually knit together these communities so that they can function well together and respect one another

What we bring into Public Life is a power that is often missing, is that power that's often neglected, especially in a-- really, we live in this age of attack at a communications level, that when real people bring real values and real experience to Public Life, something gets created that can exist in almost any other way.

SUSIE HAYWARD: Thank you for highlighting both the ambivalence of the sacred-- as Scott Appleby speaks to it-- on these issues, but also the power and the animating force and the level of dialogue that can happen when people are invited to speak through the frame of religion and spiritual commitments and values. Jasmine, how about you? Do you have a story for us?

JASMINE BEACH-FERRARA: Yeah. So this is a story that goes back to when we first launched the campaign for Southern Equality, which was in the 2011 window. But a lot of the themes here are absolutely relevant to the work we're doing in real-time right now. So it's may be aware there's a barrage of anti-queer legislation that's barreling through southern legislatures, particularly around gender-affirming care bans for youth. So just kind of planting a flag in that real-time moment.

But this story goes back to the context of 2011 when we led a campaign advocating for marriage equality across the south. It was called the "We Do" Campaign and was about standing alongside queer families in the south as they took the action of requesting a marriage license in their hometown.

Usually, very small communities like Poplarville, Mississippi, and Morristown, Tennessee, and Wilson, North Carolina, go into the county clerk's office to deliberately provoke a denial, and in that, create this narrative moment that really told their story as a family living in a small southern town, but also shown a very direct light on what it meant when this discriminatory law was actually enforced in real-time against real people.

And we really built every aspect of that campaign through a lens of how to provide pastoral love and support to families as they took these very public steps, often at some risk to themselves, and how, also through a theological lens, to frame these actions in a way that really were about the reclamation of public space for a community that was really typically exiled to the closets and shadows of small towns.

So we built these so that we led processions through small towns across the south, where families would be joined by their friends, their family, and we always had affirming clergy in the mix as well. We would do blessings for the families before they went into the public building. And just did everything we could to saturate this experience of actually provoking the enforcement of discriminatory law with love and also with a very intentional posture of empathy towards the people whose job it was to enforce this law.

So we were working with a lot of folks who had been greatly harmed by religion in their lives and for whom religion didn't necessarily feel like a safe place, but for whom ultimately, the theological and pastoral questions of love and empathy and what it means to act with courage and conviction in our public lives resonated really deeply. So we were trying to find our way through the seams of those issues.

And just very briefly, the kinds of things that would happen would be a couple-- this amazing couple named Monty and Steve, who took part in one of these actions in Wilson, North Carolina-- holding hands for the first time ever in public as they walked down the street with their young six-year-old son to request a marriage license. And the power of that when you stop to absorb what that means.

Or people sharing with clergy who are involved with this that this was the first time that they had ever interacted with a minister who wasn't trying to convert them or basically wasn't condemning them. They'd never had an interpersonal interaction with a clergy member who wasn't taking that posture and doing harm in that way. So more to share there, but that's the story in a nutshell of this four-year campaign we led and some of the ways that it speaks to the themes we're talking about today.

SUSIE HAYWARD: It's powerful. And especially on an issue like LGBT rights, where so much of the opposition is framed with reference to religion or within religion, how powerful it is to be able to disrupt that dominant narrative that religious positions are always anti-queer, when in fact, the reality is that, as Ryan was saying, religions are ambivalent and there are a great many religious narratives and religious actors who not despite, but rooted within their faith traditions, support LGBT rights. Thank you, Jasmine. Erica, over to you. Do you have a story to share with us?

ERICA WILLIAMS: I will never forget October 17, 2016, when some of the family from the Fight for $15 in Durham, North Carolina, and clergy which were led by the Reverend Dr. William J Barber, we went into downtown Durham and we blocked the streets, as our Fight for $15 family declared that they deserved a living wage.

I remember as we walked into the streets, this was my first time engaging in civil disobedience, and I must admit I was nervous because I did not know how this was going to turn out. And as we marched into the streets and traffic began to back up, as we began to sing--

(SINGING) Ain't going to let nobody turn me around, turn me around, turn me around--

And the children were singing and clapping, and the families were there saying, we just want to be able to put food on our children's table, something inside of me, at that moment-- I knew, I said oh, God is in this place.

