Enjoy our latest conversations and learn about our ongoing programs below.
Whether it’s a drumming webinar or a session on “creative activism,” Auburn webinars offer a unique, immersive invitational experience. Participants can attend in-person, online, or watch later at their convenience. We seek out teachers worldwide who in an hour or less can share the core of their teachings, and provide an opportunity for participants to ask hands-on questions.
Want to go deeper? Contact us to book a customized training.
Auburn Webinars will return Fall 2018.
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Watch our latest talks: Fall-Winter 2017/18:
WEBINAR: BLACK LIBERATION THEOLOGY OF DISABILITY
Thursday, May 31, 2018 from 12 Noon to 1 PM (EST)
KENDRICK KEMP had two major strokes in his twenties that impacted his life in profound ways. He talks with us about how his own life was changed by these events and how “disability” is an issue of deep impact for people of color, as well as the influence of his mentor, the late Dr. James Cone. Learn more about his story and his “Black Liberation Theology of Disability,” during this moving and insightful conversation. Auburn webinars offer a unique, immersive invitational experience. Participants may attend in-person, online, or watch later at their convenience.
WEBINAR: BRIDGING DIVIDES, EXPLORING METHODOLOGIES
Thursday, May 31, 2018 from 2:30 PM to 3:30 PM (EST)
MIKE NICONCHUK is a Senior Researcher with the Boston-based organization Beyond Conflict, and will be sharing his insights into how neuroscience can help us understand each other across political and cultural spectrums. This webinar is part of a series curated by Auburn SVP Macky Alston on “bridging divides.” Auburn webinars offer a unique, immersive invitational experience. Participants may attend in-person, online, or watch later at their convenience.
One of the greatest challenges that leaders we work with have surfaced is how to engage one another across difference, divide and disagreements within our organizations, communities, and movements and beyond. On Thursday, May 31st, Auburn is again lifting up a rock star in this field, ground-breaking neuroscientist Mike Niconchuk– continuing our series of webinars helping you think about how best to bridge divides to do justice in your community and work. Auburn is thrilled to bring to you this practitioner who has a deep knowledge of what is working best.
Thursday April 5, 2018, 12 noon:
WEBINAR: FAITH-ROOTED STORYTELLING AND PUBLIC NARRATIVE
Join us for a faith-rooted storytelling and public narrative workshop. Learn how “story” has served the great religious and social change movements throughout history. And discuss how telling your story can impact social change. This webinar is led by two gifted organizers from different faith traditions:
Jennifer Bailey, an ordained minister, public theologian, and emerging national leader in the multifaith movement for justice, who was named one of 15 Faith Leaders to Watch by the Center for American Progress. She is the Founding Executive Director of the Faith Matters Network, an interfaith community equipping faith leaders to challenge structural inequality in their communities.
Daniel May began his organizing career building tenant unions in the South Bronx before moving to Los Angeles to found, with other organizers, One LA-IAF, the Los Angeles affiliate of the Industrial Areas Foundation. While in Los Angeles, Daniel led a campaign to uncover and end police profiling and abuse of undocumented immigrants in Maywood, CA and spearheaded the IAF’s outreach to the LA Jewish community. He then served as Political Director for the Service Employee International Union’s Campaign to Improve Assisted Living. Daniel has a Masters in Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School and is currently a PhD candidate in Religion, Ethics and Politics at Princeton University.
Coming soon: A RECORDED VERSION OF THIS TALK
Thursday March 22, 2018, 2:30pm:
WEBINAR: BRIDGING DIVIDES, EXPLORING METHODOLOGIES
RACHEL BROWN is the Founder and Executive Director of Over Zero, which works to prevent and create long-term societal resilience to violence. She is the author of Defusing Hate: A Strategic Communication Guide to Counteract Dangerous Speech and the Founder and former CEO of Sisi ni Amani Kenya.
