RESISTANCE AND TRANSFORMATION
A Tapestry of Faith Program for Adults
WORKSHOP 2: PROPHETIC, PARALLEL, AND INSTITUTIONAL
BY BY REV. COLIN BOSSEN AND REV. JULIA HAMILTON
© Copyright 2011 Unitarian Universalist Association.
Published to the Web on 9/29/2014 11:13:26 PM PST.
This program and additional resources are available on the UUA.org web site at
www.uua.org/religiouseducation/curricula/tapestryfaith.
WORKSHOP OVERVIEW
INTRODUCTION
We would have every path laid open to Woman as freely as to Man. Were this done, and a slight temporary fermentation allowed to subside, we should see crystallizations more pure and of more various beauty. We believe the divine energy would pervade nature to a degree unknown in the history of former ages, and that no discordant collision, but a ravishing harmony of the spheres, would ensue. — Margaret Fuller, Women of the Nineteenth Century
This workshop introduces a framework for evaluating different strategies of leadership in times of resistance and transformation. Often, history is presented as a time line, highlighting the actions of extraordinary individuals and chronicling the events that shaped an era. However, not all change is effected in the same way. Even the most individualistic leader owes a debt to other people, communities, and ways of thinking. This program recognizes that there is more than one way to resist injustice, and more than one way to work for the transformation of our world.
This workshop introduces three strategies commonly found in social justice leadership and organization: the prophetic, parallel, and institutional voices that have shaped our history.
Each of the three approaches may be voiced by an individual, a group, or a movement, and individuals, groups, and movements may employ different approaches at different times. All three strategic approaches are grounded in the shared Unitarian and Universalist conviction that a free faith demands critical engagement with the world.
To ensure you can help adults of all ages, stages, and learning styles participate fully in this workshop, review these sections of the program Introduction: "Accessibility Guidelines for Workshop Presenters" in the Integrating All Participants section, and "Strategies for Effective Group Facilitation" and "Strategies for Brainstorming" in the Leader Guidelines section.
GOALS
This workshop will:
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Participants will:
WORKSHOP-AT-A-GLANCE
Activity | Minutes |
Welcoming and Entering | 0 |
Opening | 10 |
Activity 1: Prophetic, Parallel, and Institutional | 5 |
Activity 2: The Prophetic Approach | 20 |
Activity 3: The Parallel Approach | 15 |
Activity 4: The Institutional Approach | 15 |
Activity 5: Complementary Strategies | 10 |
Activity 6: Journaling | 10 |
Faith in Action: Different Approaches | |
Closing | 5 |
Alternate Activity 1: Who Has Influenced Me | 10 |
Alternate Activity 2: Our Work | 20 |
SPIRITUAL PREPARATION
Read Handout 1, Parallel, Prophetic, and Institutional Voices. Reflect on the three strategies in your own life. Have you experienced these different ways of approaching justice issues? Do you tend toward one strategy over another? Why? How do you feel about the different approaches? Often we have very strong opinions about the "right" way to do things, and this can lead us to believe our way is the only way or the correct way. As you prepare to lead the workshop, consider how you will respond when participants value one approach over another. Before you lead the workshop, take time to complete this sentence: "At the end of this workshop, I hope the participants leave feeling... "
WORKSHOP PLAN
WELCOMING AND ENTERING
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
As participants enter, invite them to sign in, put on name tags, and pick up handouts. Direct their attention to the agenda for this workshop.
OPENING (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Invite a participant to light the chalice while you lead a unison reading of Reading 449 from Singing the Living Tradition: "We hallow this time together by kindling the lamp of our heritage."
Lead the group in singing the hymn you have chosen.
Ask participants to think of a person or organization that inspires them in their own concept of social justice. Invite them to go around the circle, sharing their own names and the name of the person or organization that inspires them. Have them share just the name, to keep the workshop moving.
ACTIVITY 1: PROPHETIC, PARALLEL, AND INSTITUTIONAL (5 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Tell participants they will begin looking at different strategies for social justice work and examine a few case studies from Unitarian Universalist history.
Distribute Handout 1, Prophetic, Parallel, and Institutional Voices and invite participants to read it. Enlist three volunteers to read the definitions of each of the three approaches aloud.
Explain that they will examine these strategies one at a time, looking at a case study for each. Point out that the term "voice" can refer to either the voice of one person or the collective voice of a group representing one agenda.
