Interfaith Scholar Weekend 2022 

Revisiting Old Covenants in a Time of Plagues

• The “hockey stick curves” of social and ecological indicators of historical crises
• The old story of plagues of and on Egypt
• Exodus 16 as an archetypal blueprint for survival and sustainability
• Huldah, a mysterious prophet who exhumes buried covenants to animate justice and sustainability (2 Kgs 22:14; 2 Chr. 34:22)

Each of these 90-minute presentations will include elements of Lecture, PowerPoint, Art, Text, Design, Polling, and Q and A to engage viewers/listeners.

Manna vs. Mammon:
Are We Building Capital or Community?

• Breaking taboos of silence around economics in our houses of worship
• The Levitical Tradition of Jubilee and the shmitta year (Leviticus 25 and 27)
• Its preservation by the African American Church
• The Muslim notion of riba-free banking; (Surah Al ‘Imran verses 13-132)
• Tonnies’ classic articulation of Gesellschaft (capital) vs. Gemeinschaft (community)
• The structural economic disparities of indebtedness, homelessness and impoverishing work
• The gospel parable of the “De-fective Manager” (Luke 16: 1-9)
• A Sabbath Economics covenant for personal and political transformation (first three steps), with a nod toward the current.

Public Addiction, Ecological Ultimatums:
A Call to Recovery

• Twelve Step Spirituality and public addiction
• Looking at our production/consumption habits through the addiction-recovery lens
• Our ecological footprint and Wendell Berry’s golden rule
• Solidarity as defection from the social architecture of isolation
• Demonstration projects in communities of color
• Compulsive work and the Green Sabbath Project

Sabbath as Reparative Justice

• How to address historical inequities
• Healing Haunting Histories and decolonization work
• Jesus and the Rich Man (Mt. 19:16-30; Mk.10:17-31; Lk.18:18-30) as a call to reparative justice
• How to sustain Sabbath Economics Covenant work in our communities of faith