More about Rachel’s work: Any number over zero cannot be divided, and Over Zero supports societies to resist division and create long-term resilience to identity-based conflict. She is the author of Defusing Hate: A Strategic Communication Guide to Counteract Dangerous Speech, which brings together insights from diverse fields of expertise – from marketing to cognitive neuroscience – to support practitioners seeking to design communications-based interventions for atrocity prevention. She was a 2014 Genocide Prevention Fellow at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide (where she developed Defusing Hate) and has led trainings and project design workshops on counteracting dangerous speech for a variety of organizations globally. She has spoken on counteracting dangerous speech at international conferences and events, including as a PopTech 2016 speaker, and her work on counteracting dangerous speech was profiled in the Christian Science Monitor. Rachel also founded and is the former CEO of Sisi ni Amani-Kenya (SNA-K), a Kenyan NGO that pioneered new strategies to build local capacity for peacebuilding and civic engagement, most notably through the creation of a text-messaging model and platform to support community-based efforts. She was recognized as a 2012 PopTech Social Innovation Fellow for this work, and the organization was profiled in the documentary Peace In Our Pockets. Rachelholds a B.A. in International Relations from Tufts University.
Coming soon: A RECORDED VERSION OF THIS TALK
Thursday January 11, 2018, 2:30pm:
Body made in Israel, soul made in heaven 🙂 I’m a woman, a percussionist, with a great passion and love to music and it’s incredible influence on life. West African music is my favorite genre of all, to play and to listen to. It moves me deeply.”
Roni Parnass
Webinar: SOUND & FREQUENCY, PART II: DRUMMING, with Fariduddin Fred Johnson and Roni Parnass.
This is part II of a sound and frequency workshop taught by Fariduddin Fred Johnson, and co-led by instrumentalist Roni Parnass.
Location
Online & Auburn Seminary | 475 Riverside Drive | New York, NY 10115
Thursday January 11, 2018 from 2:30 PM to 3:30 PM (EDT)
PRESENTERS
About Roni Parnass:
I conduct African drumming workshops all across Israel. Women’s empowerment is a field very close to my heart and occasionally I hold women’s groups which are intended to strengthen and motivate women. Above all, in my workshops I aim to give room to that wonderful channel, that allows the beat of the drum to just flow right through us.
About Fariduddin Fred Johnson:
Tone, frequency, and breath are part of your innate power to heal yourself and others. Experience the healing of sound and frequency with Fariduddin Fred Johnson, Director of Strategic Initiatives and Deputy Director at Intersections, while learning more about how sound works in our bodies.
As a student of West African natural healing indigenous music traditions for nearly a decade, Johnson brings to the contemporary world a fusion of ancient sound traditions, coupled with 21st-century science on the power of the vibration universe.
Join us online or in-person, and learn about how, with sacred intention, to move through pain and experience greater joy. Experience the first talk in this series here: WATCH THE TALK NOW
Thursday January 11, 2018, 12 noon:
Faith is our guide.”
Andrew Hanauer
Webinar: Bridging Divides, exploring methodologies, with Andrew Hanauer.
Location
Online & Auburn Seminary | 475 Riverside Drive | New York, NY 10115
Thursday January 11, 2018 from 12:00 NOON to 1:00 PM (EDT)
PRESENTER
In this talk, Andrew Hanauer reminds us of The Golden Rule and the teachings of Matthew and The Torah, as key to bridging divides over long held resentments and misunderstandings:
“And be not divided, but remember God’s blessing upon you,
when you were enemies, and he brought your hearts together
so that you became one.”
“That which is hateful to you, do not do unto your neighbor.
That is the whole Torah. The rest is commentary.”
“For I was hungry, and you gave me something to eat. I was
thirsty, and you gave me something to drink. I was a stranger
and you invited me in.”
Hanauer shares his expertise on how to bridge divides across beltway politics. He is the Director of the One America Movement, an organization founded by faith and community leaders in the aftermath of the 2016 election to address divisiveness in American society. A frequent public speaker at houses of worship of all kinds, and at venues including the United Nations, the National Press Club and Congressional briefings, he serves on the steering committee of the Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency Coalition and on the board of directors of Bridges of Promise, a non-profit that funds school fees for children in East Africa. His work has been published by The Times of Israel, Inter Press Service, the Christian Citizen and featured on Voice of America and media outlets across the US and abroad. Previously, he was Campaigns Director at Jubilee USA. He has directed green job training programs in low-income communities in California and run an after-school homework center at a public elementary school.
Enjoy part 3 of this 5 part series featuring leading practitioners in the field.
I write on lots of different things, but mainly themes of reconciliation, forgiveness, conflict, storytelling, and theology. Sometimes, I tell personal stories from my life of travel, prison volunteering, childhood in rural Appalachia, and work in conflict zones.”
Michael McRay
Webinar: Bridging Divides, The Stories that will Save Us, with Michael McRay.