And as we kept singing and yelling and proclaiming to the streets and to the businesses, including McDonald's, and Taco Bell, and Popeye's that they needed to pay their workers a living wage and not only a living wage but stop the sexual harassment of black trans women and to stop the harassment of queer folks.

So we just kept on singing in the middle of the streets. And as we got arrested one by one, I remember a young woman saying to me-- at that time, I had on the collar, which I don't wear anymore because I need my actions to speak more than my collar. At that time, I had a collar on, and she said, thank you for being here with us. She said the church often don't come out and stand with us. They want us to come to the church, but they won't come to the streets.

And at that moment, I knew-- I said, God, this is where your house is. This is where you're calling for us to be. And so that night, as we sat in the jail and we continued singing and continued protesting, I committed myself in that moment because I think it's just not about a campaign that we all put ourselves in, it's something we must commit ourselves to.

And at that moment, I know I became fully committed to this work of economic justice because in that moment, I saw that families, white, Black, Brown, Native, all together, were in the streets declaring their right just to be human. And so even after that night of protesting and civil disobedience, we continued on with the Fight for $15.

And as we know at that time, this country wasn't really wanting to talk about poverty. Even in the 2016 election, even from both sides, nobody said, poverty, but as the Poor People's Campaign and Repair Us and Fight for $15 kept decreeing and decrying this call for a living wage, that is what has been able to shift the tides in this nation to get us to see that there is no middle class, really. It's either the have or the have-nots.

And so I would say that that night, for me, was a solidifying moment, but also, it was a striking moment in the city of Durham and even across the south as Fight for $15 continued to take a stand to call for a living wage.

SUSIE HAYWARD: Thank you, Erica, for taking us there and for sharing your song, too. It's remarkable to me how these songs live on and they represent struggles of the past that continue today, and link us with some of the ancestors in these fights for justice, just like so many of the religious traditions, and symbols and practices that are sometimes present in these movements.

I'm a scholar of Myanmar Buddhism, in particular, and it was remarkable to me, as part of the civil disobedience movement after the coup, the ways in which religious traditions, practices, songs, and so on, were enlivening and animating in ways similar to what you're speaking to, Erica. And thanks also for also reminding us of the fundamental center issue of economic inequality and poverty that intersects with so many of these other justice issues as well.

I want to-- I am going to take a little bit of speaker's prerogative here to throw out a question that we talked about as a group in our rehearsal, but it wasn't on the list today, y'all, but hopefully, you'll feel prepped about it and not on your back foot here. I am curious-- we're living at this time of-- in North America-- in a lot of places around the world, but we're experiencing in North America, this iteration of rising white Christian nationalism is how it is sometimes described.

And as organizers working on these issues of economic, gender, racial justice, Indigenous rights, and so on, I would imagine that you are confronting that in your work. I wonder specifically, what religious literacy or spiritual literacy-- what an understanding of religion offers, as you think about confronting those dynamics in particular? And this time, I'm not going to call. I'll just open it up. Does somebody want to take that question first?

JASMINE BEACH-FERRARA: I will, just to get us started, but very much like [INAUDIBLE] Erica and Ryan to hearing from you all. Yeah. I mean, you're in a landscape where nothing about that question is abstract or ambivalent. If you engage at all in the politics of the south right now, whether it's in an organizing space or at the electoral level, you are confronted with very clear, unambiguous evidence about the presence and power of white Christian nationalist ideologies in the way that's taking shape in our political landscape.

The way that those sort of elements have become increasingly politically empowered within the traditional political power structure of the Republican Party, specifically in the South-- folks holding local, state, and national office, reflecting those ideologies. But then also, at the ground level, the way that grassroots groups, militias movements are operating and tethered into that.

So I'll say, at that level, it's very real. I think it's very important that we are precise and name it as white Christian nationalism. And then I think the piece that you have to live into and reckon with every day in the South is how do we understand that at the spiritual and relational level? Because these are also people that we know-- the people that we work with, people that we may be contending with, running for office against, organizing against but also living down the road from.

And I think that, to me, there's this very rich set of questions about what our faith teachings are and how we live into that around withholding the analysis about what's so dangerous. And also understanding what that means at the level of a 16-year-old young man who's coming of age in an environment like that, and what's happening to him at a spiritual level, and what his future holds in our communities, his future holds--

So a lot to unpack there, but I'll just tee those things up as some starting points. And of course, Erica and Ryan, want to hear your thoughts.

