Spirit Led Nonviolent Direct Action Campaigning

People powered campaigns for change have been a tool to move the pillars of power supporting injustice throughout history. Join this workshop for experiential exercises, worship, reflection, and discussion to build skills in designing strategic people powered campaigns. Expectations for the week are for participants to dive into a very experiential program exploring core tenets…

Workshop Description

People powered campaigns for change have been a tool to move the pillars of power supporting injustice throughout history. Join this workshop for experiential exercises, worship, reflection, and discussion to build skills in designing strategic people powered campaigns.

Expectations for the week are for participants to dive into a very experiential program exploring core tenets of nonviolent direct action campaigning, including the concept of pillars of power and the consent model of power, four roles of social change, spectrum of allies, and sequencing tactics to build a campaign. The intention is that this will be a meaningful taste of a vast tradition of beloved community practicing worship in action, and hope that it will inspire participants to continue spiritually- grounded action for justice in their home communities.

The goals and objectives for the week can be thought of in four categories: the spiritual, the cognitive, the social, and the active.

Spiritual– For participants to feel connected to the social movements behind them and in front of them, and to feel more courageous to step into those movements as their full selves. For participants to feel more sense of belonging within the long arc of justice. For participants to feel more joy and courage about taking action, and for participants to have specific spiritual practices they feel they
can use to ground themselves during actions and protests.

Cognitive– For participants to learn the about Bill Moyer’s four roles of social change, and to appreciate the role of the positive rebel energy in social movements. For participants to learn how non- violent direct action is about power, and is an assertion of the power of people. For participants to learn the basics of non-violent direct action strategy, goals, and tactics, and to feel more comfortable taking action with some specific tactics through role play and scenario discussion by the end of the week. Case studies from work with
the Earth Quaker Action Team will be particularly highlighted to demonstrate some of these pieces.

Social– For participants to feel heard, appreciated, and utilized by their intergenerational peers. For participants to hear stories of faithful action from people across all ages.

Active- For participants to feel empowered to continue taking spiritually-grounded action in their home communities, and to feel more comfortable organizing and working within intergenerational groups.

We will draw from the work of Training for Change and Joanna Macy’s “Work that Reconnects” to choose exercises that are highly experiential, and include an element of imaging the ancestors who have come before, and the generations who come ahead, and how our actions today fall within these timelines.

The basic structure of the workshop will be 15% worship / worship-sharing, 15% lecture: 30% Experiential Activities and 30% discussion. Every day will start with approximately 15 minutes of worship or worship sharing, followed by a brief story from a facilitator or guest about a time they felt spiritually grounded in nonviolent direct action. The bulk of each day will then be spent in a mixture of small groups and large, participatory exercises.

Each day will end with a group discussion of the day’s themes and lessons, followed by singing, moving or some other practice that invokes a tradition from current or past social movements. For example, singing the 19th century American mining union song Step by Step. On Thursday of the week, there will be a role play to practice worship-in action, through participant-designed mock actions. There will be lots of practice moving, singing, and relying on fellow participants in a team setting.

Guests will not be asked to bring any other specific materials and should not incur any other program costs.

Leader Experience

I have led versions of this workshop now many times at FGC– for the first time in 2017 with Walter Hejlt-Sullivan, I think in 2018 or 2019 with Francisco Burgos, and most recently in the virtual FGC in early 2025. I was on staff at Pendle Hill for over 6 years and helped facilitate the Continuing Revolution program there, an experiential program annually for young adults.