Pace e Bene

In 2007, Pace e Bene facilitated a two-day nonviolence training with the conveners and signers of the Goodsoil Covenant, a pledge to work actively to end discrimination of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Lutheran clergy by opposing policies and promoting parallel structures in the Evangelical Church of Lutherans in America.

As former Pace e Bene staff-member Laura Slattery reports, “Over 100 people in the Sierra Pacific Lutheran Synod have signed this covenant. The workshop was held with twenty of the signers, many of whom have been involved in the struggle for the inclusion of all people and the embracing of a more embodied spirituality within the Church for over a decade.  We began the workshop with an exercise fostered to build community and to remind the participants of their common bond.  Then, through interactive exercises, group sharing, a video and a bit of input, participants delved deeply into the practice and philosophy of nonviolence, starting at the personal level and leading them into an understanding of how social movements work.

“By the end of the first day they were able to analyze their own movement for justice using the tools that we had presented. The second day focused specifically on their movement and the next steps that they would take.  From the training emerged four committees that will take the following four actions:  1) Educating people in the Reconciling in Christ congregations regarding goals of Good Soil; 2) Producing and showing a Video Quilt of stories from their respective congregations at the next Synod Assembly; 3) Investigating and listing all of the inconsistencies with how the policy banning GLBTQ people from the clergy is applied and then meeting with the Bishop to discuss it; 4) Gathering together and posting on the GoodSoilSPS website a list of resources for congregations/conferences that use Gender Inclusive language.”