SUSIE HAYWARD: Thanks, Jasmine. Ryan or Erica, do either of you want to--

[LAUGHTER]

RYAN ANDERSON: Should have pointed quicker. So just a little nuance. So I live in a different context, so it doesn't show up quite the same way here as it does in the United States. But I think that the same underlying phenomena is the same. Here is much more on issues, I think, around colonialism and ongoing exploitation of the environment, and also how religion holds particular power structures.

And actually, Erica, you talked earlier on about the connection between religion and empire. And I think that that is one of the things we have to get really clear about, is that how much religious traditions have either been taken over or become aligned with systems of imperial domination.

And so whether it's the Roman Empire, historically, whether it's the American empire today, that is a deep religious challenge. And how deeply it's a part of our religious traditions is also really important. What we've found working around Truth and Reconciliation is just how deeply those imperial understandings have shaped our theology.

But a part of that religious literacy is also knowing that it's easy to clump up a whole group into one big group and throw whatever crap you want on them, but the reality is that these traditions are far more complex. As Christians, we have to remember that for the first couple of hundreds years, we were mainly slaves, and it was a religion in opposition to the empire.

So how do we reclaim that roots? Or I come from a pietistic tradition that was opposing the church and state religions and siding with the-- siding with a lot of the workers who were suffering back in Scandinavia, and they got kicked out. [Laughs] So there's this alternative tradition within almost most religious traditions, and I find it within almost all religious tradition. So how do we re-engage that?

But then I think the other question is how do we also find the best of our religious traditions? And I think the principles of all humans are worthy of dignity, no matter what, and that preferential option for the poor. So whoever is exploited, whoever is at the-- whoever is being knocked down, whoever-- including the Earth, how do we always hold that up as one of our guiding lights, as we approach these things but also never dehumanize anyone?

SUSIE HAYWARD: Thank you, Ryan. Erica, any one thing you want to add to that, or I can call on you first for the next question?

ERICA WILLIAMS: Great. I'm so glad you brought that question up. So I wanted to hear from my fellow friends on this call because this is something that I think about all the time, honest to goodness truth. And knowing the history of this nation, when our ancestors were brought to these shores, they were brought on the basis of Christianity, in the sense that there was a hierarchy, and God had called white people to be superior and Black people to be inferior.

And so we know the theology. If you haven't read J. Kameron Carter's theological frame of race, you need to look at it because it gives a lot of intel to this conversation. But even going into present day, as I marched through Charlottesville in 2017 and we saw folks who, on the other side, were very clear about their faith-- called them to be out there marching and protesting. God had called them on the same side.

We're over here, faith leaders, from Reverend Traci Blackmon to Cornel West, and other folk here saying, well, no, we know that Jesus was on the side of the oppressed. But even going even further to January 6, 2021, when The Rude Boys and the Proud Boys set it off at our capital, they went in the name of Jesus.

And so that is the thing that I think we don't want to talk about-- a lot of folk don't want to touch that, that this is all done in the name of white Christian nationalism. And so my thing is this is something I think that all of our movements-- and not just white spaces, Black spaces, too because white Christian nationalism has taken over all across the nation, I'll just say that and leave it there.

But ultimately, I think that in this conversation or this question, it is really important that we address this because as we prepare for this 2024 election-- and I'm just going to say it like I feel it. As we are seeing the ways that things are playing out with some of the candidates, I will say DeSantis-- I'll say his name in this space-- he is someone who was very clear about his candidacy, is geared around Christianity.

And so I think it's important that we have-- not just in the Christian text or the the Bible, but in a lot of the religious spaces or context, because most of the major denominations-- excuse me, religions, their foundation is justice. It's about taking care of the poor, the orphans, the widows, the least of these.

So we must begin to have this conversation and really get clear about what we're up against because this form of Christian nationalism, white Christian nationalism, excuse me, that we're seeing, it's not about God, it's about whiteness, power, and wealth. And if we don't start talking about those three trinities that they're working with, we're going to be in for a rude awakening, come 2024.

And so I don't know if all of that was clear, but I am saying that that's something that's deep on my heart right now. Because if we don't address that matter, all the other things that we're talking about, they're not going to be important because that is the thing that they have-- the platform and the power-- to use against the oppressed.

