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A conference on Progressive Christian Values to be held October 13-15 at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC will gather Christians together to actively condemn the moral failures of the right-wing government and issue a comprehensive strategy for reform.
Panelists at the conference will present an array of ongoing faith-based media and policy responses towards Hurricane Katrina, poverty, the war in Iraq, health care, the environment, and racism. Work will center on effective strategies for faithful political organization, providing ways for participants to collaborate on the local, regional, and national level. "Focusing on values that transform the human race into the human family is essential as we live into the post-Katrina world" says the Rev. Ed Bacon, one of the key conference organizers.
The first day of the conference promises to be a major media event, demonstrating that moderate and progressive Christians have cohesive, public, strategic, unified aims for America. Expert panelists will show how the image of the church has been co-opted by a radical right and offer ways to respond.
“American political forces, in collaboration with this radical group, have corrupted Christ’s message of service towards one’s neighbor into a punitive politics of fringe interests wed to the idolatry of worldly security,” said the Rev. Rosa Lee Harden, Values Conference executive producer. “We invite journalists, clergy, laity, and the public to help us call America back from this dangerous politics, whose devastating effects we have seen so clearly in the abandonment of the poor after Hurricane Katrina.”
Further information on the conference is here:
www.everyvoice.net/values
- Please visit the conference PR website: www.everyvoice.net/values/pr
- Email the PR contacts: Elizabeth Krueger (elizabeth@everyvoice.net) or Jo Guldi (jo@socialredemption.com)
Practical Information
- The conference opens Thursday, October 13, 1pm, at St. Alban’s Church (at the National Cathedral campus) with an address by journalist E. J. Dionne.
- Six conference tracks address the politics of progressive Christianity (Thursday), economic justice, peacemaking, racism, and the environment (Friday), and family values (Saturday morning).
- The conference has places for five hundred participants. Seats are filling up rapidly, and we encourage attendees to register on our website. Registration for all sessions, banquets, and receptions being held at the National Cathedral and the Marriott is open for $255 a head ($85 for students). Registration for panels only (without banquet tickets) is $190 ($20 for students).
- Those in the DC/New York/Philadelphia area are encouraged to drop by the National Cathedral for whatever sessions most interest them. Day-attendance costs $20 ($10 for students).
Organizers and Participants
- The conference is the work of several grass-roots organized religious groups from California: Via Media, a new program of church education videos and materials based around Christ’s teachings and the concerns of progressive politics (www.everyvoice.net/viamedia/); the EveryVoice Network, a group of progressive Episcopalian clergy and laity (www.everyvoice.net); Claiming the Blessing an intentional collaborative ministry of leading Episcopal justice organizations focused on promoting wholeness in human relationships, abolishing prejudice and oppression, and healing the rift between sexuality and spirituality in the Church, (www.claimingtheblessing.org/); CrossLeft, a group of inter-denominational progressive Christian policy activists (www.crossleft.org/); All Saints’ Church, Pasadena (www.allsaints-pas.org/); and the Cathedral College, DC (www.cathedralcollege.org/).
- Our confirmed participants include political and social justice figures Jim Wallis, former Senator John Danforth, Jonathan Schell, and Richard Parker; journalists E. J. Dionne, Amy Sullivan, and Steven Waldman; and intellectuals Michael Kazin and David Hollinger.
- The conference will also host the directors of the major think tanks on religion, including the Bliss Institute, the Henry Institute, and the Center for Public Justice.
- Leaders of the progressive Christian activist groups CrossLeft, The Christian Alliance for Progress, the Center for American Progress, The Center for Progressive Christianity, and CrossWalk America will also be in attendance.
- Leaders from the Episcopal Church present will include: Robert Radtke, President of Episcopal Relief and Development; the Rt. Rev. Mark Andrus, Suffragan Bishop of the Diocese of Alabama; the Rt. Rev. Steven Charleston, the Rev. Ian Douglas; Valerie Batts; Mike Kinman; the Rev. Dr. Sabina Alkire and many others.
History and Aims
- The Values Conference follows a series of conferences this year at which spiritual progressives have loudly protested the co-option of the values debate by religious conservatives. Religious Right agendas like “Justice Sunday” meant to stigmatize the Democratic Party have met with outrage on the part of America’s silent majority of moderate and progressive Christians. The Values Conference will build social networks and cohesive strategies where earlier conferences have already demonstrated a body of Christians united by outrage at the Religious Right. The conference tracks point to the strategies and efforts underway in politics that evidence true Christian values that actually reflect the social gospel of Jesus Christ.
