Summer 2019

ECO Core Intensive

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. Reading and writing assignments to be completed before the course. Final paper. This course has a special focus on economic and racial justice addressed intersectionally. Relates to Thresholds #2,5,7 and 8 and MFC Competency #4. Please take within your first year.

Leadership Along the Way

The rationale for this course is to develop one’s own life-regenerating leadership along the long arc of social change and transformation that existed before our time and will continue after us. We will explore ways of engaging and directing energy within an ecosystem so as to encourage diversity and distribution of leadership. This includes rediscovering our agency in challenging environments while leading in a way that honors the leadership present in any given moment, as well as the leadership that preceded and will follow such moments.
This course is in-person, interactive, and informed by Taoist, Zen, and Somatic praxis. Students will be expected to complete readings, reflections, and activities that will deepen their leadership practice.
Relates to SKSM Thresholds 1, 3, 5, & 7, and MFC Comps 3, 5, & 7.

Multi-religious Core Intensive

Multireligious Intensive: Amidst the Blessing of the Ancestors weaves teachings on organic multireligiosity from Ibrahim Baba (Dr. Ibrahim Farajae) with practices of ancestor reverence and healing. According to Ibrahim Baba, organic multiregliosity “interrupts practices of considering religions as monolithic, rigidly-separated traditions in conflict with one another [and] rather understands them as having complex and constantly-morphing relationships in successive generations and in ever-widening geographical and cultural contexts.”

This intensive focuses on embodying multireligiosity in personal practice, tending multireligiosity in spiritual leadership and public worship, and engaging multireligiosity toward countering oppression and cultural (mis)appropriation. The intensive also engages embodied practice around ancestor reverence and healing – in spiritual lineage and family / blood lineage – as a way of anchoring multireligious expression, countering oppression, and aligning to blessing. Each day of the intensive combines conceptual exploration of multireligiosity, embodied practice of counter-oppressive devotion and tending work in ancestral lineage ritual and repair. Course texts include multi-media selections from Ibrahim Baba, readings by Adrienne Maree Brown on intersectionality and emergent strategy, and Ancestral Medicine by Daniel Foor. Prior to the intensive, students are expected to complete select readings as well as to submit a reflection paper on personal experiences of multireligiosity and ancestral tending. At the completion of the course, students submit a second reflection paper weaving their learnings and experiences in the intensive.

This course relates to SKSM Thresholds 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and MFC Comps 1, 3, 4

UU Ministerial Leadership

This CORE intensive course focuses on the theological foundations and habits of mind necessary to be a self-defined leader among Unitarian Universalists, either in congregations or in other UU settings. Students will have the opportunity to test their current skills in a series of real-world challenges likely to be faced in parish or community settings. The goal is to allow student the chance to confront possible issues while the stakes are low. Role playing, small group work and reflection papers will be required. This is a required course for the M.Div. program.
Relates to SKSM Thresholds 1 & 5 and MFC Comps 2, 5 & 7
Students must contact the instructor via e-email prior to enrolling in order to receive permission to register. Registration is contingent upon faculty approval.

UU Polity

The Polity Intensive Class will happen June 19-23 at the site of the Unitarian Universalist Association’s General Assembly in Spokane, WA. Students will discover the mechanics of governance by observing Unitarian Universalist polity in action. We will attend plenary sessions, business mini-assemblies and worship services, as well as meet together as a class to process our observations, learn the history of congregational polity in contrast to other polity paradigms, and thus locate our polity in its theological and cultural contexts. We will also use the case study method to dissect recent actions of the General Assembly, using video from previous General Assemblies. We will evaluate how polity acts as it is translated from the church to a national setting: informed by social justice, our polity can have global impact. The General Assembly this year will allow a new interpretation of Unitarian Universalist polity as a legacy, in its revisiting the General Conference, and as a vision of radical inclusion. The convention center will be a laboratory for our lived faith as it becomes bylaws: through these reflections we will develop strategies to translate our Principles and Purposes into action, to become more effective religious leaders, as well as resources for our congregations and communities. For Unitarian Universalists, democracy is in the details. Students will be responsible for their own travel, food, lodging, and General Assembly Registration.Students are evaluated through: Demonstrated preparation, class participation and final reflection paper 10-15 pages.