SUSIE HAYWARD: Yeah, thank you for highlighting the urgency of that issue and taking us back to Charlottesville, too, for the reality of how it shows up in very violent real ways to threaten communities, as well as in systemic ways. And how our ability to analyze and be critical of these intersections and collisions between the religious and the political can help us potentially craft a new way forward.

We are going to open it up to Q&A, so please do send some questions along for our speakers today. Before you do that, I have one final question for all of you, which is a little bit-- another doozy. But I've been thinking a lot-- we at RPL have been thinking a lot about just how many urgent challenges there are to issues related to justice at this current moment, this era of backlash that we're in right now, that you've all been highlighting.

And I know many organizers are working urgently to respond to these challenges, often, by their nature, in ways that require forms of confrontation and resistance to powerful forces and actors, in ways that are necessary and can also have these effects of polarizing communities even further, have the potential risk of doing that, or of reproducing old solutions that haven't been effective in the past.

And as our faculty advisor, Dr. Moore sometimes reflects on-- and she draws from Paulo Freire in saying so-- just practice-- praxis requires a kind of critical reflection and action to ensure that one is not unwittingly, despite the very best intentions, reproducing unjust forms of personal relations, or reifying systems and structures and problematic assumptions, and ways of operating.

So I wonder how you think about that. Jasmine, you spoke a little bit about it in your answer just now, in terms of the communities you live within and how to engage with them in ways that recognize the need to continue to have deep relationships. And I invite you to say a little bit more on that. Or Erica and Ryan, how do you think about the ways of doing organizing creatively and critically, so as not to reproduce or reify polarization or harm? Jasmine.

JASMINE BEACH-FERRARA: Yeah. I mean, I think a couple of things that we rely on as guide stars, and I will just be sort of very personal here. Less heady, more heart that for me are kind of non-negotiable, indispensable pieces of this as a Christian person doing this work. And the only way I would know how to be sustained in this work is really being deeply grounded in a love ethic.

And the expression of that through an approach of empathy and towards really praying every day about what it means to love, love God, to love neighbor, to love enemy, and also, to be deeply attuned to harm and how-- and creating organizing environments in which people can really be clear about how they can stay safe and how they cannot be exposed to harms that can be overwhelming and very damaging.

I think we have to have very real conversations about that. And then within all of this constant checks and cross checks around issues of privilege, around issues of how white dominant norms, for instance, are shaping approaches around the interplay of efficacy and respectability politics, when you're organizing in a Southern context in particular.

And then just the very slippery slope that I think I see play out in organizing spaces we're at [INAUDIBLE]. You're always on a slippery slope. You have to just know where you're at. Around like when we have wins, they very rarely look like the ideal of what we want and how we define what winning means, how we interact with political systems that have inherent limitations. And then how we interact with funding streams and philanthropic sources that also have complications.

So all of that is a very big ecosystem of constant questions to be asking the simplest thing I wake up each day thinking about is this question of how do we come from a place of love, how do we live into very clear teachings about that from a Christian perspective, and then how do we think about supporting the voices, the leadership, and centering the voices of leadership of those most impacted, while also caring for each other as we do this work and interface with empire and systems that have a tremendous amount of complications associated with them.

SUSIE HAYWARD: Great. Thank you, Jasmine. Erica.

ERICA WILLIAMS: You know that great, I say, philosopher and I would also say theologian, Michael Jackson had a song said, the man or the person in the mirror. And so I often say that oftentimes in our organizing spaces, we're not rooted in love, we're rooted in lust. And I say lust of power because a lot of times, we show up in these spaces wanting to be seen and wanting to have some form of influence. And so I think it starts all one individually.

We must look at ourselves and see our own biases and see our own things that we're struggling with because I've been-- let me just keep it honest in this space, I've been in spaces with folks, in particular white folks, and oftentimes, they don't want to hear the voices of Black people. And they don't want them to be in leadership or they think they can't lead.

And so that's oftentimes a struggle for me when you say that you're here for my liberation, but you're actually here more oppressing me. So I think this starts with us looking internally to see what we have when we come to this space. Because Che Guevara said, a great revolutionary must be rooted in love. So we must see where our heart is, where our love is. So that's one thing I would lift up is that's really where we're coming when we come into these spaces of organizing. But then I would also say,

I think that one thing spirit gave me during my time at Harvard Divinity, one morning in prayer, the spirit said, those who are proximate to pain, push. And those proximate to power, pause. So I think what I'm struggling with in a lot of times is people who are proximate to power are always saying, wait, pause. We can't. We must wait.

