The 2009, fourth annual Film, Faith, and Justice Conference will be held this October 15-17 at Seattle First Presbyterian Church. This event pairs the movies of the Human Rights Watch Film Festival with keynote lectures from leading theologians and discussion panels that explore the relationship between faith commitments and current issues of social justice. This year’s films, lectures, and panel discussions will be focusing on issues of poverty, reconciliation after genocide, human trafficking, business as mission, and understanding human rights theologically. We invite you, your colleagues and students to participate in this unique event, which is both informative and challenging.
Some of the films to be showcased are:
My Neighbor, My Killer is a film that documents the journey of the people of Rwanda to peacefully coexist after the brutal genocide that occurred between the Rwandan Hutu and minority Tutsi in their country. In 1994, the Rwandan government established Gacaca, open-air hearings with citizen judges, and released confessed genocide killers and sent them back to their villages to face the survivors of their brutality. The film bears witness to the fear and anger, the frustration and forgiveness, the sadness and hope that comes through these hearings, all in the hopes of reconciliation.
Crude is film that takes a look into one of the largest and most controversial legal cases, deemed the $27 billion “Amazon Chernobyl” case. It explores the real life drama and devastation to the lives of indigenous people in Ecuador and their fight for their health, their land, the environment, and their basic human rights against a huge corporate giant. It is a David and Goliath story that is explored in its complexity while bringing an important story and message regarding environmental peril and human suffering into focus.
Our list of keynote speakers include:
Dr. Emmanuel Katongole is a Catholic priest of the Kampala archdiocese in Uganda and co-director of the Center for Reconciliation at Duke Divinity School—a center whose mission is to inspire, form, and support leaders, communities and congregations to think, feel, and live as ambassadors of reconciliation in a broken world. Dr. Katongole’s research interests cover a wide range of issues related to theology and violence especially in Africa. He examines the role of stories in the formation of political identity, the dynamics of social memory and the nature and role of Christian imagination.
His published works include: Beyond Universal Reason; The Relation Between Religion and Ethics in the Work of Stanley Hauerwas (Notre Dame Press, 2000), African Theology Today (Scranton Press, 2002), and more recently, A Future for Africa (University of Scranton Press, 2005). Dr. Katongole serves on the board of the International Academic Advisory Council of St. Augustine’s College of South Africa.
Kelly Johnson is Associate Professor at the University of Dayton, as well as an author and speaker. After earning a B.A. in theology and an M.A. in liturgical studies at the University of Notre Dame (1986, 1987), Kelly Johnson spent several years working with the Catholic Worker in Connecticut and the Peace People in Belfast, as well as teaching in Poland and Tennessee. While writing for her Ph.D. (Duke University) and teaching at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, MN, she helped to start a Catholic Worker house of hospitality. Although teaching at the University of Dayton now occupies the bulk of her time, Dr. Johnson continues to maintain ties to the Catholic Worker and to the Ekklesia Project, an ecumenical association of scholars, pastors, and lay people encouraging Christians to remember their vocation as a historical community whose primary allegiance is to the Body of Christ.
Rob Morris is the president of LOVE146, an organization committed to combating child sex slavery & exploitation with the unexpected and to restoring survivors with excellence. Love146 works toward the abolition of child sex slavery and exploitation through Prevention and Aftercare. To read more about this organization go to their website at www.love146.org.
For more information about the event schedule, a complete list of speakers and films and to buy tickets, go to: www.filmfaithjustice.com.
Also, please feel free to contact me at sbmccrum@yahho.com with any additional questions.
Sarah McCrum
