This coming Wednesday to Friday will be Houghton’s annual Faith and Justice Symposium. The theme this year is “Racial Justice: Called to Love”. Brian Webb, Sustainability Coordinator, explained, “We address an important topic that challenges us as Christians to respond to issues of injustice in our society. Past symposia have addressed immigration and refugees, environmental justice, war and conflict, global poverty, and human trafficking. By highlighting these critical issues, Houghton is able to bring attention to issues that affect our world in major ways, but are often overlooked in our day to day reality.”
The symposium began in 2011 to encourage discussion around “key issues, opportunities, and challenges”, according to the school website. “Each year the symposium brings leading thinkers from across the country to lecture, dialogue, and explore around a central topic,” said Brian Webb. “This year’s theme of “Racial Justice: Called to Love” will challenge our community to explore how we might advance racial justice within our campus, our church, and our society. Students will learn how to approach this complex issue within the context of our Christian faith, while exploring what it looks like to have an authentic Christian response to injustice in the world today.”
A full itinerary of this year’s symposium is available on the school website. Wednesday will feature primarily guest chapel speaker Mark Charles, with an after chapel lunch and an evening “Talkback” session providing opportunities for discussion. Sojourner’s magazine said of Charles, who has connections to both Dutch and Navajo heritage, that he “seeks to understand the complexities of American history regarding race, culture, and faith in order to help forge a path of healing and reconciliation for the nation. He partners with numerous organizations to assist them in respectfully approaching, including, and working with native communities.”
On Thursday evening, there will be a showing of the film Hidden Figures and time afterwards for discussion. Friday, the final day of the symposium, will begin at chapel with Micky ScottBey Jones, the Director of Healing Justice at Faith Matters Network and an Associate Fellow for Racial Justice with Evangelicals for Social Action. “Micky facilitates conferences, trainings and online conversations while exploring a variety of topics including self-care in community, healing justice, intersectionality, faith-rooted activism, revolutionary friendship, race & justice, and theology from the margins. She loves to curate contemplative and dialogic spaces and activities.” There will be two workshops in the afternoon and a coffeehouse in the evening. The “Engaging the Arts” coffeehouse will feature an art auction, participatory art, and spoken-word poetry.
“One of the goals of the Faith and Justice Symposium is to keep the idea in front of our community that our faith is not just a mystical encounter with God, nor just a set of ideas to be believed, but that our encounter with God and our beliefs should shape us to be people who seek justice in the world,” commented Dean of the Chapel Michael Jordan. “ Faith and justice need to be intertwined.” He went on to say, “Obviously, that question of what justice is and who experiences it and how are very difficult questions, and we deal with them throughout the year in many different ways. But the Faith and Justice symposium is one way of focusing very specifically on this question.”