Fellowship
The Faith & Justice Fellowship
A nine-month journey, from September to May, of theological formation for exploring the spiritual and public dimensions of Christian faith. Experience the Faith and Justice curriculum with a cohort of peers! In addition to network activities, cohorts typically meet 2x a month. How to Join: (1) Join the Network. (2) Sign up for a specific cohort inside the F+J platform.
You can do the fellowship from anywhere in the world.
For over ten years we have seen the fruits of face-to-face cohorts meeting regularly over the course of the year focused on pressing spiritual questions. We continue to be committed to a fellowship that flourishes through in-person learning community.
At the same time, since 2012 we have been involved in distance learning programs in partnership with a broad array of accredited educational institutions. Hundreds of students from over a dozen U.S. states have gone through our various distance learning programs. Thanks to our innovative use of online educational technology, you can do the fellowship from anywhere in the world.
Prior to COVID-19: Regional participants had six Saturday gatherings and three retreats throughout the year. Distance participants had three immersions over the course of the year.
In light of COVID-19: We are continuing to monitor the situation and will be announcing specific events, as feasible. As we move online, in order to maintain as much of the relational component as possible, we will focus on doing more frequent online, synchronous sessions, both small group and large group, including monthly webinars and chapel services. While there is no substitute for being together, we will continue to prioritize relational connection in a variety of safe and creative ways.
Laity & Pastor Cohort | 2-3 hrs/wk
Fellows engage in a wide array of activities, from regular cohort meetings to monthly Saturday morning sessions with a guest speaker to 2-3 annual gatherings/retreats.
Academic Cohort | 8-12 hrs/wk
Students on the academic track should expect varying lengths of time for different individuals, depending on their learning styles. On average, participants should plan to spend 3-5 hours/wk reading + 1-2 hours in reflection/discussion each week + 4-5 hrs/wk on course assignments.
It is possible to do the work of the fellowship for advanced standing with credit at one of our partner seminaries:
- Austin Theological Seminary
- Fuller Theological Seminary
- Pittsburgh Theological Seminary
- Western Theological Seminary
Our students have gone on to study at each of the seminaries above as well as Luther Theological Seminary, Princeton Theological Seminary, and Wesley Theological Seminary. Please visit our Seminary page for more info.
- Tuition for Cohorts: In addition to network membership ($240/yr), cohort tuition is $900 (Sep-May); occasionally, we also offer short-term cohorts (with announcements on our blog and via social media channels). Additional retreats, conferences, and immersion trips have separate registration costs.
- Additional Costs: Fellows should also plan on book purchases ($200 over the course of the year). Optional retreats and other regional gatherings will have separate registration fees.
Participants make quarterly payments of their remaining tuition balance after the application fee and confirmation deposit. Scholarships are available; we encourage early application for full consideration.
- Join the Network: You can join anytime via a monthly or annual membership. Join here today!
- Enroll in a Cohort: Open enrollment for cohorts is June through August inside our platform.
If you have any questions, please drop us a line at info@faithjustice.net.
Cohort Descriptions
Cohorts follow the monthly programming of the Faith and Justice Network as their core curriculum while using specially selected themes as a lens for interpretation and application. It is a great way to dive deeper and build community around an even more specific set of questions.
Adam Bailon
Theme/Lens: The Enneagram + Justice. This group will engage at the intersection of Enneagram type and justice. We’ll explore questions like, “How have aspects of my personality structure been entangled with oppression? and, “How can freedom within my personality structure contribute to the way of justice?”
The group will be in conversation with the core curriculum and emphasize working with our Enneagram type structures to build capacity for kind self observation, develop compassion, and find freedom for ourselves and one another. Some Enneagram familiarity will be beneficial for participants but no prior Enneagram knowledge is required.
Meeting Time: Wednesdays 4:30-5:30pm PT / 7:30-8:30pm ET (2x each month)
Adam Bailon is an Enneagram practitioner in the Narrative Tradition. He delights in the sacred witnessing of people discovering compassion and love for themselves and their most estranged other. He comes from a background of pastoral ministry and is passionate about the way working with personality structure can contribute to greater wholeness in individuals and justice in our world.
Angie Hong and Peter Choi
Theme/Lens: Faith, Justice, and Asian American Identities. Just as it is hard to define what it means to be “Asian American,” it is difficult to understand what seeking faith and learning justice might mean for Asian Americans. This cohort will be a space of mutual support and communal learning as we explore matters of faith, justice, and identity together.
