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.

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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: 8-15

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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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

There is a one-time registration fee for the program. The registration fee includes:

Comprehensive materials for each session
Facilitation scripts, guidance, and training resources
Retreat and immersion guidance
Adaptations for virtual groups
Direct access to program staff for support

Books are an additional cost and titles will be sent via email from the facilitator.

To ensure our programs are not cost-prohibitive for anyone, all programs are offered on a sliding fee scale ranging from $35-$75.

We ask you to choose the registration fee tier that best aligns with your current financial situation. Paying on the higher end allows us to keep the program affordable for all.

If the $35 tier is difficult for you, please consider the program anyway. We ask that you decide what amount you can contribute as a commitment to the program, and send us an email at info@justfaith.org to learn about partial scholarship opportunities for the remainder amount.

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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.