Spiritual Activism Training for Spiritual Communities!
There is no time to waste. Our communities are threatened by climate disaster, growing economic inequality, racial injustice, and the healthcare crisis. We need to build the power necessary to create long-lasting systemic change. We need to not only win elections, we need to win people’s hearts and minds and help them envision a caring society – caring for each other and caring for the planet. This necessitates both a fundamental change of consciousness and deep systemic changes to the systems and structures of our society.
If the right wing can offer a dissatisfied public their distorted worldview that blames the “other” for the failings of our profit-driven, consumerist marketplace, surely we justice-seekers can challenge this with a message that affirms people’s yearning for a world in which their needs for meaning and purpose, belonging and connection, and love and care are met. We need to build a social change movement that speaks to these needs in meaningful ways and to create a society that shows real, subjective caring.
If you support this cause, join our training. There are four critical understandings and skills we teach that can make our social change movements more successful:
1. The Clash of Two Worldviews
There are two worldviews that operate at all times within each of us and in our society. The worldview of love, with its focus on interdependence and abundance and the worldview of fear, with its focus on power over and scarcity. Although the worldview of fear dominates our government and corporate media, our spiritual traditions have always promoted the worldview of love!
2. Visionary Proposals
We take a critical look at our economic and political systems to understand how they got us here; draw on spiritual teachings and wisdom traditions as guides for a vision of the world we want; and promote concrete proposals and strategies to get us there. We do this by promoting a positive vision of the world we want – our collective dream. Rather than limit ourselves to what we are told is “realistic”, we use a psychologically and spiritually informed analysis of our political landscape to put forth a vision of a world based on a New Bottom Line that prioritizes human life and planetary well-being rather than economic success and power.
3. Emphasize our Shared Humanity through Prophetic Empathy
An empathy that involves both deep listening and restorative empathy principles, insight, and persuasion that will be critical for engaging moderate conservatives in ways that don’t shame, demean, or condescend. Empathy alone is not sufficient–while it may temporarily soothe people’s pain, it does not provide them with an alternative worldview and understanding. Prophetic empathy affirms people’s humanity while simultaneously helps them understand how the economic and political structures of our society create some of the limitations that they face and that drive their resentment. In doing so, it can help shield them from the toxic attraction that right wing churches and movements provide; support them to see how the systems and structures of our society cause some of their pain; and encourage them to transform our society to alleviate it.
4. Honor Our Diversity of Faith, Belief, and Reason
This does not mean accepting that falsehoods are truth, but rather understanding (this is a lot easier for us as clergy than many others in social change movements) that even religious people are smart and their beliefs and views are worthy of respect, even as we disagree with their policies, positions, and how they interpret and understand their religious teachings. This fosters the creation of caring social change movements that welcome people who lack the depth of self-awareness and social knowledge we desire and holding them with compassion and accountability as they learn and grow. We can respond to them with disarming empathy and bring them into a transformative discourse. With enough people trained and committed to prophetic empathy, we can shift the culture of social change spaces to connect the struggles for social justice with a concern for the hearts and well-being of those involved in this work and that ensures that social change spaces embody the values of loving the stranger. We will then become truly loving, inclusive, and spiritually nourishing.
What’s included?
Along with approximately 15 hours of course instruction, participants get unlimited access to our class portal with a wealth of resources and class recordings to use for reference throughout their spiritual activism journey.
We also connect participants to our wider community of spiritual progressives where they can enjoy camaraderie, support, and loving accountability.
Pricing
We offer a sliding pricing scale based on self-reported income for those who choose to join our group public training. Faith groups of 20 or more qualify for reduced pricing and a customized training experience.