This is a magnificently beautiful song in honor of the Orixá, Nanã Buruku. In Candomblé, Nanã is an elder, feminine, earth-based energy. She is the energy of the primal connection between earth and water, the holy mud out of which life forms and to wh...
Continue ReadingThere are rumblings in the land. Some good news out of Denver, Colorado. Here is the link to two very moving stories of Colorado-based white American women who decided to pay reparations to African Americans for some of the generational misery sl...
Continue ReadingOn February 21, at the Stella Adler Studio in NYC, poet Sonia Sanchez, public theologian Ruby Sales and musician-producer Toshi Reagon joined Rachel E. Harding for a conversation about Remnants and the meaning of spirituality and social justice in 21st ...
Continue ReadingIn the photo above, from November 2015, Makota Valdina Pinto — an esteemed elder in the Angola Candomblé tradition — offers popcorn in a rite of cleansing and blessing to participants in an annual march for religious tolerance and res...
Continue ReadingWe are proud to announce the upcoming visit to the USA of Iyalorixá Valnizia de Ayrá (Mãe Val) — senior Candomblé priestess and community activist from Brazil. Candomblé is a powerful, poetic and ancestral tradition developed by enslaved ...
Continue ReadingThe Ring Shout is a powerful, ancestral ritual of song and rhythmic movement that Black people in the USA have practiced for many generations. It is a form of worship that we developed during slavery – combining the sacred songs of our strength and ...
Continue ReadingOn May 17, students, faculty and alumni from the Iliff School of Theology gathered to remember and celebrate the lives and spirit of our co-founders, Vincent and Rosemarie Freeney Harding, in honor of the third anniversary of Vincent’s passing. ...
Continue ReadingOn April 4, 1967 Martin Luther King delivered his sermon, “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence,” in the Nave of the Riverside Church in New York City. The sermon became King’s major public statement against the War in Vietnam. King spoke eloquen...
Continue Reading– with Ruby Sales and Michelle Alexander at Riverside Church in NYC, April 4, 2017 The Veterans of Hope Project joins the Iliff School of Theology and Riverside Church for a commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s ...
Continue ReadingMy father wrote this two-page statement on immigration in 2008. He used his experience as a historian and the commentary of his friend and comrade, Rev. Phil Lawson, to reflect on connections between the fugitive ancestors of African Americans and t...
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