The REA Board of Directors has met several times in recent months to discern our most appropriate response as a membership organization about the happenings in Israel & Palestine. The Board followed the Protocol for Public Statements developed by the Public Life Committee in 2021. As these meetings and discussions took place, several members of the Committee on Public Life & Global Community communicated their inability to serve for various personal and professional reasons. The Board, nonetheless, considers it important to offer a collective response. This is an intractable conflict with many ramifications for all members of our organization, and even finding common ground is a struggle. This issue was and remains painful and divisive, and the Board has not reached a resolution or consensus on how to speak about it in a formally worded statement.
The Board wishes to move forward highlighting our identity as a guild that values dialogical processes, reflects our JEDI commitment to transparency in communication, and facilitates religious and interreligious education. In this vein, at the Annual Meeting in July, we will hold space to:
- Work with the Advisory Committee to revise and rethink the protocol of statement-making and the nature of statements made through the Committee on Public Life & Global Community.
- Devote time at the Annual Meeting in July, led by the Board, to discuss how we are responding to issues of war and peace, violence perpetrated in the name of religion, and related topics from our particular contexts.
- Take steps as a Board to reconstitute the Committee on Public Life and Global Community Committee.
The Board of Directors of the Religious Education Association
- Anne Carter Walker
- Patricia Bonilla
- Denise Janssen
- Heesung Hwang
- Dori Baker
- Joshua Lunde-Whitler
- Mark Chung Hearn
- Karen-Marie Yust
- Eunjin Jeon
- Hosffman Ospino
- Joyce Ann Mercer (ex officio)
- Wanda Stahl
- Paulus Kristianto
- Anton C. Vrame
Here is a PDF version of the statement