When is it going to be a time when we recognize in our spaces that there may call-- there may be a time that calls for us to have to get out of our comfort? There may come a time, as the kids say in the streets, we're going to have to put some skin in the game. And not just talk about these things or theorize them, but actually be willing to put ourselves on the line.

So as a Black queer woman in this space, I often tell folks, I know that when I step on the scene, I'm already a threat to the system because I'm not going to be quiet. Because I didn't come to be status quo. I came to set it off. But I'm also checking for some people on the right and the left of me to come in to say, you know what, we're here.

We're not going to step back, we're not going to compromise, but we're actually going to ensure that our people are taken care of, that our people are loved and that dignity is brought to the forefront for all people. So until we get out of our comfort, I think our movements will continue to be complacent and continue to look just like the systems in which we're fighting.

But I just believe, I just believe, that there are some people, I'm here with them in this Zoom room today and even some in the participants-- excuse me, in the overflow, in the room that are seeking to be ones who will be the ones who will cry out. And will say that we can no longer continue to have these systems of empire and will do all that they can to check themselves and check the structures in which we live in.

SUSIE HAYWARD: Thank you Erika. Ryan, anything you want to add from your experience?

RYAN ANDERSON: No. I think-- I don't have a lot to add. I think what has been said so far is quite beautiful and quite true. But I think, a couple of things is just somewhat to reiterate what people said, is I think first of all, it's just to recognize how deeply those systems of empire and oppression are integrated to us both consciously or unconsciously. Like it is deeply ingrained in us, and it is hard to undo them. And actually on all sides.

And I think, the other thing, I'm just reiterating it, like those religious principles of recognizing the humanity of all people. Previous people talked about the ethic of love. Like holding that really intentioned with the preferential option for whoever has been pushed to the-- like pushed to the edges, who have been exploited, who have been marginalized, like holding those two together, and actually it's a real tension.

And recognizing that there's actually a real tension in there because of how we have denied people's humanity. Like how do we live in that tension? But then also, I think, a bit of what Erica said, is that we need that tension, so we can build power with. But the power needs to act. Like if we don't move to confronting issues, what are we doing? And also recognizing confronting isn't punching each other, but confronting, con front, is bringing our heads together.

So how do we bring our societies heads together in real-- and conflict is a part of democracy. So in real confrontational democracy where the issues can't be sidelined, but we are forcing our communities to bring our heads together to say, how do we actually solve these issues? And realizing the process. What Jasmine said, is we work in a really messy systems. So we're going to mess [LAUGHS] So how do we create this?

SUSIE HAYWARD: Yeah. And The search for purity can be an impossible search, right?

RYAN ANDERSON: If security is a great way to block action is what I learned.

SUSIE HAYWARD: Thank you. So we have some great questions that are coming in the chat box. I'm just going to throw out a couple of them. Jasmine, there's one for you in particular that's asking about trans youth recognizing the issues of homelessness amongst LGBT especially, but particularly trans youth who experience that and your advice on working with policy leaders who have been in opposition to trans rights.

Erica, there's a question for you about the attack on CRT and the education system, a critical race theory, in the education system. And what are other mechanisms or means by which to help do that education work about thinking critically on issues related to race, particularly in the United States here?

And then Ryan, I wonder if you might say something about Ned's question here related to some of the colonial roots of philanthropy and speaking to what the relationship is or is not between organizing and philanthropic work. So Jasmine, to you first.

JASMINE BEACH-FERRARA: Yeah. I'll keep this brief because I really want to hear from Erica and Ryan on those questions. The approach we take, and this is literally something we're working on every single day right now, is interacting with elected officials in the South around issues of trans rights. And the approach we take is it we'll sit down with anyone, anytime, anywhere for conversation.

And we try to be very strategic about who's in that conversation from a perspective of, on the one hand, recognizing and meeting that legislator where they are. And on the other hand, not exposing particularly youth in our community to the harm that can come from having conversations that are based on a lot of biased promises.

So our approach is to just show up again, relentlessly, and keep having the conversations and to understand that my general experience around how people are positioned on queer issues is that people do change. People can change. People do change. It is almost always idiosyncratic versus formulaic. And it is about showing up again and again and again. Creating a space for some trusted dialogue relationship.