Meeting Time: Thursdays 5:00-6:00pm PT / 8:00-9:00pm ET (2x each month)
Angie Hong is a worship leader, writer, and speaker focusing on identity, theology, and worship. She co-founded Kinship Commons, a worship collective centering BIPOC and has written for Faith and Leadership and The Atlantic.
Peter Choi is director of the Faith and Justice Network, on the Core Doctoral Faculty at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, and author of George Whitefield: Evangelist for God and Empire.
Brian Cropper Heredia
Theme/Lens: Education and Belonging. Alongside the Faith and Justice curriculum we will explore how, despite fervently seeking the highest humanistic values, our pedagogical vision for students has been infiltrated by what Willie James Jennings prophetically diagnoses as a“diseased social imagination” (2020). How might educators embrace new perspectives and partnerships to foster belonging with those students and families for whom the classroom is not yet a beloved community? This group is open to educators broadly conceived: (past, present, and future) teachers, administrators, counselors; anyone interested in using education as a site for theological reflection.
Meeting Time: Thursdays 5-6:30pm PT / 8-9:30pm ET (2x each month)
Brian Cropper Heredia is an interdisciplinary high school teacher and school leader with a background in comparative theology and international relations. Over more than a decade of experiential education in both urban and outdoor settings, Brian has facilitated trips to Alaska, Israel and Palestine, and Los Angeles (to name a few!) with groups of young people, their families and educators in the hopes of empowering them to engage the world curiously and expressively.
Daniel José Camacho
Theme/Lens: The Long History of Christianity and Race. This is a group for anyone wanting to take a deeper dive into Christianity’s relationship to the birth of modern racism. In addition to having more time to discuss race-related readings from the fellowship curriculum, we will explore topics such as supersessionism, slavery in the early Church, and Spanish Christian colonialism.
Meeting Time: Thursdays 1:00-2:00pm PT / 4:00-5:00pm ET (2x each month)
Daniel José Camacho is a writer and editor. Previously a contributing opinion writer at the Guardian and an associate editor at Sojourners, his work has appeared in publications such as The Revealer, Religion News Service, America Magazine, ABC Religion & Ethics, and in the essay collection The God Beat: What Journalism Says about Faith and Why It Matters. Daniel is currently working on a book about Bartolomé de las Casas with Avid Reader Press.
D.L. Mayfield and Krispin Mayfield
Theme/Lens: Deconstructing White Evangelicalism. This group is for folks looking to retain elements of the Christian faith while doing the work of unpacking the ideologies of white evangelicalism. Understanding the ways these insidious theologies have impacted us on a personal and systemic level is important if we want to imagine that another world is possible. This cohort will make space for processing the past and present, identifying dominant culture theology in our own lives, and making connections to the ethics of white Christian nationalism making continuous headlines.
Meeting Time: Thursdays 6:00-7:00pm PT / 9:00-10:00pm ET (2x each month)
D.L. Mayfield is an author who focuses on white evangelicalism and the ethics of (un)neighborliness, and who is currently in the deconstruction process herself.
Krispin Mayfield is a trauma-informed therapist who recently wrote a book on attachment theory and evangelical theology, and why white evangelicalism in particular sets us up for insecure attachment with the Divine.
Fred Harrell
Theme/Lens: A Pastoral Theology and Ministry of Inclusion. What does it look like to build communities of inclusion and flourishing? It’s a simple question of utmost importance. This cohort will provide a space of collaborative and imaginative work for pastors striving for a robust theology and ministry of inclusion as integral to the calling of Jesus.
Meeting Time: Wednesdays 10:00-11:00am PT / 1:00-2:00pm ET (2x each month)
Fred Harrell is the founder and senior pastor of City Church San Francisco.
Julie Rodgers
Theme/Lens: Reimagining Belonging. Additional details coming soon…
Julie is a Teaching Fellow at the Faith and Justice Network and a writer and speaker on faith and sexuality. She has a Masters in English from the University of Dallas and she’s written about topics related to LGBTQ Christians in The New York Times and Washington Post, among other publications. Previously, Julie served in the Chaplain’s Office at Wheaton College and worked in high school ministry in West Dallas. She is the author of Outlove: A Queer Christian Survival Story.
