Friends General Conference Gathering will take place at Johnstown, PA from June 28-July 5, with 63 week-long workshops, including one explicitly for nontheist Friends, and others that seek to bring nontheist and theist Friends together. Please let me know if there are workshops that meet this description beyond those I have linked to below.
Nontheist Friends and Courageous Discernment (Robin Alpern and David Boulton)
Committed nontheist Friends are invited to explore the nature and process of discernment. How do we recognize, interpret and respond to leadings, calls, clearness, and sense of the meeting, outside a traditional theistic framework? How do our processes of decision-making enable us to live faithful, adventurous lives?
Reclaiming Our Understanding of the Divine (Jim Cain, Sally MacEwen and Elaine Ruscetta)
A safe space to articulate, explore, and deepen understanding of the divine and its source. Through lecture, discussion and worship we go deeper than common dichotomies and oversimplified labels to negotiate new conceptualizations of things like theist and nontheist; fundamentalist and analytical Biblical interpretation; and words which describe the divine.
Seeking Common Ground (John Helding)
Together we’ll explore ways to discover and communicate our common needs, truths, and ways of being in the world. Instead of emphasizing differences, can we learn to identify and celebrate common ground? In our personal lives? Within Quakerism? A week of building community, developing communication skills, and seeking common ground.
