Radical Faithfulness Program

An Intensive 9-Month Online/On-Campus Program
on Spiritual Activism and Faith-Based Organizing
(with five on-campus residencies)

From September 26, 2016 to May 22, 2017

Core Trainer

Steve Chase
A longtime Quaker activist, writer, and educator, Steve works to cultivate spiritual depth, strong faith communities, and effective community action towards a more spiritually fulfilling, socially just, and ecologically sustainable human presence on this planet. He is the author of the book Letters to a Fellow Seeker: A Short Introduction to the Quaker Way and the Pendle Hill pamphlet Revelation and Revolution: Answering the Call to Radical Faithfulness (PHP #431). Steve is the Director of Education at Pendle Hill and before that was the founding director of Antioch University’s graduate program in Advocacy for Social Justice and Sustainability. He has taught numerous face-to-face, online, and blended classes, and has supervised many student fieldwork and writing projects.

Guest Trainers & Webinar Presenters

Matthew Armstead
A graduate of Swarthmore College, Matthew currently is a social action trainer with Training for Change and the staff coordinator for the Earth Quaker Action Team. Grounded in his work as a community organizer, Matthew has led sessions on strategic planning, building teams that support diverse leadership, organizational development, and nonviolent direct action. He has also worked with diverse groups of people, such as Occupy Wall Street activists, multi-faith LGBTQ communities, and Pendle Hill’s annual Young Adult Friends Conference. He recently spent a month supporting new organizers in Ferguson, MO.

Erva Baden
A contemporary shaman who weaves together various healing modalities with compassion, humor and fun to journey with folks who are committed to their own path of deep healing and transformation, Erva Baden is one of the original cofounders of Shadow Work Seminars and a long time facilitator in the Woman Within organization. She has accumulated more than 25 years of experience in facilitating process work around the world and is currently focusing her work on assisting people to reclaim their lives and to restore their souls’ radiance from the effects of trauma, particularly the traumas of racism and abuse. “This is mind, body and spirit work at the deepest level. I will commit to you if you commit to yourself.”

Rev. Dr. William Barber II
The Rev. Dr. William Barber II is pastor of Greenleaf Christian Church and architect of the Forward Together Moral Monday movement, which has drawn tens of thousands to the NC state capitol and is being replicated in other states. He is President and Senior Lecturer of Repairers of the Breach, Inc., President of the NC NAACP, visiting professor at Union Theological Seminary, and the author of The Third Reconstruction.

Eileen Flanagan
A member of the Chestnut Hill Friends Meeting, Eileen has written and taught on various aspects of spirituality for over twenty years, including as a Pendle Hill teacher and conference leader. Her most recent book, Renewable: One Woman’s Search for Simplicity, Faithfulness, and Hope, is about her midlife realization that she was not living in sync with her values and needed to answer the spiritual call to a deeper faithfulness. This journey led her to greater community engagement, particularly with the Earth Quaker Action Team, where she now serves as clerk of the board. That work, engaging in nonviolent direct action for a just and sustainable economy, has been a source of joy, learning, and spiritual integrity for her. (You can read more about her story at www.eileenflanagan.com.)

Michael Gagné
A graduate of the Green Corps leadership program for environmental organizers, Michael served as the Eco-Justice Organizer for the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of Friends for two years, helped launch the Earth Quaker Action Team and its campaign to stop mountaintop removal coal mining, and served as the Founding Director of the Envision Peace Museum—an institution geared toward popularizing the stories and tools of effective peace and justice work around the world. He is currently engaged in the campaign to defeat the Keystone XL pipeline and works for the Environmental Leadership Program as a recruiter, trainer, and community-builder. Michael has also served as a guest educator in high schools, colleges, and universities, as well as served on Pendle Hill’s faculty. At Pendle Hill, he taught an early version of the current “Answering the Call to Radical Faithfulness” program, which was entitled “Called to Action: Exploring Nonviolent Social Change.” He is particularly interested in linking together faithful activism, environmental justice, sustainable economics, and grassroots democracy.

Dr. Amanda Kemp
Dr. Amanda Kemp blends activism and spirituality, theatre arts and history. A survivor of the New York City foster care system, Dr. Kemp has been a lifelong poet-performer and advocate of racial justice and equality since her first anti-apartheid march in 1983. She earned her B.A. from Stanford University where she helped to lead the Stanford out of South Africa divestment movement and the successful struggle to revamp the University’s Eurocentric humanities requirement. Awarded Stanford’s prestigious Gardner Fellowship for Public Service, Dr. Kemp apprenticed with the Honorable Maxine Waters and the Rev. Jesse Jackson. After earning her PhD, she taught at the university level for a decade and is now the founder of Theatre for Transformation and a Tribe of the heart, a community of change makers committed to Oneness and Justice. She also regularly leads diversity and inclusion workshops and consults with organizations committed to equity.

For more information, click on the links below, or contact Steve Chase, Director of Education, at 610-566-4507, ext. 123.

Program Overview
Who Should Participate?
What Students Say
Program Learning Objectives
Core Components of the Program
Program Schedule and Themes
Educational Philosophy
A Word About Online Learning
Program Costs and Scholarships
Program Faculty
Applying to the Program