ACTIVITY 2: THE PROPHETIC APPROACH (20 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Introduce Henry David Thoreau as an example of someone who offered a prophetic voice and approach to social justice. Distribute Handout 2, Henry David Thoreau and project or pass around his portrait. Invite participants to read the handout to themselves, or read it aloud. Engage participants in discussion, using these questions:
ACTIVITY 3: THE PARALLEL APPROACH (15 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Introduce Margaret Fuller as an example of someone who offered a parallel voice and approach to social justice. Distribute the story, "Margaret Fuller," and project or pass around her portrait. Read or tell the story to the group. Engage participants in discussion, using these questions as a guide:
ACTIVITY 4: THE INSTITUTIONAL APPROACH (15 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Introduce A. Powell Davies as an example of someone who offered an institutional voice and approach to social justice work. Distribute the story and project or pass around Davies' photograph. Read or tell the story "A. Powell Davies" to the group or invite them to read it to themselves. Engage participants in discussion, using these questions:
ACTIVITY 5: COMPLEMENTARY STRATEGIES (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Invite participants to reflect on the three strategies that they have just reviewed. Then, invite them to brainstorm other examples of these approaches to social justice leadership. Although examples can be from anywhere, encourage the group to find both historical and personal examples from within the congregation, from within Unitarian Universalism, and from the world at large. Write their examples in the columns participants indicate, but encourage discussion of alternate classifications. Point out that there are people or organizations who might fit in more than one column, or who might be working with people from another column. The point is not to divide the examples into hard-and-fast categories, but to begin to think about the different strategies that are available to us, and how those strategies can be complementary, rather than in competition with one another. If the conversation is spirited, give a three-minute warning before the end of the brainstorming activity.
ACTIVITY 6: JOURNALING (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Description of Activity
Make sure participants have journals or writing paper, and something to write with. Invite participants to respond to the following:
Name a time in your life when you have been inspired by a social justice leader. How did this person or organization inspire you?
Let them know they will be invited to share their answer with others.
CLOSING (5 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Invite participants, if they wish, to share a few words or a sentence from their journals.
Invite everyone to join in reading the closing words, by T.S. Eliot, Reading 685 in Singing the Living Tradition. Invite a participant to come forward and extinguish the chalice as you say these words: "As we extinguish this chalice, may we let the light of our tradition kindle our hope for a better world."
Distribute Taking It Home and invite participants to continue to write in their journals between workshops.
FAITH IN ACTION: DIFFERENT APPROACHES
Description of Activity
Take a moment to reflect on the diversity of approaches to social justice work in your own congregation. Do you feel indifferent about or uncomfortable with any of the social justice work in your congregation? At the next social gathering or coffee hour, seek out someone who is involved in a social justice project you have not been involved with. Explain that you are participating in the Resistance and Transformation workshops and you are interested in different approaches to social justice. Ask them about their work and what motivates them to take up a particular cause. This is an opportunity to set aside ideology and strategic preferences and really listen to a different perspective. You might ask the person how their cause fits into the larger life of the congregation. How does this work relate to their spiritual life? Do they feel supported? Marginalized? Was this cause something they brought with them, or did the congregation introduce them to the issue? Rather than debating with this person, use this conversation as an opportunity to reflect on the three social justice leadership strategies and the different approaches taken in your congregation.
LEADER REFLECTION AND PLANNING
Take a few moments right after the workshop to ask each other:
Review the next workshop. Are there any questions to research or logistics to arrange between workshops? Make a list of who is responsible for which preparations and materials for the workshop.
TAKING IT HOME
We would have every path laid open to Woman as freely as to Man. Were this done, and a slight temporary fermentation allowed to subside, we should see crystallizations more pure and of more various beauty. We believe the divine energy would pervade nature to a degree unknown in the history of former ages, and that no discordant collision, but a ravishing harmony of the spheres, would ensue. — Margaret Fuller, Women of the Nineteenth Century
Reflect on the social justice work you have done in your lifetime. Make a list of all of the different ways in which you have taken a prophetic, parallel, or institutional approach to advancing justice and peace in the world. As you consider your list, ask yourself why, in each circumstance, you chose one approach over another. What factors did you weigh in making your decisions? Are there causes which inspired you to try multiple approaches? As you examine your own history of work on behalf of social justice, are there conclusions you draw or observations you make about your own preferred style and approach? About effective strategy?
ALTERNATE ACTIVITY 1: WHO HAS INFLUENCED ME (10 MINUTES)
Description of Activity
This activity is designed to follow the Opening.
After participants have shared their own names and named inspirational figures, invite each participant to find a partner with whom they have not worked. Invite them to share with their partner some details about what they find inspirational about the person or organization they named. When did they encounter this person? How has this encounter affected their life? Allow eight minutes for partnered conversations.
