{"id":49127,"date":"2021-04-21T04:58:18","date_gmt":"2021-04-21T08:58:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/?p=49127"},"modified":"2021-04-29T16:16:45","modified_gmt":"2021-04-29T20:16:45","slug":"hot-topics-five-spring-semester-discussion-groups-focus-on-faith-race-and-gender","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/2021\/hot-topics-five-spring-semester-discussion-groups-focus-on-faith-race-and-gender\/","title":{"rendered":"Hot topics: Five spring semester discussion groups focus on faith, race, and gender"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

EMU’s campus community entered into a wave of critical discussions about faith, race, and gender this semester. Three book clubs emerged independently, while yet another reading group and a film series came from projects in a graduate counseling course focusing on multiculturalism. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Faculty, staff, and student participants have wrestled with questions about how race, racism, faith, gender, and sexism influence power, theological formation, campus life, and beyond.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n


\n\n\n\n

These book studies are making visible normative structures in our community that limit our capacity to experience one another in all of our complexities. That is good work. We cannot correct that which we cannot, or refuse, to see. I think we are awakening to realities of the ways anti-blackness functions on our campus.\u00a0 <\/p>

Professor David Evans<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n


\n\n\n\n

Deep reading, deep listening<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Eastern Mennonite Seminary<\/a> supported 10 faculty and staff with copies of After Whiteness: An Education in Belonging<\/a><\/em> by Willie James Jennings. Seminary instructor Sarah Bixler <\/strong>and Professor David Evans <\/strong>facilitated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As part of the 2021 Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Celebration<\/a>, Evans<\/strong> and co-facilitator Ezrionna Prioleau ’17 <\/strong>led more than 20 faculty members and students in studying How to Be an Antiracist<\/a><\/em> by Ibram X. Kendi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Supported by the Center for Interfaith Engagement<\/a>, a group of faculty and staff read three books on the themes of race, faith, and justice, contributing towards an action plan to develop and deepen commitment to and competency in interfaith engagement and racial justice. (Read more specifics below.) Facilitators were Tala Bautista,<\/strong> adjunct faculty for Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, and Mikayla Waters-Crittenton<\/strong>, associate director for student accountability and restorative justice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two groups of graduate students in Professor Jennifer Cline<\/strong>\u2019s two-semester multicultural counseling course series created and co-facilitated community advocacy projects within the EMU community: <\/p>\n\n\n\n