A Holiday Sermon for Every Faith: Tools for Teaching Tolerance

with Lecia Brooks

Wednesday, December 19, 2012 10:00 a.m. CST

What we know about the state of hate and intolerance in the U.S. is harrowing, but not crippling. How can holiday sermons transform communal calls for peace into tools for teaching tolerance? Join Lecia Brooks, Southern Poverty Law Center’s Director of Outreach, in the in the first webinar installation of our Faiths Against Hate campaign. Faith-based community and interfaith participants will benefit by this discussion explaining how interfaith measures can successfully mitigate the worsening climate of hate in the United States, how to link the lessons of the SPLC’s Teaching Tolerance campaign to the holiday sermon as a vehicle, what positive outcomes arose from peace-seeking action this year, and how to train parents to teach tolerance in a holiday season.

Lecia Brooks is the Director of Outreach for the Southern Poverty Law Center where she leads efforts to develop and facilitate educational resource models of anti-oppression, teaching tolerance, and advancing civil rights.   Brooks shepherded the publication of the widely-read biannual Teaching Tolerance Magazine of the SPLC in conjunction with the center’s first web-based professional development program, the Teaching Diverse Students Initiative.  Prior to joining the SPLC, she served as Director of Special Projects at the Conference for Community & Justice in Los Angeles.  While there, she initiated a series of anti-hate courses with the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office for juvenile hate crime offenders; designed and directed residential camp programs with Tyra Banks for teenage girls to combat the negative effects of sexism; and created and facilitated anti-oppression workshops for high school students and teachers featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show. Brooks is also the Founder and Principal Consultant for Diversity Matters, an independent consulting firm that develops customized education and diversity workshops for non-profits, institutions of higher learning and government entities. Brooks began her career as an elementary school teacher, and earned her degree in political science at Loyola Marymount University.  

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Macky Alston

Join Auburn Media’s Founding Director Macky Alston for this workshop that will outline the top ten tips you need to remember to get your voice heard through the media. Voices of faith who are interested in using the upcoming news hook of the anniversary of September 11th as an opportunity to bridge religious divides are encouraged to join this special workshop.

Macky Alston is Senior Director of Auburn Media at Auburn Theological Seminary, and dedicated to informed coverage of religion in the media. Macky is an award-winning filmmaker and an organizer in the worlds of media and religion. He has received two Sundance Film Festival Awards, the Gotham Open Palm Award, three Emmy nominations, and has appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Today Show and in The New York Times. Alston is currently screening his new documentary LOVE FREE OR DIE about Gene Robinson, the first openly gay person to become a bishop in the historic traditions of Christendom.

Title: Auburn Media Training: Top Ten Tips to Speak Prophetically through the Press

Date: Thursday, August 30, 2012
Time: 10:00am CDT
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Beth Katz

Identity, religion, spirituality, and culture — these topics define our interactions with others but normally are taboo in conversation. How can we create a new normal in which families and communities openly and respectfully learn and share about these important aspects of identity? This webinar offers concrete strategies for doing so and reflects on other lessons learned from Project Interfaith’s most recent program, RavelUnravel.com.

Launched in May 2012, RavelUnravel.com is a multimedia exploration of the religious and spiritual identities that make up our communities and world. This unique site features over 720 video interviews where individuals from a wide variety of religious and spiritual identities discuss their identities in a personal way, as well as the stereotypes that impact them and whether or not their communities have welcomed their chosen religious or spiritual paths.

Beth Katz is Founder and Executive Director of Project Interfaith. She is an adjunct professor at the University of Nebraska at Omaha where she has taught courses on international conflict resolution and religious diversity. She also is a member of the Nebraska Medical Center’s Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) Consultation Committee and serves on the Mayor’s Clergy Advisory Board in Omaha as well as the board of the Center for Catholic Thought and Culture at Creighton University. In 2012, she was the recipient of the President’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Legacy Award from Creighton University and was named one of the Ten Outstanding Young Omahans (TOYO) by the Omaha Jaycees.

Title: Reimagining Interfaith Conversation: Engaging Your Community Through Multimedia 

Date: Wednesday, August 1, 2012
Time: 10:00am CDT
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Matthew Weiner

		Wednesday, June 20, 2012 12:00pm U.S. Central Time

The interreligious movement has no road map: we are creating it as we go. Effective interfaith work today requires new methods and a new kind of grassroots organizing. The movement is not static. It is an experiment.

