Pastor
Maria Anderson and co-facilitator, Christopher Bear-Beam, gathered with
congregational members for five Sundays, beginning in April 30 and ending on
May 28, 2017, to lead a class on Sexism.
Participants could attend as many or as few of the classes as they
wished.
St.
Ansgar is located at 515 Woodford St, Portland,
ME and
can be reached by calling 207-774-8740, or
going to www.saintansgar.org.
The
class was formulated to include accurate content, interactivity, group
communication, and dialogue within the group.
St. Ansgar is a church within the sphere of the Evangelical Lutheran
Church of America (ELCA);
the
denomination began the process of creating a church-wide social policy
statement on Sexism in 2009. Each
congregation within the ELCA will give feedback to the Churchwide Assembly, and
the document will be brought to the Assembly in 2019.
Topics
covered during the five-week class (that began during the Easter season)
included: 1). Intro: why are we here to
discuss this topic; getting on the same page around Sexism; 2). What problems do women face? 3).
How is Sexism personal? 4). Why do images of God matter? 5).
What does economic justice look like?
The
class used group guidelines that we hope were effective in creating a safe, sacred
space; the facilitators used small group exercises, large group activities, and
other focused exercises. Our philosophy
was to create a “give-and-take” (a dialogical model that uses listening to “two
to one or more” as a primary method so that experiential learning may emerge.
One
participant attended the class because she lives in the neighborhood where St.
Ansgar is located. She was also
interested in the class because she’s an editor for parts of a biblical
commentary that’s a feminine critique & exposition of other teachings &
practices in the biblical annals, using a feminist mode of interpretation &
hermeneutics.
Other
presentations, groups and classes will be sponsored by St. Ansgar, so be sure
to watch for future events!
©Christopher
Bear-Beam
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