ALTERNATE ACTIVITY 2: OUR WORK (20 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
If you generated a newsprint list of your congregation's social justice activities in Workshop 1, invite the group to reexamine that list using the framework of the three strategies introduced in this workshop. Go through the list one by one, asking the group to put each item in one of the columns. If new examples come to mind, feel free to add them.
If you have not yet generated such a list, invite participants to brainstorm a list of all the social justice activities connected with the congregation. Include activities explicitly sponsored by the congregation, activities that individuals undertake with the support of the congregation, and activities done by members of the congregation that are outside the scope of the congregation's social justice program. As activities are named, place them in one of the three columns.
Encourage the group to reflect on how these examples might fit in more than one column, or how they might be seen as complementary to one another. Are there individuals or groups using different strategies to achieve the same goal? For example, a Unitarian Universalists for the Ethical Treatment of Animals group that sponsors a monthly vegan potluck is employing a "parallel" strategy, while an individual in the congregation who works for animal rights may have preached a sermon calling for a "prophetic" stance on medical testing involving animals.
RESISTANCE AND TRANSFORMATION: WORKSHOP 2:
STORY: A. POWELL DAVIES
Arthur Powell Davies did not start out as a Unitarian minister. He came to the United States in 1928 from England, as a minister in search of a "freer" strain of Methodism. Once he found his home in the Unitarian movement, he became one of the leading figures in the American Unitarian Association (AUA) and was an advocate for institutional growth and change throughout his career. He advocated for a move away from the view of Unitarianism as just another sect of Christianity, proclaiming, "If we are 'just another Protestant denomination,'then we have no distinction and no justification for larger scale advance. If we are what Channing called 'the universal church' . . . then we must begin to be that church."
Davies was a popular and talented preacher who was greatly involved in the social and political issues of his day. He wrote extensively in favor of the American pursuit of freedom, and when McCarthyism ran rampant through the country, his well-known anti-Communist credibility allowed him to speak out against questionable governmental tactics without calling his own patriotism into question. By the 1950s, he was well established in Washington, D.C. as the minister of All Soul's Church, Unitarian, with influence that extended to several Supreme Court justices and even to the office of the President. Once he had been accepted as a powerful presence in Washington, Davies applied a "change from within" strategy to matters of racial desegregation. He worked to establish an integrated youth club and led a city-wide campaign to patronize restaurants that were racially integrated, while at the same time he maintained his membership in a prestigious whites-only gentleman's club, hoping to influence the power elite through institutional channels.
Meanwhile, under the leadership of Davies, the All Souls Church, Unitarian began spinning off "daughter" churches, planting new congregations throughout the greater D.C. area. He and his wife, Muriel Davies, nurtured these new institutions. His passion for his work kept him from slowing down even after major surgery in 1953. He died several years later, at fifty-five, from a blood clot that resulted in hemorrhaging.
RESISTANCE AND TRANSFORMATION: WORKSHOP 2:
STORY: MARGARET FULLER
Margaret Fuller was born in 1810, at a time when women could not attend institutions of higher learning. Although brilliant, she was denied the educational opportunities enjoyed by her father and her male peers. She persevered in her education, on her own terms. She refused to accept the limited role of women in American society, and was a pioneer on issues of women's rights.
Both members of the Transcendentalist circle, Fuller and Ralph Waldo Emerson were intellectual sparring partners. She was an editor of and contributor to The Dial, the famous Transcendentalist journal of the era. Plagued by financial troubles after the death of her father in 1835, she took teaching positions to make ends meet. Her work as a teacher included time as part of the faculty of Bronson Alcott's experimental Temple School.
Unable to attend Harvard Divinity School as Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Ellery Channing and Theodore Parker had done, Fuller took it upon herself to create a place where women could discuss issues of ethics, education, theology, fine arts, and classical mythology, discussions that the male friends and husbands of her circle took for granted. She began holding salons primarily for women—events she called "Conversations"—in the Boston bookshop owned by her good friend Elizabeth Peabody. As topics for conversation, she often used the same books that were being discussed at the Divinity School. Fuller was able to support herself for a time from income generated through these salons, and was therefore able to write.
In 1845, Fuller's most influential work, Women of the Nineteenth Century, was published. Peabody's bookshop had become a meeting place for the growing women's rights movement, and Fuller's book encapsulated the work of that community. Horace Greeley, in his review of the book, stated, "It was the loftiest and most commanding assertion yet made of the right of Woman to be regarded and treated as an independent, intelligent, rational being, entitled to an equal voice in framing and modifying the laws she is required to obey, and in controlling and disposing of the property she has inherited or aided to acquire... hers is the ablest, bravest, broadest, assertion yet made of what are termed Woman's Rights."
