On February 10th, 2023, Harvard Divinity School alumnx working as community organizers came together to discuss their insights from their work on the ground and how their time studying religion has influenced their work with communities in pursuit of social justice. This event was part of the Leading Toward Justice webinar series, which is jointly sponsored by Religion and Public Life and HDS Alumni Relations.
The workshop was moderated by Susie Hayward, MDiv ‘07, the Associate Director of the Religious Literacy and the Professions Initiative. Joining her were panelists Jasmine Beach-Ferrara, MDiv ‘10, Erica Williams, MRPL ‘22, and Ryan Anderson, MDiv ‘04. Beach-Ferrara is the Executive Director of the Campaign for Southern Equality, which aims to support the protection of LGBTQIA+ rights and people in the South. Williams, a member of the Master of Religion in Public Life’s inaugural cohort, is a spiritual leader, organizer, and international human rights activist who has been a key advocate with the Poor People’s Campaign. Anderson works in Alberta, Canada as the Lead Organizer for the Calgary Alliance for the Common Good, a non-profit group which includes community, ethnic, non-profit, labor, and religious groups coming together to advocate for issues important to the lives of Calgarians.
Hayward began the conversation by asking how the panelists’ academic study of religion has informed the work that they do in their communities. Anderson spoke deeply about his field education at Resurrection Lutheran Church in Roxbury, MA, naming it as a place where he began to see how congregational life and community life can become unified towards calls for justice. Like Anderson, Beach-Ferrara discussed the ways she has combined her work in organizing, pastoral care, and the academic study of religion to create a “toolbox” from which she can support and advocate for communities. Similarly, Williams spoke about her time in spaces dedicated to the academic study of religion as “giving shape to the call” to ministry.
Hayward then asked each organizer to share an anecdote from their time in organizing spaces that they find particularly powerful or illustrative of the intersections between the study of religion and community advocacy.
Erica Williams shared a moving story of attending a rally for “The Fight for 15” labor justice campaign in Durham, North Carolina in 2016. Breaking into song and reminiscing about the activists—children and adults together—blocking the street and singing Ain’t Nobody Gonna Turn Me Around, Williams recalled that in that moment she knew “God is in this place.” Going on to describe how she and others were arrested for this act of civil disobedience, she reflected, “I committed myself in that moment . . . to the work of economic justice, because in that moment I saw families—white, Black, Brown, Native—declaring their right to be human.”
Anderson and Beach-Ferrera also recalled moments of civil disobedience and public action that made profound impacts on them and their work. Anderson spoke of his first action with the Calgary Alliance, which drew 600 people out of the pews and to city hall for a walkout after being prevented from speaking out on budget cuts. Recalling the mayor telling him afterwards that “these actions changed the political culture of the community,” Anderson felt that this act was deeply illustrative of thinking about “how we can bring the goodness of all these [religious] traditions together . . . into public space.”
Beach-Ferrara evoked a powerful image of civil action with her work with the 2011 “We Do Campaign,” which provided pastoral love and support to LGBTQ+ families as they tried to obtain marriage licenses in the South—often at great personal risk. Beach-Ferrara called this “a reclamation of public space for queer families that had been relegated to closets and darkness.” Like Anderson and Williams, Beach-Ferrara too spoke of an ultimate “posture of empathy” from which religiously informed social justice work takes place.
To conclude the webinar, Hayward cited the contemporary “era of backlash” and rise of “white Christian nationalism” in North America and its organizing spaces, asking organizers about their approaches to avoiding the reproduction of harm in their work and communities.
On the issue of harm reduction, Beach-Ferrera began by positing that her two non-negotiables in organizing spaces are “being deeply grounded in a love ethic,” and “being deeply attuned to harm.” These two key values allow her to create an environment in which there are constant and consistence acknowledgements of privilege, as well as a commitment to asking, “How do we center the voices and leadership of those most impacted?”
Anderson held that “power needs to act to confront issues,” and that attention must be paid to the ongoing legacy of colonialism in public space and the environment, including their religious dimensions. Anderson said, “We need to get really clear about how religion and the way we understand our traditions has been and is still deeply aligned with empire . . . at the same time remembering the ideal of internal diversity in our traditions . . . and remember that all people deserve dignity.”
Williams recollected, “As I marched through Charlottsville in 2017, I saw people who believed God had called them to the other side too . . . but I know that Jesus was on the side of the oppressed . . . [For white Christian nationalists] it’s not about God. It’s about whiteness, power, and wealth.” She then uplifted the power and vitality of activists and organizers getting out of their comfort zones and being willing to take risks in the name of liberation, saying, “Until we get out of our comfort zones, our movements will continue to be complacent.”
By Destiny Magnett, MTS ‘24, RPL Graduate Assistant