Location
Online & Auburn Seminary | 475 Riverside Drive | New York, NY 10115
Thursday December 14, 2017 from 12:00 NOON to 1:00 PM (EDT)
PRESENTER
Michael McRay shares his unique experiences and insights around his work and storytelling vis-a-vis the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and incarceration.
He is an author, educator, and facilitator of storytelling. His works include: Where the River Bends: Considering Forgiveness in the Lives of Prisoners (2015); Letters from “Apartheid Street”: A Christian Peacemaker in Occupied Palestine (2013); and with Tony D. Vick, Secrets from a Prison Cell: A Convict’s Eyewitness Account of the Dehumanizing Drama of Life Behind Bars (forthcoming, 2017). michaelmcray.com
Thursday December 07, 2017, 2:00 pm Central:
Relief and rebuilding are not color blind.”
Rev. John Vaughn
Webinar: Race, Class, and Disaster Relief with Rev. John Vaughn, Pastor Rudy Rasmus, Rev. Catherine Flowers, Sherece Y. West-Scantlebury, and Roderick L. Smothers, Sr., Ph.D.
Location
Online & Philander Smith College | Harry R. Kendall Building- Nugent Center, 900 West Daisy L Gatson Bates Drive, Little Rock, ARK 72202
That’s 3 PM Eastern; 2 PM Central; 1 PM Mountain; 12 NOON Pacific. The webinar is 1-hour.
Presenters
Rudy Rasmus is a Houston-based pastor, humanitarian, author, and faith leader, who’s known as “Beyoncé’s pastor,” because of Tina, Beyoncé, and Solange Knowles’ support of his St. John’s Church in Downtown Houston. Joining Pastor Rasmus will be Catherine Flowers, from Houston’s Bread of Life ministry program.
Sherece Y. West-Scantlebury, Ph.D., is president and CEO of the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation, a private, independent foundation. West-Scantlebury’s work focuses on economic development; education; and economic, racial, and social justice. Before coming to Little Rock, Dr. West-Scantlebury served as the founding director of the Louisiana Disaster Recovery Foundation, which was established post hurricane’s Katrina and Rita.
Rev. John Vaughn is executive vice president of Auburn Seminary. Before joining Auburn, Rev. Vaughn led the Twenty-First Century Foundation’s Gulf Coast recovery and rebuilding efforts.
Roderick L. Smothers, Sr., Ph.D ,14th president of the college, as well as students and community from the Philander Smith College area.
NOVEMBER
Thursday November 16, 2017, 12 noon:
Emotions are always in charge, that’s the learning of neurobiology which is rather disappointing…”
Parisa Parsa
Webinar: Bridging Divides, exploring methodologies with Parisa Parsa.
Online & Auburn Seminary | 475 Riverside Drive | New York, NY 10115
Thursday November 16, 2017 from 12:00 NOON to 1:00 PM (EDT)
Parsa, of whatisessential.org, shares a case study on what her group calls, Reflective Structured Dialogue (RSD) and how it can be used in faith-based and social service organizations.
Parisa served as the Director of Congregational Development for the New England Unitarian Universalist Association, providing leadership development, training tools and resources for mission-focused planning and change management for ministers and congregations. An ordained minister, Parisa led a mid-sized congregation in Milton, Massachusetts for ten years, and has served in leadership roles for faith-based and social service organizations across the country.
Bridging Divides is a training curated at Auburn by Macky Alston, and draws from leading practitioners in the field, who are exploring ways to engage people across difference, divide, or disagreement and craft a strategy that works best in light of goals and cultural context. Join the webinar to learn what they know.
Join us online or in-person, and learn from leading practitioners in the field. This is Part 1 of a 5 part series.
OCTOBER
Thursday, October 12, 2017, 12:00 noon:
So many well-intentioned people want to make a difference but lack the roadmaps to get them there.”
Patricia Jerido
Webinar: Creative Activism & You
Online & Auburn Seminary | 475 Riverside Drive | New York, NY 10115
Thursday, October 12, 2017 from 12:00 NOON to 1:00 PM (EDT)
Are you an artist? Do you feel there’s something you want to express that could help society as a whole? What is it and how would you do it? These are questions Patricia Jerido, a trained social worker and consultant with over 30 years experience in social justice work, and Macky Alston, an acclaimed filmmaker and Auburn’s Senior Vice President, Strategy and Growth, have been tackling.
