
Episcopal Divinity School (EDS) and St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery have partnered to co-host Being Church: Leading and Caring for our Communities through the 2024 Election, a series of free online workshops leading up to the November elections. The four-part series will feature conversations with theologians and church leaders exploring questions of how to boldly claim Christian values and lead with those values in liturgy, preaching, and the public square.
“It’s an important moment for the church to step forward, yet many local congregations feel paralyzed by the growing tensions in their communities and neighborhoods,” said Anne Marie Witchger, priest-in-charge of St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery and co-organizer of the workshops. “This series seeks to equip congregations and church leaders with the language and tools to engage with confidence, and to do that in a way that is grounded in our core values of love, justice, connection, and peacemaking.”
The first workshop, “Claiming our values in a climate of fear,” took place on August 4, 2024, and featured a conversation between Scott Bader-Saye, Dean and President of Seminary of the Southwest, and Altagracia Perez-Bullard, Associate Dean of Multicultural Ministries at Virginia Theological Seminary. The conversation was moderated by John Thatamanil, Professor of Theology & World Religions at Union Theological Seminary and Priest Associate at St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery.

“The opposite of despair is hope,” shared Perez-Bullard during the workshop. “Though these moments feel intense to us, any historian will show you all the other times when societies have been in these kinds of tensions and struggles…[We must be able to] put things in perspective and acknowledge that we have a lot of resources that can be brought to bear in the situations we are facing. Hope allows us to have the energy to engage in responding to the things that seem overwhelming.”
Bader-Saye echoed these sentiments and emphasized the importance of community. “We are not in this alone,” he shared. “Being in community with each other gives us a place to stand, to begin to examine what’s going on, because we know we’ve got people around us. And that gives us a place to become reflective about the real situation of the world.”
Three more workshops in the Being Church series will take place leading up to the election in November:
- August 29: Praying our values: This workshop will feature Rev. Dr. Ruth Meyers, the Rev. Canon Dr. Stephanie Spellers, and the Rev. Lydia Bucklin in conversation on the use of prayer and liturgy to address the current climate of fear and division. Learn more and register here.
- September 24: Preaching our values: This workshop will feature the Rev. Shaneequa Brokenleg, Dr. Joy J. Moore, and the Rev. Winnie Varghese in conversation on preaching our Christian values in a climate of growing Christian nationalism and white supremacy. Learn more and register here.
- October 30: Leading with our values in the public square: This workshop will feature Bishops Mariann Budde, Andy Doyle, and Jennifer Baskverville-Burrows for a conversation exploring the opportunities and challenges of civil engagement during this election season. Learn more and register here.
For more information on the Being Church series, please click here.