And in my view the Holy Spirit is often in the room when and as that change happens. And sometimes it happens over a month, and sometimes it happens over 25 years. But it happens often enough that we feel committed to continuing to try to show up. But to do it in ways, again, that Center community care and are consistent with those values.

SUSIE HAYWARD: Thanks, Jasmine. Erica. CRT in education.

ERICA WILLIAMS: Yeah. Just real quickly. I mean, I think ultimately, what we must move from in this moment where I often see all across the country is we have a lot of Black Lives Matter signs in front of our faith spaces. It's time to move from the outside of markings and move to the indoor situation. And so I say that in the context of throughout history in particular, I in the Black church, it has always been the church that did political education. It was the church or the faith spaces that taught community about the various issues in society.

So I would say to all of us here on this call, who are faith leaders or faith proxy, to begin to challenge our particular faith spaces to do that work. So you don't want to do it in the schools? We oftentimes have children there on Sundays, work away where you can put it in your children's work or even with your Bible study. See, we want to read the Bible, but as-- who was that? Niebuhr or Bonhoeffer, whatever said have the Bible in one hand and the paper in the other. Y'all going to put me out of here, HDS, because I did--

SUSIE HAYWARD: That was Karl Marx.

ERICA WILLIAMS: I didn't learn too well. Whoever that was. One of them. But they said have the Bible in one hand and the paper in the other. We have got to go back to that model in our faith spaces of using what they won't give in society to bring to our people in community. And they don't have to go to our faith centers. You can just host a community session and say, we're going to talk about.

It's Black History month. Come on. If we want to do Black History month, say you're going to talk about how things in this country have been set up and do that as a way to oppose the various system. But also fight like hell to go to the school board meetings and go to other spaces to make sure as a faith person that you state that your faith cause that you stand against injustice.

So as the Bible says, I'm Christian. I'll say it says, go down to the King's palace and issue a decree. And so that's what we must do. We can't stand on the sidelines and just allow for these things to happen. We have got to get like the Dream Defenders did down in Florida and other groups. We as people of faith have to get in there and call for this change. So do it at your own faith center and in the public square.

SUSIE HAYWARD: Thank you, Erica. Ryan, we've got a minute left. So can you tackle philanthropy and colonialism?

RYAN ANDERSON: No. But just to take a shot at it. I think we have to recognize that from a religious tradition, a lot of philanthropy comes from alms giving. Where people would leave the church, toss money to the poor, so they felt better about themselves. And also that a lot of who has money is structured in the injustices of our society.

So I live in a place where most of the money comes from the oil industry. And piping climate work in the midst of that. And that often that's used to silence advocacy. But on the other side, human generosity is one of the greatest characteristics of humanity. And there are also people who are willing to be generous to bring about real change. So how do we foster that, and then how do we also-- and we need money to hire people to build power. So how do we also deal with the world is messy?

And so how do we work within that massive needing money, knowing where it comes from, but still using it to do the work that needs to get done and not be bought? [INAUDIBLE] one.

SUSIE HAYWARD: Thank you so much to all of you. And I apologize to our audience members who weren't able to get their questions answered. But we did see it, and we did read it and hope to be able to continue this conversation moving forward. I just wanted to highlight what Kristen already threw into the chat box there. We have our religion and the legacies of slavery events that are going on Monday evenings this term.

One of the books that Erika mentioned, Theologies of Race was just channeled on Monday night session in a conversation between Professor David Holland and Kathryn Gin Lum from Stanford. So you can join us next Monday night when Dan McKinnon will be sharing family stories of HDSs own intersections with slavery and practices of enslavement that Harvard was complicit in.

So thank you, thank you, thank you to Jasmine and Ryan and Erica for your powerful reflections, and for the powerful work that you're doing and the examples you offer to current PhD students as representatives of the Alumnix community. And I'll hand it back over to Chandra.

CHANDRA MOHAMMED: Great, Susie. Thank you. Thank you, Susie, Erika, Jasmine, and Ryan. This was a wonderful discussion. And thanks to all of you in the audience for your questions and for joining us today. I do wish we had more time. And I hope you'll continue to reflect on and discuss everything we talked about today. I hope you'll also continue to stay connected with us through the HDS website and the HDS Facebook and Instagram. We really look forward to connecting with you. And to everyone, especially our panelists, thank you so, so much.

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