Spirituality and Racial Healing: Embracing Truth, Justice, and Restoration

Broadly Spiritual Programming Series

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Do you want to address racism but you don’t know where to begin?

This eight-week program guides participants in telling the truth about the history of racism in the United States, that we might work toward true restoration with one another.

Program Overview

Regardless of whether your group is new to the topic, or if you’ve already taken our first program on racial equity, Spirituality and Racial Healing: Embracing Truth, Justice, and Restoration will guide your small group in the difficult but necessary conversation about our history of racism in the United States.

Spirituality and Racial Healing invites participants to formulate their own responses to racism in their families, workplaces, and communities. By fostering active listening, dialogue, and meditation, and by encouraging meditative practices and informed action, it cultivates an expanding community of people who work to dismantle racism in their respective contexts.

Spirituality and Racial Healing explains the historical context behind the racial inequalities we face today, whether in education, the criminal justice system, the workforce, or even in faith communities. Though we focused specifically on enslaved Africans and their descendants, this program will open participants’ eyes to patterns of injustice that affect other marginalized communities as well.

Spirituality and Racial Healing is not based on any one specific religion or denomination. It is designed for a more broadly spiritual audience. Those who are unaffiliated with a church or religious tradition, or who identify as “spiritual but not religious” will find the program content relevant and meaningful. This version of the program may also resonate with an interfaith audience. Meditative practices at the beginning and end of each session provide a spiritual foundation for the program. These practices draw from Hindu and Buddhist practices of mindfulness but do not arise from any one particular religious tradition. (A specifically Christian version of “Faith and Racial Healing” is also available).

Program Goals

Goals for Spirituality and Racial Healing: Embracing Truth, Justice, and Restoration include:

Learn about the history of racial injustice in the U.S., so that we might better understand and more effectively eradicate modern-day racial injustice

Learn how communities responded to racial injustice in the past, so that we might learn from their mistakes and successes

Develop practical tools for seeking racial justice in our local communities and our nation

Sessions

Spirituality & Racial Healing: Embracing Truth, Justice, and Restoration consists of an opening retreat, eight 2-hour sessions and an immersion experience.

Recommended group size is 8-14.

Program Framework & Session Topics

  • One-Day Retreat: Community-Building & Self-Reflection

  • Session 1: The Big Picture of Racial Injustice

  • Session 2: The Middle Passage

  • Session 3: Recovering the Voices of the Enslaved

  • Session 4: From Convict Leasing to Mass Incarceration

  • Session 5: Acknowledging Our History of Lynching

  • Session 6: The Struggle for Equal Education

  • Immersion Experience (to be determined by the group)

  • Session 7: The True Theology of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

  • Session 8: Seeking Restoration (and Guest Speaker)

Sessions include:

Meditation and mindfulness practices
Dialogue
Active listening
Relationship building
Videos/guest speaker

Want to know more?

An overview, sample session, and program booklet are available for free download.

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Program Promotion

Need help inviting people to your small group?

This program promotion kit contains a program booklet, a program image, a promo video, and other materials.

Cost

We believe strongly in making our programs inclusive and available to everyone

Cost should never be a barrier to participation, and we are committed to working with individuals and organizations to ensure meaningful access through flexible pricing options. Why do we use a sliding fee scale?

There are Two Registration Options:

Option 1: Individual Participant Registration

Participants register and pay individually using a sliding-scale fee of $45, $60, or $75 per person, based on ability to pay. If $45 is still inaccessible, participants can choose the Pay-What-You-Can option to choose a price that is right for them.

  • There is no charge for up to two facilitators.
  • A minimum of 8 participants is strongly recommended.

Option 2: Organization-Sponsored Registration

A church or organization may choose to cover registration for all participants using a sliding fee scale of $45, $60, or $75 per person, based on ability to pay.

  • The organization will be billed a flat rate of the amount chosen below, which covers up to 8 participants.
  • For groups larger than 8, the organization will be invoiced an additional $45, $60, or $75 per participant when the group begins, price depending on the chosen amount below.
  • If the lowest fee is inaccessible to your organization or ministry, choose the Pay-What-You-Can Rate to learn about shared-cost or reduced-fee options.

What the Registration Fee Includes

  • Comprehensive materials for each session (instant download upon purchase)
  • Facilitation scripts, guidance, and training resources
  • Retreat and immersion planning assistance
  • Adaptations for virtual groups
  • Direct access to program staff for ongoing support
  • Books are an additional cost and may be purchased separately through the bookstore.

To ensure our programs remain accessible while remaining sustainable, we utilize a sliding fee scale of $45 to $75 for our registrations. We invite you to choose the registration tier that best reflects you or your faith community's current financial reality. Paying on the higher end allows us to keep the program affordable for all.

We also offer a Pay-What-You-Can Rate. If the lowest rate does not seem accessible to you or your church at this time, don’t let this be a barrier to participation. Contact our staff here to learn about shared-cost or reduced fee options.

 

Register

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What our program participants are saying

The knowledge that I gained has better positioned me to take action in my own community to work towards fostering an atmosphere for honest and often uncomfortable conversations that must be had.

Jane P.

This course has put race out in front of my awareness. I now see it everywhere, hidden in movies, newspaper articles, conversations. Somehow in the past, I didn't always notice, or was concerned about it, compared to how I am now. Reading books about race from the perspective of black authors has been especially meaningful.

Gay W.