- The conference will assemble a number of Christian intellectuals, journalists, policy-makers, and grass-roots activists who have generally pursued their work in isolation. We hope that these groups will now be able to collaborate in areas where their strategies overlap. Out of this conference we expect to see a more unified sense of goals, impediments, and strategies than the Christian progressive movement has hitherto demonstrated.
- A further statement of the conference agenda is available at www.everyvoice.net/values/pr. The conference schedule is at www.everyvoice.net/values.
Interviewing Participants
Journalists are encouraged to interview participants about progressive Christian reactions to Hurricane Katrina, government catastrophe, poverty, Christian values, the progressive movement, and the Values Conference agenda.
- Keynote speakers include several major political actors for political change based on progressive Christian principles. Journalists may contact them through their offices.
o Jim Wallis of Sojourners, author of God’s Politics, will deliver the banquet keynote on poverty. An interview may be arranged through Jack Pannell. tel (202) 328-8842 ext. 214, fax (202) 328-8757, jpannell@sojo.net.
o Jonathan Schell, correspondent for The Nation and author of The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People and The Fate of the Earth, will deliver the plenary address on peacemaking. He may be contacted through the Nation Institute: (212) 209-5400.
o E. J. Dionne of the Brookings Institute will deliver the opening address of the conference. He may be contacted through Katherine Moore, kmoore@brookings.edu. The front desk number of Brookings Institute may be reached by calling tel (202) 797-6000, fax (202) 797-6004.
- The conference will bring together several communities of grass-roots progressive Christians who are taking political action from their congregations.
o Jo Guldi of CrossLeft, a social historian and a Christian activist responsible for the Values Conference track on politics, is available to discuss the status and aims of progressive Christian grass-roots activism: jo@socialredemption.com.
o Dr. Ray Steiner, president of CrossWalk America in Phoenix, Arizona, can talk about building bridges between moderate and liberal churches, both equally disturbed at the religious right’s corruption of the Christian message: tel (766) 292-9255, rsteiner9@cox.net.
o Kathleen LeRoy, Vice President of the Christian Alliance for Progress in Jacksonville, Florida, can discuss the campaigns used by churches and congregations to fight for progressive values in politics: kleroy@christianalliance.org.
o Stephen Rockwell, one of the co-founders of CrossLeft, a group of activists dedicated towards political change in a progressive direction based on Jesus’s teachings, is available to discuss progressive Christian responses to contemporary politics: (215) 317-1865, steve@civicdirect.net.
o Kaliya Hamlin, an organizer of activist coalitions on the internet, is available to discuss how progressive activists are using the internet to forge networks of political action: kaliya@kaliyasblogs.com.
- The conference will bring together educators, journalists, and intellectuals who are speaking out about the co-option of the church by its radical right wing and how American progressives have traditionally defended the Christian message against its corruption.
o Ed Bacon, long-time justice activist and rector of All Saints Episcopal Church, Pasadena, and Rosa Lee Harden, director of Via Media and rector of Holy Innocents’ Episcopal Church, San Francisco, are available to discuss progressive Christian education and its approach to issues of sexuality, racism, economics, politics, and social justice: ebacon@allsaints-pas.org, rosalee@everyvoice.net.
o After October 1, journalists may contact historian David Hollinger of the University of California, Berkeley, about the progressive tradition in American Christianity, the apparent fragmentation of progressive politics after the 1970s, and how new progressives are harnessing the Christian tradition: (510) 642-3402, davidhol@berkeley.edu.
o Historian Michael Kazin can talk about the intellectual tradition of progressive Christianity, its nineteenth century legacy, and its transformative power in the social gospel and civil rights movements: at work, (202) 687-0007, cell (202) 246-4440, mk8@georgetown.edu.
o Journalist Amy Sullivan of the Washington Monthly, a Democrat and a Christian, is available to discuss the progressive Christian response to current events, the community of Christian journalists, and the representation of progressive Christianity in the media: (202) 393-5155, amysullivandc@gmail.com.
