Building the Beloved Community in a Wounded World
A Virtual Symposium sponsored by the James River Chapter of the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy
October 7, 2020, 9:00 am – 2:00 pm
Registration: www.tinyurl.com/vicppoct7
Through this symposium, we will engage people of faith and goodwill to address the challenges raised by the collision of COVID-19 with the rampant racism of our day.
- This event will begin with a keynote address by Bishop W. Darin Moore, Presiding Prelate for the Mid-Atlantic Episcopal District of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church.
- After Bishop Moore sets the stage for our consideration and contemplation, the symposium will focus on five themes: Honor, Heroes, Health, Healing, and Hope.
HONOR
The Beloved Community calls us to recognize and memorialize the victims of the COVID-19 crisis and rampant racism as we channel woundedness and loss into empowerment for Building the Beloved Community. We will begin with the sharing of an excerpt from Eddie Glaude’s newly released biography of James Baldwin, followed by a piece entitled, “Say My Name.” In this segment, we will read the names of victims (from those offered by symposium participants), and present the story of one woman’s very personal journey through her grief in the loss of loved ones due to COVID-19 and the faith that sustains her. We will conclude with remarks by Hurunnessa Fariad, Head of Outreach & Interfaith at the All Dulles Area Muslim Society (ADAMS Center), who will give insight and example as to how we can move grief, injustices, and the deep desire to memorialize victims into compassionate action.
HEROES
Heroes place themselves in situations where their presence confirms the essence of who they are in helping to create the Beloved Community. Through thoughtful presentations and engagement, this discussion seeks answers to these questions: What can we do to acknowledge and support the people who stepped forward, often risking their own safety, to help us navigate COVID-19 and rampant racism pandemics? How do we ensure doctors, nurses, hospital workers, first responders, faith leaders, teachers, demonstrators, organizers, and others receive the recognition they deserve. What do we do to support their work and engagement?
The first thing we will do is acknowledge that heroes are unintended influencers; John Whitley, Community Activist for Human and Civil Rights, will lead this part of the discussion. Then Tara Hassen Taylor, Community Activist for Family and Domestic Justice, will talk about how heroes work in places where they expect to make a difference. Next, Johnette Weaver, Community Activist for Racial Justice, will share how heroes get involved in acts of civic engagement.
Throughout this presentation, participants will have opportunities to reflect and share. John Whitley will close by talking about how heroes are committed to the worth and dignity of Mother Nature’s creation.
HEALTH
Good health is more than just the absence of disease. Good health includes behavioral health, the influence of health related policies, education, and protection against violent crimes, racism, hatred, and economic/environmental injustice.
Dr. Tom Pruski, Program Manager at The Heal the Sick Program (Wesley Theological Seminary’s Institute for Community Engagement), will address the following issues in his presentation:
- What factors can bring about a healthy change in our communities?
- What strategy is needed to form and achieve realistic goals to reduce health disparities in our communities and achieve access to preventive services for all?
- How can the shared values of every faith tradition help in the improvement of health, especially of those who bear a disproportionate burden of suffering compared to the total population?
- What role will leadership play in the promotion of healthy communities? Is there a role for Spiritual Interventions and Health Ministers?
HEALING
Healing, we will affirm, is not magical. It is a process that is both individual and societal, engaging our total awareness of our history, current experience, and future hope of a new order to animate us. Three distinguished panelists will help us understand the necessary disruption of our lives, upsetting the status quo, devolving into levels of chaos that is and must shake the foundations of our sacred values. We will understand that this chaos, as we embrace it, will invite us to be transformed at our core. In that way the possibility to healing opens up a changed reality—a new reordered society where the sense of the Beloved Community might be realized to a greater degree than we could have imagined.
The participants in this discussion include Dr. James Garbarino, author and professor at Loyola University in Chicago and nationally renowned expert on child development and youth violence; Rev. Dr. James Melson, a minister in The United Methodist Church and the Founder and Director of The Cornelius Corps; and Rev. Walter Johnson, Pastor of the Zion Prospect Baptist Church, Yorktown, Virginia, and Moderator of the Greater Tidewater Peninsula Baptist Association.
HOPE
The hope of a “Beloved Community” has provided the motivation for hundreds of experiments in the past millennia – from Synagogues and Mosques to Churches, from Augustine’s City of God to John Locke’s version of Social Contract Theory, to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States, to Martin Luther King Jr’s Capturing the hope of the non-violent civil rights movement in his defining the “Beloved Community” this fifth and final “H” accesses and celebrates the faith basis of Hope.
Symbols of Hope, from the traditional song “Follow The Drinking Gourd” to John Lewis’ farewell message, will frame the intellectual and emotional argument for a hope that does not disappoint. We hear the cries all around us: US Senator Corey Booker says “Hope right now in American is bloodied, battered . . . a hope that has lost its naivete.” Austin Channing Brown, noted author and racial justice advocate, joins in when she says: “Hope for me has died one thousand deaths.” Their cries arise from the cacophony of the scream of a wounded world. That provides the starting point for those who have either lost their faith or defiantly hold to their faith.
What if faith, hope, and love could be transformed into loyalty to something beyond one’s self, hope in the future of humanity, and universal love? That’s what the idea of a Beloved Community promotes! The Beloved Community is one that is truthful about its past and hopeful about its future. Noted authors and educators Brad Elliot Stone (Professor of Philosophy at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles) and Jacob Goodson (Associate Professor of Philosophy at Southwestern College in Winfield, Kansas) will engage in a conversation about the origins and the destination of the Beloved Community.
- The event will close with a “Call to Action” presented by Christine Payne (Registered Nurse; Board of Directors and volunteer at Olde Towne Medical and Dental Center; member of the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Council of the Virginia Nurses’ Association; 2019 graduate of the Sorensen Institute’s Political Leadership Program.)
- We seek to realize a “Beloved Community” as we Honor the victims of today’s pandemics, acknowledge and celebrate our Heroes, advocate for Health and well-being, promote Healing, and offer Hope. There is power in the interconnectedness of our Faith Community – a power that drives us towards an intentional response to our wounded world. Our activism takes many forms, and in anticipation of this Election Season, a purposeful, collective response has never been more urgent.