Release to the Captives:
Restorative Justice, Abolition, and Ministry with Incarcerated Persons
Monday, January 6 - Wednesday, January 8, 2025
The Shalom Academy is a peace-and-justice-forward retreat experience in the beautiful Shenandoah Valley with daily worship, keynotes, workshops, conversational spaces, and time set aside to relax or connect with fellow wayfarers. A virtual access pass is available for keynotes and teaching sessions.
Keynote Sessions
Chris Hoke
Keynote addresses will be delivered by Chris Hoke, the founding director of Underground Ministries and creator of the One Parish One Prisoner program in Washington State. He is a commissioned PC(USA) pastor and the author of Wanted: A Spiritual Pursuit Through Jail, Among Outlaws and Across Borders.
Teaching Sessions
Still Doing Life
Howard Zehr and Barbara Toews will present their Still Doing Life project, which will be exhibited on location. Still Doing Life consists of 22 pairs of photographs and interviews separated by 25 years of individuals serving life sentences without the possibility of parole in Pennsylvania prisons. Howard is Director Emeritus of the Zehr Institute for Restorative Justice at EMU. Barbara is Associate Professor of Social Work and Criminal Justice at the University of Washington, Tacoma, and an alumna of EMU’s Center for Justice Peacebuilding. In this hybrid teaching session, they will be joined by Freddie Nole, who participated in the project prior to his 2019 release.
RJ and the School-to-Prison Pipeline
Katherine Evans and Aundrea Smiley will engage in a conversation about the potential of restorative practices in education to dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline, how to resist the logics that sustain that pipeline, and our need to lean into our own mission of healing, humanization, and liberation. Katherine is a Professor of Teacher Education at EMU, where she has developed the graduate program in RJE, and co-author of The Little Book of Restorative Justice in Education. Aundrea is Assistant Professor of Teacher Education at EMU, an EMU alumna from the first RJE cohort, and a career educator with over 17 years of experience in the field.
David Evans
The opening teaching session will feature David Evans, Professor of History and Intercultural Studies at Eastern Mennonite University. His forthcoming book, Damned Whiteness: How White Christian Allies Failed the Black Freedom Movement, explores the work of Dorothy Day, Clarence Jordan, and Ralph Templin in the context of the long Black Freedom Movement.
Workshop Sessions
Workshops will feature a nonprofit organization accompanying children in detention, advocates for racial, social, and economic justice in public policy, learning for trauma-informed spiritual care, as well as current practices for restorative (even transformative) encounters in local communities. The schedule also holds time and space for creative processing and incubating actionable plans.
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Extended Workshop Session
Anabaptism at 500: The Anabaptist Community Bible
Facilitated by John D. Roth
Project Director, Anabaptism at 500
Professor of History (ret.) at Goshen College
Becoming Resilient Leaders with Trauma-Aware Practices
Facilitated by Courtney Joyner
Assistant Professor of Formation
Co-Director, The Shalom CollaboratoryMore Options and Additional Details Coming Soon
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Shorter Workshop Sessions
Restorative Justice as Transformative Encounter
Facilitated by Joe Cole
Associate Director of Restorative Justice
Center for Justice and Peacbuilding
Explore how a restorative justice (RJ) gathering can become a “Transformative Encounter.” Restorative practices support growth, learning, and healing for participants, and RJ processes can be life-changing for everyone involved–the person harmed, the person who caused harm, facilitators, and community members. This session will engage transformative values, a transformative process, and the transformative presence of the participants through dialogue and group activities.
Restitutio Divina
Developed by biblical scholar Stephanie Day Powell (EMU) and pastoral theologian Leah Thomas (AMBS), restitutio divina (“divine restoration”) is an embodied practice of biblical reflection and a pastoral theological response to somatic experience, suffering, and trauma. Building on the contemplative practices of lectio divina and visio divina, restitutio divina engages participants in a reflective meditation with biblical narrative and artistic works of reception in order to facilitate an affective exegetical experience. Restitutio divina also draws on the insights of Somatic Experiencing, a psychological approach to healing embodied trauma developed by psychologist Peter Levine. Join us for this dynamic contemplative encounter with sacred scripture.
Book Discussion: The New Jim Crow
Facilitated by Jacob Alan Cook
Assistant Professor of Christian Ethics
Co-Director, The Shalom Collaboratory
Jake will facilitate a discussion of Michelle Alexander's award-winning book The New Jim Crow.
Accompaniment as a Restorative Practice
Facilitated by Ms. Iesha Wiliams, Rev. Ashley Diaz Mejias & Rev. Lauren Ramseur
Explore what accompaniment looks like in ministry with youth (ages 11-21) who are in detention and prison, what we have been learning on this journey and we’ll explore together practices to implement this model as a restorative framework in your context.
In her weekly exegetical blog “Dear Working Preacher”, professor Karoline Lewis of Lutheran Seminary shares, “Accompaniment is not simply having someone beside you. Accompaniment is not a mere ministry of presence. Accompaniment means active and assertive abiding—an abiding that enters into places of fear and discomfort, uncertainty, and troubled hearts, and speaks the truth freely.”Voices of Jubilee is a community of pastors, returning citizens and volunteers who meet isolation with connection by accompanying incarcerated youth and their families. We are a ministry of the Presbytery of the James (PCUSA) and located in Richmond, Virginia.
More Options and Additional Details Coming Soon
Engage the work of organizations like:
This event has been designed in collaboration with the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding and the Zehr Institute for Restorative Justice.
