After a detailed faculty and student review of the recent “Answering the Call to Radical Faithfulness” course, our first extended online/on-campus interfaith program in spirituality, grassroots organizing, and nonviolent action, Pendle Hill has made some curriculum refinements and is spending September recruiting, admitting, and orienting new students before the next round of the program really takes off in October. There are still a few slots left in this next round of this online/four residencies course. Please contact core faculty member Steve Chase, Pendle Hill’s Director of Education, for more information, or check out the online program description. Some scholarship money is also still available.
Here are just a few student testimonials from the first round of this program:
“As a woman from the Deep South and an Episcopal priest, I have spent much of my professional life addressing issues of justice. However, after the non-indictment of those who killed Eric Garner, it was like a light switch went off deep inside of me. I had to act. I have done lots of leadership and mediation training work, but none focused on justice based groups. I recognized the need for resources to help me know how to keep investing in the work that I so passionately cared about for the long run and connect the dots more intentionally between my faith and my activism. What I have discovered in the Radical Faithfulness program is a community that will be part of my life forever. Pendle Hill feels to me like stepping through the veil into one of this world’s thin places. The faculty is simply outstanding, giving space, calling forth new insights, drawing things out of me I did not know were there. The community of learners is richly diverse. In our last meeting, we crossed over from polite early relationships to deeply demanding, powerfully real engagement. I can’t wait to see what will unfold next. I’ve taken home new learnings that now infuse my preaching, my activist work, and my choices about what to prioritize in my life. Perhaps most importantly, the course has afforded me opportunity to crack open deep and previously unexpressed knowing within myself about myself and my calling in the next chapter of my life. I am most grateful to have had this remarkable opportunity.” —Ruth Woodliff-Stanley
“Intense? Yes, but also great! It was wonderful to work with other faith-based activists regarding the common elements of our calls and gather wisdom about how to engage in ever more effective activism. The online work made it possible to discuss readings with other students and the on-campus residencies were rich opportunities to build our connections as a learning community and engage in active learning together. The faculty has extensive skill and experience. Worth the time commitment.” —Angela Hopkins
“The Radical Faithfulness course provided me with a time to reflect and challenge my sense of what my faith has called me to, and offered me the space to discern how I can act in faith to make changes where I am, in my community. As a volunteer in a restorative justice program, I see how assumptions about passively offering such a program does little to make the changes we hoped would happen. I am now bringing these questions to the others in the program to work on ideas to be more bold; and I am working at my Friends Meeting to challenge us to be more proactive on restorative justice issues ourselves. I have yearned for time and structure, allowing study and discernment, for a long time, and am so grateful!” —Joan Broadfield
