Update from Dr. Emma Farrell, February 21, 2025

Dear Beloveds,

I write to you from a place of deep reflection and inspiration. This week, I have the profound honor of attending the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference, a national annual gathering dedicated to nurturing, sustaining, and mobilizing the African American faith community. It is a space of wisdom, courage, and collective power, where faith and justice meet in ways that challenge the mind, stir the soul, and call the body into action.

I cannot fully describe the experience, but I will try. To be a guest—a minority in a cultural space—offers a broadening perspective. It is humbling. It compels me to listen more deeply, to step outside my own context, and to witness faith in a way that is embodied, urgent, and alive. There is a deep invitation here: an invitation to alterity, to step into another’s lived experiences with an open heart and an open mind. And when we do, we are transformed.

In this sacred space, I have seen a radical commitment to justice—not just in words, but in action. I have seen a people standing firmly in faith, unshaken by fear, and bound together by the belief that liberation is not just a hope but a divine calling. I have heard truth spoken from the pulpit with boldness and conviction. I have felt the energy of a congregation that does not sit passively but engages with their whole being.

When the preacher says, “Every good leader feels the suffering of his people” (Rev. Dr. F. Bruce Williams, Sr.), the people respond with audible assent. When the call is made, “The most effective tool of oppression is the oppressed mind” (Allan Boesak), the room erupts in claps of affirmation. And when the truth is spoken about “…the psychopath in office who uses the power given to him by the people *on* the people,” the people rise to their feet in a collective declaration that they will not be silent, that they will not be moved.

This kind of worship does not allow for passive spectatorship. It evokes full, embodied participation. It calls us to bring our whole selves—our joys, our struggles, our righteous anger, and our relentless hope. Friends, I wish you could be here with me to witness it. But know this: you are here in my heart. You are present in my prayers. And I carry back with me not just stories, but an invitation—for us all—to listen more deeply, to love more boldly, and to come alive for justice.

With love and solidarity,

Emma