This webinar will seek to address the following questions: How do we creatively organize religious and spiritual communities when the desired outcome is not a fixed idea and can change? How can our work be genuinely inclusive of traditions that are more conservative? How can religious communities better engage with the secular public?

Matthew Weiner has worked as an interfaith organizer for 20 years, and he now serves as Associate Dean of Religious Life at Princeton University. He served for ten years as Program Director for the Interfaith Center of New York, where he developed a methodology for engaging religiously diverse communities through civil society, working with over 500 grassroots religious leaders and the New York State Court System, the New York Public Library, Catholic Charities, the New York Board of Rabbis, and the United Nations. He earned a Ph.D. from Union Theological Seminary, an M.T.S. from Harvard Divinity School, and an BA from New York University. He writes about public religion, interfaith and civil society, and engaged Buddhism.

Title: Unexpected Diversity:  Interfaith Organizing from the Bottom Up 

Date: Wednesday, June 20, 2012
Time: 12:00pm CDT
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The recent Parliament Webinar, “Interfaith Social Media: Interfaith Leadership in the Digital World” with Frank Fredericks provoked many questions during the webinar. Frank has kindly taken time to answer many of the questions that we did not have time to answer during the webinar itself:

		Wednesday, May 9, 2012 10:00am U.S. Central Time

This webinar will explore how to think about social media.  Using the frameworks of Marshall McLuhan, marketing theory, and media hook, we will explore how to leverage these technologies tactically, to comprise an effective overall strategy in interfaith and religious work.  #socialinterfaith

Frank Fredericks is the founder of World Faith, Çöñár Records, and Co-Founder of Religious Freedom USA. After graduating from NYU, Frank worked in the music industry, managing artists such as Lady Gaga. In 2006, he founded World Faith. a youth-led interfaith organization active in ten countries. As an active blogger, Frank has contributed to the Huffington Post, Washington Post, and Sojourners. Frank has been interviewed on Good Morning America, NPR, New York Magazine, and various international media outlets, and is an IFYC Fellow Alumnus, Soliya Fellow, and YouthActionNet Fellow.

Frank also works as an independent Online Marketing and PR Consultant, consulting non-profits, corporations, foundations, recording artists, and political campaigns on web issues ranging from viral video and social networks to SEO and advertising. He resides in New York, New York, where he still performs as a professional musician with local artists.

Title: Interfaith Social Media:  Interfaith Leadership in the Digital World

Date: Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Time: 10:00 AM – 11:00 AM CDT

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This webinar will be recorded and will be available on our website after the event.

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Kay Lindahl

		Wednesday, April 11, 2012 10:00am U.S. Central Time

This webinar focuses on the power of sacred listening: the art of becoming a listening presence, someone who can truly hear what the other is saying. To become that presence takes practice, not only to listen to others, but also to listen to ourselves and to listen to God. Just as we take time to write, practice, and polish a speech in preparing to talk, there is value in learning how to practice preparing to listen. We will explore three types of practices in this webinar: cultivating silence, slowing down to reflect, and becoming present. The quality of our listening can make a profound difference in any conversation. It is a sacred art and a spiritual practice. As we open our hearts to deep, attentive listening, we find it transforms all our relationships, nurtures our inner voice, and inspires our spiritual growth.

Kay Lindahl is a Certified Listening Professional and the founder of The Listening Center. She is recognized as an inspiring teacher and spiritual guide for people of all religious backgrounds and she conducts workshops and retreats around the world on the sacred art of listening for religious, spiritual, educational, health services, community, and business groups.

Kay is also a dedicated spokesperson for the interfaith movement and currently serves on the Board of Directors for Women of Spirit and Faith and The Immortal Chaplains Foundation. She is a past trustee for the Global Council of the United Religions Initiative, former chair of the North American Interfaith Network and an Ambassador for the Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions.

Title: The Sacred Art of Listening

Date: Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Time: 10:00 AM – 11:00 AM CDT
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Alexandra Asseily

		Tuesday, March 13, 2012 10:00am U.S. Central Time

This webinar offers participants the opportunity to develop a greater awareness of our own responsibility for peace in our lives and to acquire more skills to apply around us.

