Radical Faithfulness in Action

Financial aid may be available. If you are seeking funds to participate in this program, click to review and complete our Financial Assistance Application and a Pendle Hill staff member will follow-up with you shortly. Thank you for your interest.

Are you already engaged in organizing for social justice? Do you value the importance of interconnection, community, and spiritual practices to sustain you in your work? Are you wondering how to sustain your spirit in the work ahead? Radical Faithfulness in Action may be for you.

Join experienced organizer-facilitators and committed people of different faiths to strengthen your capacity for effective community action for peace and justice. The experiential curriculum will help you:

• Gain knowledge and skills in effective social action organizing;
• Give and receive support in your ongoing social justice work outside the course; and
• Deepen spiritual practices that will build resilience in carrying on the work.

Online resources and webinars will support three on-campus residencies in which participants will engage the following themes:

June 28- July 1 Reconnection: Spiritual Grounding to Interrupt the Status Quo
August 16-19 Resistance: Embracing the Trickster
October 25-28 Resilience: Death is Not an Ending

Facilitator

Matthew Armstead is a community builder, facilitator, and cultural organizer in Philadelphia, PA, and he is a core trainer with Training for Change. He has worked with diverse groups of people from Occupy Wall Street activists to Ivy League university students and led sessions on a variety of topics, such as anti-oppression, strategic planning, community outreach, peer counseling, nonviolent direct action, training of trainers, and organizational development. He has designed workshops on raising class awareness among students, building toward racial justice with college administrators, utilizing conflict with LGBTQ community leaders, and direct action campaigning with Black Lives Matter organizers.

Dedicated to social change, Matthew develops curricula based on the framework of interlocking oppression with the goal of increasing people power. He is passionate about using music, theater, and dance to learn from groups and create dynamic change. Until 2016 was coordinator for the grassroots, nonviolent direct action campaign, Earth Quaker Action Team. Recent workshops Matthew facilitated for faith leaders include, Anti-Racist Organizing, Answering the Call to Radical Faithfulness, Roles in Social Change Movements, and Spiritual Grounding for Civil Disobedience.

Guest Faculty

Each guest facilitator will join Matthew Armstead in facilitating portions of the on-campus residencies.

Erva Baden is a contemporary shaman who weaves together healing modalities with compassion and humor to journey with clients committed to their own deep transformation and healing. She is a Reiki Master and has more than 25 years of experience in facilitating the deep emotional process and release work nationally and internationally in men’s, women’s, and mixed-gender circles. She has studied energy work, chakra healing, and core shamanic techniques, as well as trauma recovery and the intergenerational effects of trauma.

Reverend Rhetta Morgan’s work encompasses spirituality, activism and creativity, contributing to transformation towards a more just community and world. She was an international professional singer for many years before completing studies at One Spirit Interfaith Seminary in NY, becoming an ordained Interfaith minister in 2009. Some highlights of her work:

• Founder of Ecclesia Spirit, an inclusive, interfaith spiritual community, which has met monthly for the past seven years.
• Founder of the While We Wait Project. Here she provides spiritual and emotional support to loved ones of incarcerated individuals. A Leeway Art for Change grant sponsors this project.
• Facilitator of conversations on race and healing, including with Interfaith Peace Walk. She is also a facilitator for A World of Difference Institute.

Rev. Rhetta is very active in the Philadelphia area, using music she writes and sings to inspire and heal. Alongside ministerial work at Ecclesia, she uses her voice to create inclusive sacred space, recently this included performing for the Town Hall on Incarceration and Gender hosted by the Leeway Foundation + Bread and Roses Community Fund. She is a board member of Earth Quaker Action Team and has worked Philly Thrive, PILOTS’ student organizers, MAYPOP, The New Economy Coalition and Protecting Our Waters. Some of her most meaningful work is mentoring and counseling activist leaders, encouraging self-care and what she calls a spiritual toolbox to aid against despair, overwhelm and depression.

Joshua Kahn Russell is a social movement facilitator who has trained thousands of activists across the globe. He is the Executive Director of The Wildfire Project, and facilitator/ action-coordinator with the Ruckus Society. Most recently, Joshua managed the Global Training Program at 350.org. He has helped campaigns win against banks, oil companies, logging corporations, and coal barons; worked with a wide variety of groups in a breadth of arenas, from local resiliency projects, to national coalitions, to the United Nations Climate Negotiations. He has spent the last 17 years as an organizer, campaign strategist, and non-violent direct action coordinator.

Joshua is a stage performer, integrating engaged storytelling, song, and popular-education facilitation techniques into music festivals, concerts, and multimedia cultural events. He has toured nationally and internationally with Nahko and Medicine for the People on the HOKA Call To Action Tour; Propagandhi on the Supporting Caste and Potemkin City Limits tours; and Microcosm Publishing on the Cut and Paste tour.

Travel directions to Pendle Hill. Click to view the flyer. For more information, please contact Lina Blount at 610-566-4507, ext. 122 or lblount@pendlehill.org.