September 2019
On September 6 and 7, 2019, Color Of Change, Define American, and Union Theological Seminary will host a symposium on mass incarceration and mass detention at Union’s campus in New York City. For too long, these issues have been treated as if they were wholly distinct when, in fact, the system that seeks to criminalize and disenfranchise communities of color is the same as that which otherizes and dehumanizes migrants. It’s time for faith leaders, journalists and politicians to reject these lies, and the white supremacist ideology that undergirds them. At the September gathering activists, faith leaders, experts, and directly impacted people will join together for a two-day, interactive training on how to dismantle these unjust systems. Rashad Robinson, Jose Antonio Vargas and Michelle Alexander will deliver keynote addresses. Attendees will understand mass incarceration and mass detention more deeply, learn concrete skills to confront them, and begin to envision what a just society would look like.
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“There are many works on Japanese-American incarceration in World War Two—especially those that recount the government and the media’s perspective on this history—but American Sutra is the first to highlight the role that Buddhism played in this history, telling the story from the inside out.” Duncan Ryūken Williams Please join us for a discussion on this recently published book American Sutra:A Story of Faith and Freedom in the Second World War, with its author Duncan Ryūken Williams. This groundbreaking history tells the little-known story of how, in one of our country’s darkest hours, Japanese Americans fought to defend their faith and preserve religious freedom. In the face of discrimination, dislocation, dispossession, and confinement, Japanese Americans turned to their faith to sustain them, whether they were behind barbed wire in camps or serving in one of the most decorated combat units in the European theater. Using newly translated sources and extensive interviews with survivors of the camps and veterans of the war, American Sutra reveals how [...]
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The Thích Nhất Hạnh Program for Engaged Buddhism invites you to join us for our monthly Dharma Talk Series: Emptiness and Social Action. Over the course of nine months, a wide array of Buddhist teachers will take us into the essential teachings of the Buddhadharma and what it looks like to move into action to address the dissatisfaction, distress, and suffering that we meet in relationship with the earth, people, and systems today, in the United States, and around the world. How does conceptual, inferential, and experiential knowledge into emptiness of an inherent self invite for a response to circumstances that are stressful, painful, and violent? Each evening will be unique, with a combination of a dharma talk, meditation, and a question and answer period exploring these essential and vital questions within Buddhism and our lives’ for this moment in time. Greg Snyder is a dharma teacher and senior priest at Brooklyn Zen Center, as well as its co-founder [...]
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Date: Friday, September 13, 1:00 – 6:00 pm; Saturday, September 14, 9:00 am – 5:00 pm Instructor: Adam Barnes RSVP: https://myunion.utsnyc.edu/building-a-moral-revolution-to-end-poverty As seminarians graduate into economic crisis, how do we prepare for the poverty that awaits us in our congregations, our communities, our family, and even our debt-saddled job searches? We at the Kairos Center believe that we are living in a kairos moment: great change and transition, where the old ways of doing things are breaking down, new ones are trying to emerge and decisive action is demanded. This course explores how religious leaders, local congregations, and poor people’s organizations can be part of growing efforts rising up to respond to the injustice and violence our communities are facing. Special attention will be given to the history of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1968 Poor People’s Campaign (PPC) and the efforts of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival to re-ignite that campaign [...]
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EDS at Union has selected No Ashes in the Fire: Coming of Age Black & Free in America by Darnell Moore for our Community Read for the upcoming fall semester. Darnell Moore will join Dean Kelly Brown Douglas on Wednesday, September 18, at 6:00 pm EST, in James Chapel for a conversation about his spiritual memoir which tracks his journey from Camden, NJ to Ferguson, MO – including his years at Princeton Theological Seminary. Moore’s story traverses many intersections that must be theologically wrestled with – race, poverty, sexual identity, toxic masculinity – and the ambiguous role that faith often plays in these journeys. For anyone studying to become Christian minister, in particular, his honest witness calls us to grapple with the long shadow of patriarchal and heterosexist biblical interpretation and theology. His story is made all the more powerful by the way he connects his own personal liberation, his coming out story, to his role as one of [...]
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