In 1846, Fuller traveled to Europe on a writing assignment. Once there, she became enmeshed in the uprisings in Italy and found a freedom that had eluded her in New England. She and a young Italian nobleman, Giovanni Ossoli, had a child together in 1848. Uncertain of what her reception might be back in New England, she and Ossoli set out with their son to return to the United States in 1850. On the voyage home, the ship was wrecked on a sandbar off of Fire Island, New York, and the entire family, along with most of the passengers, was killed. Upon hearing of the wreck, Emerson sent Thoreau out to the beach to see if any of Fuller's writings could be recovered, but nothing was found.
RESISTANCE AND TRANSFORMATION: WORKSHOP 2:
HANDOUT 1: PROPHETIC, PARALLEL, AND INSTITUTIONAL VOICES
Often, history is presented as a time line, highlighting the actions of extraordinary individuals and chronicling the events that shaped an era. However, not all change is effected in the same way. Even the most individualistic leader owes a debt to other people, communities, and ways of thinking. There is more than one way to resist injustice, and more than one way to work for the transformation of our world.
This workshop introduces three strategies commonly found in social justice leadership and organization: the prophetic, parallel, and institutional voices that have shaped our history.
Each of the three approaches may be voiced by an individual, a group, or a movement, and individuals, groups, and movements may employ different approaches at different times. All three strategic approaches are grounded in the shared Unitarian and Universalist conviction that a free faith demands critical engagement with the world.
RESISTANCE AND TRANSFORMATION: WORKSHOP 2:
HANDOUT 2: HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison. — Henry David Thoreau, "Civil Disobedience"
In July of 1846, Henry David Thoreau was jailed for refusal to pay his taxes. Although he spent only one night in prison, this experience was the motivation for Thoreau to write one of his most influential works, "Civil Disobedience."
I do not hesitate to say that those who call themselves abolitionists should at once effectively withdraw their support, both in person and in property, from the government of Massachusetts, and not wait till they constitute a majority of one, before they suffer the right to prevail through them. I think that it is enough if they have God on their side, without waiting for the other one. Moreover, any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one already. If a thousand men were not to pay their tax bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them and enable the state to commit violence and shed innocent blood.
In "Civil Disobedience," Thoreau outlined a rationale for resistance to a corrupt state, a rationale that profoundly influenced figures such as Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., the Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, as well as many others who sought a non-violent response to governmental oppression.
Sir, I do not wish to be considered a member of First Parish in this town.
Though raised Unitarian, Thoreau renounced formal membership in the institutional church as an adult. Thoreau was perhaps the most individualistic of an iconoclastic group who called themselves Transcendentalists, a group which included Unitarians such as Emerson, Fuller, and the Alcotts. He was unconcerned with the niceties of social existence, choosing instead to focus on discerning the higher moral law that was, in his estimation, often obscured by society's pressures. As Emerson said in his eulogy for Thoreau, "It seemed as if his first instinct on hearing a proposition was to controvert it, so impatient was he of the limitations of our daily thought." This urge to push beyond the boundaries of conventional thought and habit was what drove Thoreau to his "experiment" chronicled in Walden, a two-year effort to live a closely-examined life in the woods outside of Concord, Massachusetts. His deep ecological sensibility was also unique for his time, and Walden is arguably one of the most influential works for the modern environmental movement. In his own day, Thoreau was not hailed as a revolutionary social prophet. He was often considered simply an eccentric individual who followed his own conscience in all things, religious and otherwise.
RESISTANCE AND TRANSFORMATION: WORKSHOP 2:
LEADER RESOURCE 1: HENRY DAVID THOREAU, PORTRAIT
From the Library of Congress.
RESISTANCE AND TRANSFORMATION: WORKSHOP 2:
LEADER RESOURCE 2: MARGARET FULLER, PORTRAIT
From the Library of Congress.
RESISTANCE AND TRANSFORMATION: WORKSHOP 2:
LEADER RESOURCE 3: A. POWELL DAVIES, PHOTOGRAPH
From the Unitarian Universalist Association archives.
FIND OUT MORE
Read biographies of Margaret Fuller (at www25-temp.uua.org/uuhs/duub/articles/margaretfuller.html) and A. Powell Davies (at www25-temp.uua.org/uuhs/duub/articles/arthurpowelldavies.html) in the online Dictionary of Unitarian and Universalist Biography.
Information about Thoreau can be found in Thoreau as Spiritual Guide: A Companion to Walden for Reflection and Group Discussion (at www.uuabookstore.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=637), by Barry M. Andrews (Boston, Skinner House, 2003).