Mihee Kim-Kort
Theme/Lens: Vocation and Spiritual Leadership. For those who serve in leadership positions it is a vocational necessity to make space for cultivating structures of care for oneself (clergy and staff), for those in leadership, and for the church. What would it mean to consider vocation in a way that is grounded in care, attention, and orientation towards the Triune God within? This cohort will be for those who are clergy or in church leadership positions looking to make space for regularly engaging in deep and thoughtful work for their ministry.
Meeting Time: Tuesdays 11:00am-noon PT / 2:00-3:00pm ET (2x each month)
Mihee Kim-Kort is a Presbyterian minister, agitator, speaker, writer, and slinger of hopeful stories about faith and church. Her writing and commentary can be found in the New York Times, TIME, BBC World Service, USA Today, Huffington Post, Christian Century, On Being, Sojourners, Faith and Leadership, The Revealer. She is co-pastor with her spouse of First Presbyterian Church in Annapolis, MD and a doctoral candidate in Religious Studies at Indiana University with research interests in religion, literature, and race.
Mira Sawlani-Joyner
Theme/Lens: Cross-Racial Solidarity. Performative allyship is both frustrating and exhausting and is no longer a sufficient response to systemic racism and interracial division. In this cohort, let us partner together to do the deep conversion work to transform us from allies to co-conspirators of one another’s plight for justice. We will learn how the inward journey can transform how we see our neighbors and we will discuss the challenges and obstacles of justice, particularly where race intersects with socio-economic class, gender and sexuality, in multi-racial communities. It is my desire that through openness and honesty towards one another as we strive to follow the way of Jesus, we form a Christian witness that will propel us towards more intentional and transformational social action.
Meeting Time: Fridays 9:00-10:00am PT / 12:00-1:00pm ET (2x each month)
Theme/Lens: Trauma-Informed Faith and Justice. You might have heard the saying “hurt people, hurt people.” A faithful Christian public witness to issues of social justice must begin from an inward journey of healing in order to inform our outward journey as healers. In this cohort, we will discover how our spiritual practices can bring awareness to both the hidden and unhidden wounds that we carry. It is in confronting our inward wounds that we are able to connect with the wounds of others from a place of compassion. From a trauma-informed approach, our response to justice issues can interrupt cycles of violence that allow for injustice to continue generation after generation. In this cohort, we will work together to cultivate a space for healing in our commitment towards developing a trauma-informed approach to social justice.
Meeting Time: Tuesdays 6:00-7:00pm PT / 9:00-10:00pm ET (2x each month)
Mira Sawlani-Joyner is a Hong Kong born, “third culture kid” of Indian and Philippine heritage. Navigating multi-cultural spaces has been her lived experience and has informed her work in ministry in Hong Kong and Australia, and as the former Community Pastor in Forefront Church in Brooklyn, NY. She currently serves as the Associate Pastor of Spiritual Formation at Peace Fellowship Church, a church committed to working with community organizers and activists to end gun violence in Washington, DC through its social justice arm, Peace Walks DC. She is also a recent MDiv grad of Wesley Theological Seminary, where she specialized in Public Theology.
Riana Shaw Robinson and V Kehoe
Theme/Lens: Flourishing as Women of Color. This is an intentional community of Women and GNB folks of color that are navigating contexts dominated by whiteness. We’ll center the voices, experiences, and writings of Women of color and GNB folks of color to seek wisdom, faith, solidarity, and wholeness. You can expect a time of laughter, real talk, and a bit of a critical edge. This cohort welcomes both alumni and first-timers.
Meeting Time: 2nd Thursday + 4th Tuesday 6:00-7:30pm PT / 9:00-10:30pm ET
Riana Shaw Robinson is a preacher, pastor, and prophet. Riana is passionate about speaking the truth in love, offering a constant invitation for people to see themselves as beloved, and providing various ways to respond to the command to love God, self, and neighbor. Riana recently served as the Associate Pastor of Formation and Oakland City Church (OCC) where she spearheaded efforts to help the community live more deeply into its anti-racist values. Riana is an East Bay native, a mom of four, and a graduate of Mills College and Pacific School of Religion.
V Kehoe lives in Union City, CA (her hometown!) and loves improving systems, going dancing, building communities, engaging in countercultural spiritual practices, and looking back to see that her community is more Christ-like than it was 10 years ago. She has been involved with the Faith and Justice Network since 2009. In her professional life she has been a teacher, a family ministry leader, a technology consultant, a QA engineer, and a product manager.
Join the Fellowship
Sign up for a nine-month journey through the Faith and Justice curriculum with a cohort of peers.