The webinar will address our own responsibility for war and peace and the role forgiveness plays in releasing cycles of violence. Through personal reflection, we can experience those aspects of ourselves that are not fully contributing to peace and harmony and how to release and transform them through forgiveness. By doing so, we can also unblock the gifts we have inherited, in order to use them and appreciate them more fully in our lives.

As a witness of the pain of the civil war in Lebanon (1975–1991), Alexandra Asseily decided to explore her own responsibility for war and peace and became a psychotherapist. Her focus is conflict resolution—whether in the individual, family, tribe or nation.

In August l997 she was profoundly moved by a vision she had concerning the repetitive nature of conflict—that consciously and unconsciously held grievances are received by each new generation through an ancestral “contract” that can only be released through forgiveness and compassion. This vision inspired the Garden of Forgiveness in Lebanon to which Asseily has been committed since 1998. The garden is under construction in the heart of Beirut. It lies between three cathedrals and three mosques and amongst the archaeological ruins of 3,000 years of human living and dying.

She is a governor and a founder of the Centre for Lebanese Studies, Oxford University, and on the Board of the Guerrand-Hermès Foundation for Peace, an Advisor on the World Religions and Spiritualities Advisory Council of the Fetzer Institute, and a former member of the Advisory Board of the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard University. In 1978 she was co-ordinator of International Aid Organisations in Lebanon after the first Israeli invasion.

Title: What Is My Responsibility for Peace in the World? Five Steps towards a Peace Process

Date: Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Time: 10:00 AM – 11:00 AM CDT
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		Wednesday, February 8, 2012 10:00am U.S. Central Time

Contemplative practice is often lauded as a common trait of many religious and spiritual traditions, yet approaches to contemplation can be as diverse as the traditions in which they are practiced. This webinar features two experts in conversation with each other about the contemplative traditions from Sufism and Christianity. Nahid Angha and Daniel Wolpert share their expertise and compare and contrast the contemplative practices of their respective traditions.

Nahid Angha, Ph.D. is the co-director and co-founder of the International Association of Sufism (IAS), founder of the International Sufi Women Organization, and the executive editor of Sufism: An Inquiry. She is an internationally published scholar and one of the major Sufi teachers, scholars, and translators of Sufi literature today, with over fifteen published books. She has lectured throughout the world including at the UN, Smithsonian Institute, CPWR’s conferences, Science and Spirituality, Cortona, Italy, and was among the distinguished Muslim leaders and scholars who was invited to gather for the first annual Shakir World Encounters, an Islamic conference of peace in Marrakech, Morocco.

Daniel Wolpert serves as the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Crookston, MN and is the co-founder of the Minnesota Institute of Contemplation and Healing (MICAH). For the past twenty five years he has taught in the fields of psychology and spiritual formation and led retreats in such settings as the Art of Spiritual Direction Program at SFTS, the Youth Ministry and Spirituality Project, national ministry conferences, UCLA, UND medical school, Luther Seminary, and numerous churches. He is also the author of “Leading a Life with God, the practice of spiritual leadership,” “Creating a Life with God: the call of ancient prayer practices,” and co-author of “Meeting God in Virtual Reality: using spiritual practices with media.”

Title: Contemplatives in Conversation: Sufi and Christian Perspectives

Date: Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Time: 10:00 AM – 11:00 AM CDT
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		Wednesday, January 11, 2012 10:00am U.S. Central Time

With negotiations stalled, what constructive nonviolent alternatives are Palestinian and Israeli civilians pursuing at the grassroots level to resolve the conflict and end the occupation? This webinar introduces a variety of online multimedia tools and documentary films Just Vision has developed to help communities learn about and connect with Palestinian and Israeli nonviolence leaders and peacebuilders. Recognizing that too often violence, extremism and diplomatic stalemate dominate the headlines on this issue, we will look at ways to shift the conversation from spoilers to solutions, and how our attention as a global audience factors into the growth and success of these efforts.

Ronit Avni is an award-winning filmmaker, human rights advocate and media strategist with an expertise in Israeli-Palestinian conflict resolution efforts. Ms. Avni is the Founder and Executive Director of Just Vision, a non-profit organization that researches, documents and creates media about Palestinian and Israeli grassroots leaders in nonviolence and peace building. At Just Vision, she recently produced the documentary film Budrus and directed/produced the film Encounter Point.

Title: Changing the Conversation: Tools for Talking About Palestinian and Israeli Nonviolence Efforts in Your Community
Date: Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Time: 10:00 AM – 11:00 AM CDT
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