Social Justice in Adult RE

Numerous adult RE activities provide opportunities to become better educated about and prepared to act on social justice issues.  Workshops often follow a curriculum; small group discussions often follow viewing a relevant film or reading a book centered on a specific social justice issue; nationally-prominent guest speakers bring enhanced expertise to the congregation. Recent workshops and movie/book discussion groups addressed racial justice; several movie-discussion groups addressed environmental justice.

  • Building the World We Dream About was a curriculum-based workshop series of four sessions addressing racial justice, conducted in 2015.
  • Living the Pledge was a series of two half-day workshops adapted from The Richmond Pledge curriculum, conducted in 2017. More than 40 members participated in the workshops.
  • Out of the Living the Pledge Workshops a UUCK Race for Justice (R4J) grass-roots action team emerged that will plan and coordinate anti-racism activities, including  education of ourselves and others, relationship building with racially diverse populations, public demonstrations of anti-racism support by standing witness and speaking out, and advocacy for institutional change, and community action.
  • An educational session on Black Lives Matters in 2016 viewed and discussed BLUU.
  • Multiple Selma film/book small group discussions in 2015.
  • Film viewing and discussion groups related to environmental justice have focused on topics such as solar power, food and eating, permaculture, frogs and amphibians, water, wilderness conservation, and fracking.
  • Two members were invited by the West Shore UU Church in 2012 to conduct a discussion on Child Slavery and Chocolate following the showing of the documentary The Dark Side of Chocolate.
  • Guest speakers have addressed issues such as: The Move to Amend, the Middle East and refuges crisis, and for-profit prisons.

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