For More Information
- Please visit the conference PR website: www.everyvoice.net/values/pr
- Email the PR contacts: Elizabeth Krueger (elizabeth@everyvoice.net) or Jo Guldi (jo@socialredemption.com)
Panelists at the conference will present an array of ongoing faith-based media and policy responses towards Hurricane Katrina, poverty, the war in Iraq, health care, the environment, and racism. Work will center on effective strategies for faithful political organization, providing ways for participants to collaborate on the local, regional, and national level. "Focusing on values that transform the human race into the human family is essential as we live into the post-Katrina world" says the Rev. Ed Bacon, one of the key conference organizers.
The first day of the conference promises to be a major media event, demonstrating that moderate and progressive Christians have cohesive, public, strategic, unified aims for America. Expert panelists will show how the image of the church has been co-opted by a radical right and offer ways to respond.
“American political forces, in collaboration with this radical group, have corrupted Christ’s message of service towards one’s neighbor into a punitive politics of fringe interests wed to the idolatry of worldly security,” said the Rev. Rosa Lee Harden, Values Conference executive producer. “We invite journalists, clergy, laity, and the public to help us call America back from this dangerous politics, whose devastating effects we have seen so clearly in the abandonment of the poor after Hurricane Katrina.”
Further information on the conference is here:
www.everyvoice.net/values
- Please visit the conference PR website: www.everyvoice.net/values/pr
- Email the PR contacts: Elizabeth Krueger (elizabeth@everyvoice.net) or Jo Guldi (jo@socialredemption.com)
Practical Information
- The conference opens Thursday, October 13, 1pm, at St. Alban’s Church (at the National Cathedral campus) with an address by journalist E. J. Dionne.
- Six conference tracks address the politics of progressive Christianity (Thursday), economic justice, peacemaking, racism, and the environment (Friday), and family values (Saturday morning).
- The conference has places for five hundred participants. Seats are filling up rapidly, and we encourage attendees to register on our website. Registration for all sessions, banquets, and receptions being held at the National Cathedral and the Marriott is open for $255 a head ($85 for students). Registration for panels only (without banquet tickets) is $190 ($20 for students).
- Those in the DC/New York/Philadelphia area are encouraged to drop by the National Cathedral for whatever sessions most interest them. Day-attendance costs $20 ($10 for students).
Organizers and Participants
- The conference is the work of several grass-roots organized religious groups from California: Via Media, a new program of church education videos and materials based around Christ’s teachings and the concerns of progressive politics (www.everyvoice.net/viamedia/); the EveryVoice Network, a group of progressive Episcopalian clergy and laity (www.everyvoice.net); Claiming the Blessing an intentional collaborative ministry of leading Episcopal justice organizations focused on promoting wholeness in human relationships, abolishing prejudice and oppression, and healing the rift between sexuality and spirituality in the Church, (www.claimingtheblessing.org/); CrossLeft, a group of inter-denominational progressive Christian policy activists (www.crossleft.org/); All Saints’ Church, Pasadena (www.allsaints-pas.org/); and the Cathedral College, DC (www.cathedralcollege.org/).
- Our confirmed participants include political and social justice figures Jim Wallis, former Senator John Danforth, Jonathan Schell, and Richard Parker; journalists E. J. Dionne, Amy Sullivan, and Steven Waldman; and intellectuals Michael Kazin and David Hollinger.
- The conference will also host the directors of the major think tanks on religion, including the Bliss Institute, the Henry Institute, and the Center for Public Justice.
- Leaders of the progressive Christian activist groups CrossLeft, The Christian Alliance for Progress, the Center for American Progress, The Center for Progressive Christianity, and CrossWalk America will also be in attendance.
- Leaders from the Episcopal Church present will include: Robert Radtke, President of Episcopal Relief and Development; the Rt. Rev. Mark Andrus, Suffragan Bishop of the Diocese of Alabama; the Rt. Rev. Steven Charleston, the Rev. Ian Douglas; Valerie Batts; Mike Kinman; the Rev. Dr. Sabina Alkire and many others.
History and Aims
- The Values Conference follows a series of conferences this year at which spiritual progressives have loudly protested the co-option of the values debate by religious conservatives. Religious Right agendas like “Justice Sunday” meant to stigmatize the Democratic Party have met with outrage on the part of America’s silent majority of moderate and progressive Christians. The Values Conference will build social networks and cohesive strategies where earlier conferences have already demonstrated a body of Christians united by outrage at the Religious Right. The conference tracks point to the strategies and efforts underway in politics that evidence true Christian values that actually reflect the social gospel of Jesus Christ.
