Educating to “Create Just and Sustainable Communities that Counter Oppressions”
Educating to “Create Just and Sustainable Communities that Counter Oppressions” (“ECO”) is a core goal of Starr King’s M.Div. and M.A.S.C. degree programs. In this required core intensive, M.Div. and M.A.S.C. students work together to form a framework for counter-oppressive spiritual leadership. We will ask: how can spirituality, ministry, and religious activism respond to the multiple and intersecting realities of injustice, suffering, and oppression in our lives and our world? What models of justice and sustainable community invite our commitment? Drawing on Unitarian Universalist and multi-religious sources, we will explore how, in the midst of a world marked by tragedy, sorrow, and injustice, there remain abiding resources of beauty and grace that nourish resistance, offer healing and call us to accountability and community building.
Dr. Shannon Frediani
Dr. Shannon Frediani holds an M.A. in Religious Leadership for Social Change (MASC) from SKSM (2013). She is a doctoral candidate in Practical Theology- Interreligious Education at Claremont School of Theology, expected to graduate in 2018. Her current scholarship focuses on decolonizing interreligious education, highlighting spiritual needs of the incarcerated and the historically marginalized, while fostering counter oppressive narrative voices from the margins and those most impacted by systemic injustice. As a scholar, interreligious educator and peace builder, Shannon has focused her studies on narrative pedagogy, utilizing decolonial, feminist, and womanist methodologies. She is particularly passionate about witnessing and fostering spiritual formation in the context of religious leadership and social justice advocacy work.
