Did you miss our first interfaith conversation last week about Glaude’s best-selling book, Begin Again, with Rev. Dr. Paul Binion Jr.? Here is the recording.
Did you miss our “Opening Panel with Three Guest Scholars”? You can watch the recording below to catch up.
Dear Friends, Scholars, Sponsors, Donors, and Advocates:
As alternative to our usual in-person weekend program, Interfaith Scholar Weekend is so pleased to offer you our very substantive ISW 2021 Webinar Series! It is entitled, “Bearing Witness from Fresno’s Mason-Dixon Line.” See attached “Invitation” below. A two-page flyer highlighting the whole series is forthcoming.
Join us: Our six interfaith “every Monday” conversations begin on President’s Day, February 15th at 4 pm. In this 90-minute “Opening Panel,” our three guest scholars will consider what it means to “Bear Witness” to Fresno’s history of racism and redlining.
Registration: It has already begun! Register on Eventbrite. Save the dates for every Monday from February 15th to March 22nd. You won’t want to miss any of our six plenary sessions!
Note: There are opportunities for you to create your own Independent Zoom study group–tailoring it to your own needs for conversational learning. After you and your guests “attend” our plenary sessions, you can follow-up and plan your own Zoom meetings with friends, family members, or students. Keep watch on our Study Support page where you will find this forthcoming information as we update it.
Melinda Marie Pitarre, Spiritual Director
ISW 2021 Project Coordinator
PS: Bear with us as our ISW website pages and our Eventbrite landing page are still under construction. Updates and some corrections are forthcoming!
Make sure you register today for this year’s virtual Interfaith Scholarship Weekend.
This year all registration will take place on Eventbrite.
Find out more about:
ISW 2021 Webinar Series
Bearing Witness from
Fresno’s Mason-Dixon Line
Invitation
During this pandemic–as alternative to our usual in-person weekend event–Interfaith Scholar Weekend invites you to join us for six weekly interfaith Zoom conversations, when we will consider what it means to “Bear Witness” to Fresno’s history of racism and redlining. All sessions are free!
Time and Dates:
We start each Zoom session at 4:00 pm on six consecutive Mondays from February 15th to March 22nd. All sessions are free! Registration required for each session [link coming soon] You can attend one or six sessions.
Friday, February 21
Fresno City College, Old Administration Building, 1101 East University Ave., Fresno Ca, 93741
7:30 pm Free Opening Lecture “Truth in an Age of Untruth”
Saturday, February 22
Temple Beth Israel 6622 N. Maroa Avenue, Fresno, CA 93704
- 8:00 am – 3:00 pm Registration & Kosher/Vegetarian Breakfast
- 9:00 am Torah Reflection
- 9:15 – 10:30 am Gandhi & South Africa’s Blacks
- 10:45 am – 12:00 pm The Partition & Violence of 1947
- 12:00 – 1:00 pm Kosher/Vegetarian Lunch
- 1:00 – 2:15 pm Gandhi’s Hinduism & Today’s Hindutva Ideology
Sunday, February 23
Fresno State University Peace Garden and Wesley United Methodist Church
• 9:00 am Meditation
Fresno State Peace Garden
10:30 am Sermon: “Reverence for all Faiths”
Wesley United Methodist Church 1343 East Barstow Ave., Fresno Ca, 93710
To remind many of you, and inform many others, our 2020 scholar is Rajmohan Gandhi, grandson of Mohandas Gandhi, historian, journalist and peace builder in the non-violent tradition of the Mahatma.
Dr. Gandhi comes to us thanks totally to Dr. Su Kapoor, who hoped our committee and local community 
would be able to celebrate Mahatma Gandhi’s 150th anniversary in a worthy way. Su’s friendship with the Gandhi family explains why Rajmohan is committing to enrich our ISW in February 2020, and why his sister Ela Gandhi will visit CSUF on October 14, 2019, following another CSUF Gandhi Celebration, Oct 10-11, organized by Dr. Veena Howard. For more information on the events of October 10 and 11, see the Fresno State website.
Also, please let us know if you have any questions about our 2020 ISW Event with Rajmohan Gandhi.
Rajmohan Gandhi, who is the grandson of Mohandas Gandhi, is a historian, journalist and peace builder in the non-violent tradition of the Mahatma. His topic will be announced shortly.
Read more about Rajmohan Gandhi
The Interfaith Scholar Weekend in 2020 will be held February 21-23, 2020. Online registration has not yet opened.
Our ISW 2019 scholar, Rev. Dr. Thandeka, has recently published her newest book: Love Beyond Belief. For this new book, there is a book study open and available on Thursdays at 6:00-7:30 PM at Community United Church of Christ, 5550 N. Fresno St. The book study will begin on Thursday, January 17th and concluding on February 28, the Thursday preceding our Interfaith Scholar Weekend.
Call 559-435-2690 or email faithgrowth@communityucc.com to reserve a spot,
or schedule your own Book Study if that would be easier for you and your community.
Books were ordered through Amazon at $20.75 per book or purchased for a kindle.
Our featured speaker for Interfaith Scholar Weekend 2019 is the Rev. Dr. Thandeka, a Unitarian Universalist Scholar.
Thandeka is the creator of the Love Beyond Belief™ initiative for moderate, liberal, and progressive congregations and the founder of Contemporary Affect Theology, which is designed to explain emotional development in religious settings and terms. Polebridge Press published her new book, Love Beyond Belief: Finding the Access Point to Spiritual Awareness, in 2018.
Thandeka, Affect Theologian and President of Love Beyond Belief, Inc., is author of The Embodied Self: Friedrich Schleiermacher’s Solution to Kant’s Problem of the Empirical Self (1995), Learning to be White: Money, Race and God in America (1999, German edition 2009), and Love Beyond Belief: Finding the Access Point to Spiritual Awareness (2018). Her essays include work in The Oxford University Handbook on Feminist Theology and Globalization (2011), and The Cambridge Companion to Schleiermacher (2005).
Her books and essays have helped secure her place as a “major figure in American liberal theology,” as Gary Dorrien notes in The Making of American Liberal Theology: Crisis, Irony, and Postmodernity, 1950-2005 (John Knox Press, 2006).
Jaak Panksepp, the founder of affective neuroscience, commends Thandeka’s “decisive historical-philosophical analysis” as work that can provide “a universal substrate for nondenominational religious experience” (The Archeology of the Mind, 391).
Thandeka received her Ph.D. in philosophy of religion and theology from Claremont Graduate University. She was given the Xhosa name Thandeka, which means “beloved,” by Archbishop Desmond Tutu in 1984. She is an ordained Unitarian Universalist minister and congregation consultant, and formerly an Emmy award-winning television producer.
Thandeka has taught at Andover Newton Theological School, Harvard Divinity School, Lancaster Theological Seminary, Meadville Lombard Theological School, Williams College, and she was a Fellow at Stanford University’s Humanities Center, a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Process Studies at Claremont School of Theology in California, and Union Theological Seminary in New York City. She is a Fellow at Westar Institute.
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