Jerido’s prior experience includes working on human rights issues in the Manhattan Borough President’s Office, and as co-director for Client Services at the Minority Taskforce on AIDS, where she worked with women incarcerated at Rikers Island. Alston’s films include Love Free or Die – PBS 2012; Hard Road Home – PBS ’08, The Killer Within – Discovery Films ’06, Questioning Faith – HBO ‘02, and Family Name – PBS ’98. He has won at Sundance twice and received the Gotham Open Palm Award, three Emmy nominations, and appeared widely in the press, including The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Today Show and The New York Times.
Join us for a lively conversation– and learn how to channel your creativity into something powerful.
YOU’LL WALK AWAY WITH…
- A wide range of tools and examples to help you and your community capture the public imagination through your faith-rooted activism
- Knowledge of the ways in which creative activism has been at the heart of the history of social and religious movements throughout history
- Creative exercises that engage you to develop actions designed to move heart and minds for justice
Participate online or in-person, and learn how to use your gifts to ignite social change.
SEPTEMBER
Thursday, September 28, 2017, 12:00 noon:
Every breath is a celebration of life itself.”
Fred Johnson
Webinar: Experience the Healing of Sound and Frequency
Online & Auburn Seminary | 475 Riverside Drive | New York, NY 10115
Thursday, September 28, 2017 from 12:00 NOON to 1:00 PM (EDT)
Tone, frequency, and breath are part of your innate power to heal yourself and others. Experience the healing of sound and frequency with Fariduddin Fred Johnson, Director of Strategic Initiatives and Deputy Director at Intersections, while learning more about how sound works in our bodies.
As a student of West African natural healing indigenous music traditions for nearly a decade, Johnson brings to the contemporary world a fusion of ancient sound traditions, coupled with 21st-century science on the power of the vibration universe.
Join us online or in-person, and learn about how, with sacred intention, to move through pain and experience greater joy.
Watch our talks from last season: Spring-Summer 2017:
Combatting Loneliness and Social Isolation, Caitlin Breedlove – on re·sil·ience
We are a deeply isolated & lonely set of communities.”
Caitlin Breedlove
Caitlin, vice president of movement leadership at Auburn Seminary, has a wonderfully complex mind; in one breath she’ll reference seminal social activist Grace Lee Boggs — and Bogg’s notion of “dialectical humanism”– and in the next, bring her point home with insights into her own foibles as an organizer. This intelligence and authenticity make even being resilient and defeating loneliness and social isolation seem like problems that anyone can tackle. (July 6, 2017)
Micky ScottBey Jones is shaping brave spaces
I was a hyper-conservative, anti-liberal agenda, evangelical.”
Micky ScottBey Jones
Webinar: Bridging Divides, brave spaces, with Mickey Scottbey Jones.
Mickey’s own life experience, in her case of moving right to left, created in her a deep compassion, for herself– and others. She is a supervisor within Auburn’s Justice Ministry Program and is a womanist contemplative activist, healer, nonviolent direct action organizer and consultant. (June 30, 2017)
Thanks to Catherine Torpey, Executive Director of The Focusing Institute, from our studio audience, who shared her thoughts on the talk.
Digital Security 101 – Digital Security for Activists
There’s a lot of fear and panic around our digital communications, so its good to have this conversation.”
Dan Greenman
Auburn’s resident tech guru, Dan Greenman. As Director of Technology he’s seen it all in the realm of people’s various tech phobias and avoidances– and brings us up to speed to learns so easy ways to protect your and your organization’s data and reputation. (May 4, 2017)
Dismantling White Supremacy From the Inside Out
. . . what that means is engaging white people in the faith against systemic racism.”
Rev. J.C. Austin
Learn why white Americans resist engaging or even acknowledging systemic racial injustice, and how to help them get past that and work to dismantle racist patterns and systems with Rev. J.C. Austin in this webinar. (April 26, 2017)
The Johnson Amendment – what your organization needs to know
For 63 years, the Johnson Amendment has protected religious groups and charities from manipulation by partisan politics. Now some want to overturn these protections by repealing the Amendment.”
Sally Steenland
Sally Steenland, former Director of the Faith and Progressive Policy Initiative at American Progress, argues that now more than ever, we need the Johnson Amendment, which protects houses of worship from becoming, “one more cog in the political machine.” Watch this fascinating webinar to learn more about this lesser known but important law, why it may be in jeopardy, and what you can do about it. (March 6, 2017)
