OxTalks will soon move to the new Halo platform and will become 'Oxford Events.' There will be a need for an OxTalks freeze. This was previously planned for Friday 14th November – a new date will be shared as soon as it is available (full details will be available on the Staff Gateway).
In the meantime, the OxTalks site will remain active and events will continue to be published.
If staff have any questions about the Oxford Events launch, please contact halo@digital.ox.ac.uk
Broad-based community organizing (BBCO) is perhaps the most widely used form of political participation supported by U.S American religious institutions today. As organizing groups become more religiously diverse, however, so do the conceptions of sacred value that ground organizing in the first place. In today’s political climate in the U.S. what we hold most dear, those sacred values such as human life, a land, or a natural resource may seem to only further entrench us in our enclaves and threaten the solidarity of any constituency. Rather than focusing on the potential for solidarity in sacred values, organizing networks have marginalized them, doubling down on a strategy of building group solidarity through common issues rather than diverse religious ethics. This lecture explores a different strategy. Dr. Stauffer argues that people organize to protect and fight for what they hold most dear and by centering sacred values organizing networks can build deeper solidarity. Differences of sacred values, rather than aspects of political and religious life to be eschewed, offer a way to build deeper relational power for the work of religious, political, and economic democracy.