Over January Term (or J-term), two students participated in a fellowship for with our Center as part of our Justice, Identity, and Social Change (JISC) initiative. These students, Raven Fowlkes-Witten and Lucy Tucker, serve on our JISC advisory board.<\/p>\n

The JISC Initiative of the Center for Religious and Spiritual Life (CRSL) seeks to integrate social justice work with our mission: We discuss ethical and moral matters beyond sectarian spheres, provide interfaith dialogue and interaction, reflect deeply on community engagement, and undergird social justice work with spiritual\/contemplative practice and ideals.<\/p>\n

For the 2016 Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday, the JISC fellowship project reflected on the intersections of spirituality and social justice. Students participated in a panel discussion at the Convocation of the Northampton MLK Commemoration<\/a>, where student activist Charnice Charmant served as a key speaker.<\/p>\n

The panel tackled the following questions:<\/p>\n

What does it mean to privilege black lives within a religious and\/or spiritual worldview, wherein universal human rights are paramount? <\/em><\/p>\n

What are the justifications for prioritizing black lives in the United States in various theological\/ spiritual and ethical traditions? <\/em><\/p>\n

How does social identity inform the work we do in racial justice, and why does it matter?<\/em><\/p>\n

Stay tuned for the answers to these questions along with student responses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over January Term (or J-term), two students participated in a fellowship for with our Center as part of our Justice, Identity, and Social Change (JISC) initiative. These students, Raven Fowlkes-Witten and Lucy Tucker, serve on our JISC advisory board. The … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":775,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[237,177],"tags":[32,93,97,230],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interfaith-matters","category-social-justice","tag-black-lives-matter","tag-identity","tag-interfaith","tag-race-racism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/religious-spiritual-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/religious-spiritual-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/religious-spiritual-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/religious-spiritual-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/775"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/religious-spiritual-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=251"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/religious-spiritual-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":550,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/religious-spiritual-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251\/revisions\/550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/religious-spiritual-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/religious-spiritual-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/religious-spiritual-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/religious-spiritual-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}