- The conference will assemble a number of Christian intellectuals, journalists, policy-makers, and grass-roots activists who have generally pursued their work in isolation. We hope that these groups will now be able to collaborate in areas where their strategies overlap. Out of this conference we expect to see a more unified sense of goals, impediments, and strategies than the Christian progressive movement has hitherto demonstrated.
- A further statement of the conference agenda is available at www.everyvoice.net/values/pr. The conference schedule is at www.everyvoice.net/values.
Interviewing Participants
Journalists are encouraged to interview participants about progressive Christian reactions to Hurricane Katrina, government catastrophe, poverty, Christian values, the progressive movement, and the Values Conference agenda.
- Keynote speakers include several major political actors for political change based on progressive Christian principles. Journalists may contact them through their offices.
o Jim Wallis of Sojourners, author of God’s Politics, will deliver the banquet keynote on poverty. An interview may be arranged through Jack Pannell. tel (202) 328-8842 ext. 214, fax (202) 328-8757, jpannell@sojo.net.
o Jonathan Schell, correspondent for The Nation and author of The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People and The Fate of the Earth, will deliver the plenary address on peacemaking. He may be contacted through the Nation Institute: (212) 209-5400.
o E. J. Dionne of the Brookings Institute will deliver the opening address of the conference. He may be contacted through Katherine Moore, kmoore@brookings.edu. The front desk number of Brookings Institute may be reached by calling tel (202) 797-6000, fax (202) 797-6004.
- The conference will bring together several communities of grass-roots progressive Christians who are taking political action from their congregations.
o Jo Guldi of CrossLeft, a social historian and a Christian activist responsible for the Values Conference track on politics, is available to discuss the status and aims of progressive Christian grass-roots activism: jo@socialredemption.com.
o Dr. Ray Steiner, president of CrossWalk America in Phoenix, Arizona, can talk about building bridges between moderate and liberal churches, both equally disturbed at the religious right’s corruption of the Christian message: tel (766) 292-9255, rsteiner9@cox.net.
o Kathleen LeRoy, Vice President of the Christian Alliance for Progress in Jacksonville, Florida, can discuss the campaigns used by churches and congregations to fight for progressive values in politics: kleroy@christianalliance.org.
o Stephen Rockwell, one of the co-founders of CrossLeft, a group of activists dedicated towards political change in a progressive direction based on Jesus’s teachings, is available to discuss progressive Christian responses to contemporary politics: (215) 317-1865, steve@civicdirect.net.
o Kaliya Hamlin, an organizer of activist coalitions on the internet, is available to discuss how progressive activists are using the internet to forge networks of political action: kaliya@kaliyasblogs.com.
- The conference will bring together educators, journalists, and intellectuals who are speaking out about the co-option of the church by its radical right wing and how American progressives have traditionally defended the Christian message against its corruption.
o Ed Bacon, long-time justice activist and rector of All Saints Episcopal Church, Pasadena, and Rosa Lee Harden, director of Via Media and rector of Holy Innocents’ Episcopal Church, San Francisco, are available to discuss progressive Christian education and its approach to issues of sexuality, racism, economics, politics, and social justice: ebacon@allsaints-pas.org, rosalee@everyvoice.net.
o After October 1, journalists may contact historian David Hollinger of the University of California, Berkeley, about the progressive tradition in American Christianity, the apparent fragmentation of progressive politics after the 1970s, and how new progressives are harnessing the Christian tradition: (510) 642-3402, davidhol@berkeley.edu.
o Historian Michael Kazin can talk about the intellectual tradition of progressive Christianity, its nineteenth century legacy, and its transformative power in the social gospel and civil rights movements: at work, (202) 687-0007, cell (202) 246-4440, mk8@georgetown.edu.
o Journalist Amy Sullivan of the Washington Monthly, a Democrat and a Christian, is available to discuss the progressive Christian response to current events, the community of Christian journalists, and the representation of progressive Christianity in the media: (202) 393-5155, amysullivandc@gmail.com.
For More Information
- Please visit the conference PR website: www.everyvoice.net/values/pr
- Email the PR contacts: Elizabeth Krueger (elizabeth@everyvoice.net) or Jo Guldi (jo@socialredemption.com)
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