The 19th annual Bridgefolk conference was held August 13–14, 2021, via Zoom. This year’s conference, Called Together to Face Racial Injustice: Starting Close In, featured the following speakers:
- Laurie Cassidy, PhD, is a theologian and spiritual director currently teaching in the Christian Spirituality Program at Creighton University. Her latest books are The Scandal of White Complicity in US Hyper-Incarceration: A Non-Violent Spirituality of White Resistance, co-authored with Alex Mikulich and Margaret Pfeil, and Desire, Darkness and Hope: Theology in a Time of Impasse, co-edited with M. Shawn Copeland. As well as being an anti-racist activist, Dr. Cassidy has ministered in the area of spirituality for the past thirty years and provided spiritual direction, retreats, and workshops across the United States.
Click here to watch session #1 with Dr. Laurie Cassidy
Opening poem: “Start Close,” by Steven Harper
- Steve Heinrichs is the Director of Indigenous-Settler Relations for Mennonite Church Canada. He is responsible for nurturing relationships of integral justice between Indigenous Peoples and our church body. His home congregation is Hope Mennonite Church, Winnipeg, Man., Treaty 1 territory and homeland of the Red River Métis. His latest book is Be It Resolved: Anabaptists and Partner Coalitions Advocate for Indigenous Justice, ed. with Esther Epp-Tiessen.
Click here to watch session #2 with Steve Heinrichs
Click here to watch session #3, with day 1 evening prayer led by Abbot John Klassen
- Diana L. Hayes is Professor Emerita of Systematic Theology in the Department of Theology at Georgetown. Her areas of specialization are Womanist Theology, Black Theology, U.S. Liberation Theologies, Contextual Theologies, Religion and Public Life, and African American and Womanist Spirituality. Dr. Hayes is the first African American woman to receive the Pontifical Doctor of Sacred Theology degree from the Catholic University of Louvain (Belgium). Her most recent book is Forged in the Fiery Furnace: African American Spirituality.
Click here to watch session #4, with Dr. Diana Hayes
Click here to watch session #5, discussion facilitated by Dr. Margie Pfeil and Nekeisha Alayna Alexis
Click here to watch session #6, with day 2 evening prayer led by Rev. Dr. Elizabeth Soto Albrecht