Le Anne's Manifesto:

I am catching up between hosting family and taking off early Friday morning for the School of the Americas protest (about a dozen of us going from the seminaries in Hyde Park; mostly McCormick, but a couple from the other schools also). I'm excited to get back down there, but I promise not to get arrested this year...but, I'm a bit fired up at the moment and want to write; while each of the pieces below has been with me some time, they've been coming together and becoming a much clearer vision much more recently--apologies, for brief manifesto to follow:



1. What is your interest? 2. What is your experience? 4. How do you see yourself serving Christ and the CHurch in the years to come?



My interest is in ecumenical and interfaith cooperation for social justice, particularly human rights and antimilitarism. I'm also in some human rights ministry classes at Catholic Theological Union (CTU) right now; for my final, I'm finishing my nonprofit plan for an 'Interfaith Peacemaker Teams.' For next semester's advanced human rights class, which requires hands-on work, I'm asking the professor to let me build the relationships with other human rights and interfaith groups in Chicago necessary to getting this group going. If all goes well by the end of the year, I'll drop down to half-time enrollment and begin recruiting and training to send interfaith human rights teams to active conflict zones. I have been blessed with much encouragement from those who have gone before me in this work, particularly Kathy Kelly and Voices in the Wilderness. I have been shying for some time now from the doors which have been opening--finally getting the courage to step through to those unknowns...



I was a human rights worker in the Middle East (mostly Israel, Palestine, Iraq) for four years, mostly with the Christian Peacemaker Teams, and we knew then but didn't have the ability to expand the model to include interfaith. Between the time I 'retired' from CPT and when I came to CTS, I got an MA in Christian-Muslim relations. But, whenever I do finish seminary (in one more year or two), I'm in the ordination process in the Presbyterian church.



Meanwhile, closer to home, I'm helping build a coalition of student organizers from all of the seminaries in Hyde Park, called the Seminary Student Action Network (www.seminaryaction.org). We launched an inter-campus paper which is gaining ground rapidly, we have monthly colloquy groups of student leaders (newspaper editors, student government, and organization leaders, etc) for mutual support and troubleshooting; and we're looking at ways to form intentionally ecumenical/
intercampus student housing to meet the shortage of affordable student housing near Hyde Park --probably also including a servant-learning component as part of the rental contract.



What I want to see coming from this, though, is a wider 'culture change' in the approach to theological education, at least for the Hyde Park seminaries. I have a funny ecumenical history here, where I've been a student and/or deeply involved with the communities at most of the seminaries here. None really touch the level of contextual, cross-cultural, servant-based education that is common to many denominational college campuses today. And it's not really about money; most of the college campus efforts are student-initiated before incorporated into the program, and students raise the funds to make them happen. I think it's mostly about commitment and creativity.



At CTS, we are blessed to have the CCT program for field site, and that the outside world is discussed within our classrooms, but I believe this is not enough to form truly globally- connected and societal- transforming ministers. I believe that physically being in the public community from start to finish of seminary education _is_ doing public theology; we can't just restrict this to the second-year field site and a section of CPE. But I do understand how it is difficult to transform these cultures from within institutional structures, which is why we are organizing as a coalition of students, to show how alternative spring break opportunities, increased cross-cultural travel seminars, and leadership/ organizing practicum opportunites can happen here for everyone.



There's one other thing I will mention, and that is my real excitement for pastoral counseling/ chaplaincy/ spiritual direction. I did CPE in a psychiatric ward this summer and loved it enough to get into Dr. Moore's classes here; I also used to lead the trauma training for new human rights workers entering Palestine, as well as the post-trauma debriefings when colleagues were killed. I know that from the accumulation of war traumas in four years, I personally can't do the direct work much anymore. The wounds are deep. But I find incredible energy for pastoring and shepherding the activists and aid workers. So...it all sort of fits together and makes it possible for me to carry on in a world of violence and despair. And I know I won't have to do it alone, through the friends that I have and continue to find in this wide body of faith. We and the Spirit can cheer each other on the way.



3. What do you see as the impact faith in the public square has made in this recent mid-term election?



I think people voted against what they saw in the religious right through the scandals and voted also against the way this war has been handled. I think now is the best time to speak an alternative view of faith in public life, before all things religious and church are seen as detestable. So we gotta get out there, not just get comfortable because we like who made it into office.



Y'all have had enough of me by now for sure. I'll close out this message with thanks to you all, and an invitation for further discussion/feedback, etc.

peace, friends,

Le Anne