Religious Education Association Code of Conduct

What is the REA Code of Conduct?

The Religious Education Association Code of Conduct is a standard agreement towards just and equitable practices. All REA members and the guests of members are to abide by the code of conduct upon attending and participating in any REA-sponsored event or gathering. REA events or gatherings include annual meetings and conferences, regional groups, board meetings, steering committee meetings, webinars, and online communities like Discord. The REA code of conduct encompasses in-person and online gatherings and covers all human interactions at REA events and conferences.

Why does REA have a Code of Conduct?

The Religious Education Association adopted a Code of Conduct to live into its JEDI (Justice Equity Diversity and Inclusion) priorities. JEDI priorities include co-creating spaces (both in person and online) that recognize and maintain the human dignity and human differences of each member and participant. The REA seeks to co-create spaces where everyone can enter, engage, and exit with their full humanity intact. In this spirit, we invite all members and participants in the life of the Religious Education Association to build a co-created and co-led space where lasting relationships are nurtured through mutuality and respect. As part of our ongoing commitment to JEDI, we are also committed to responding to code of conduct violations. Responses to breaches of the Code of Conduct includes the restorative practices of the Circle Process. The REA is also open to other modalities of response to breaches, including restorative practices that honor different cultural and religious traditions among our membership.

Who is the REA Code of Conduct for?

The Religious Education Association Code of Conduct is for its members and those who attend REA-hosted spaces as guests and participants. The REA adopted its Code of Conduct in acknowledgment that the strength of our organization is the many ways our members and their lived experiences represent human differences.

REA membership is global, multilingual, and multireligious and includes people of different gender identities, gender expressions, sexual identities, sexual orientations, racializations, and ethnicities. REA members are neurodivergent, disabled, and non-disabled people, including people with neurodivergence and disabilities invisibilized through harmful systems and structures. Our membership includes scholars, practitioners, and those who hold multiple professions across different disciplines. Members are students and professionals of all ages, including those who are emerging in the field of religious education and those who are established leaders in local and global communities.

Recognizing that members are also more than their profession is a humanizing and compassionate commitment. Among our members are people who live into various responsibilities and roles in their families and communities as part of their commitment to religious education beyond Academe and religious institutions. REA desires to recognize and welcome our membership's participation in the organization in the fullness of who they are.

General Guide for Conduct:

The co-creation of a welcoming space that honors human dignity requires commitments to the following:

• As you engage in an REA space, be aware of and work on examining and dismantling negative biases. Negative biases that can harm others include distorted perspectives, assumptions, and judgments around different human identities and embodiments, including race, religion, gender expression and identity, sexual identity, sexual orientation, disabilities, religion, language, and socio-economic location.
• Ask for people's names and pronouns and use them. Avoid assumptions about gender expression and gender identity.
• Use expansive language with the understanding that different cultural and religious expressions are part of how we engage diversity in the REA. Do not discount the diverse and varied cultural and religious expressions that co-exist.
• Utilize explicit consent. Use consent when sharing personal information, including names, contact information, images, stories, or experiences that are not your own. Consent is required in all physical conduct. As a multicultural and multireligious organization, we recognize that different cultural, religious, and personal understandings around physical boundaries between people should not be crossed without explicit consent.
• Embody anti-violence in all interactions, including anti-racist postures. Understand that violence occurs in many historical, physical, and verbal forms. For example, verbally racialized violence can seem innocuous to the perpetrator but feel intensely violent to the survivor due to histories and compounded experiences of racism. What is micro to someone is macro to another.
• Listen to one another's experiences and perspectives with respect but understand that respect does not mean concepts or ideas will go unchallenged if they harm and deny the human dignity of others.
• Remain open to an exchange of dialogue, including opinions and expressions of belief systems that stem from different life experiences, cultures, global locations, and religious traditions.
• Operate in collaboration with other REA members whenever possible.
• Imagination and creativity are pillars of the REA and are actively a part of the lives of religious educators everywhere. We celebrate how our guild, and its members imagine and activate new teaching and learning modalities, creating, and sustaining communities globally and locally and courageously moving into spaces of disruption, renewal, and collective futures. We encourage members and participants to engage in meetings in-person and online in ways that harness and emphasize imagination and creativity in a multicultural, multilingual, and interreligious guild.
• Resist passive by standing when witnessing harm in both in-person and online spaces. Silence and inaction are choices people make in moments of crisis. Understand that silence and inaction can also exacerbate the injury initially catalyzed by explicit violence. Mutuality means accountability. Instead of passive by standing, disrupt violent and harmful discourse individually and collectively when it occurs.
• Attend to personal and relational needs and responsibilities as part of your participation. REA is committed to members who care for infants, children, partners, and/or elders while participating in meetings and gatherings. Members are welcome to meet those needs and responsibilities as part of their participation both in-person and online.
• Understand the difference between intent and impact of actions, statements, and silence. While the intent of an action, comment, or silence may feel harmless to one person or group, the impact of that same action, statement, or silence may cause harm to another person or group. Emphasizing intent over impact diminishes harm. It requires the impacted person or group to explain and prove the harm incurred, which further presumes their labor in violent ways. Impact matters most at the end of the day.

Additional Guides for Online Conduct:

·   Share your name and pronouns on your Zoom (or alternate video conferencing platform) screen.

·   Remain mindful of non-verbal communication and what it might convey to others in the shared online space. Facial expressions and visible gestures on a screen can emote agreement, disagreement, respect, and disrespect.

·   Use emojis, reaction buttons, and other interactive modalities to enhance positive engagement with others in shared spaces.

·   Respect each participant's choice of turning their screen on or off to acknowledge different realities and needs. Not all participants have access to a private or quiet space and may find it easier to keep their screens off, and mic muted. Not all participants wish to share their backgrounds or locations visibly and may find it easier to blur their backgrounds or keep their cameras off. Screens on or off do not necessarily correlate to the level of active engagement.

·   Keep your mic muted when not speaking (unless invited to keep it on) so that others can hear those speaking.

·   As in any in-person space, remain mindful of how much speaking space you take up in a meeting.

·   Decide on the length of the online meeting and stick to it to honor everyone's time commitments.

·   Engage chat space with mutual respect and understand that the chat log is also automatically saved when a meeting is recorded.

·   Sharing files in the chat space should be used with the permission of others in the online space. For instance, ask, "May I share this file with you in the chat?" before sharing a document or image.

·   Ask for consent to record and/or share and store any recording.

·   Ask for consent to take photos and share photos.

·   Use headphones whenever possible to ensure the online space is confidential to those in the online room.

·   Encourage breaks as needed. Whenever possible, take breaks every 90 minutes.

The Circle Process as a Response to Breach of the Code of Conduct:

The Circle Process as Pedagogy

The Religious Education Association operates through mutuality and accountability to co-create spaces of justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion (JEDI). Mutuality and accountability mean that when grief or harm occurs within our membership, we will strive to collectively address this through our commitment to learn, transform, repair, and restore. Therefore, when harm occurs through a violation of the Code of Conduct, we encourage initiating and participating in the Circle Process as pedagogy to learn from, restore, and repair our relationships with one another through storytelling and close listening.

What is the Circle Process?

The Circle Process is built on the concept that we need one another to build peace and understanding in grief and conflict. We enter the circle with mutual values of respect, inclusion, empathy, care, and honesty. Indigenous traditions of the Talking Circle anchor and inform the Circle Process. Community members gather to discuss and process essential issues and histories through stories and careful listening. Indigenous people worldwide still practice different forms of the circle to practice and maintain life together (Pranis, 7). More information on the Circle Process can be found in The Little Book of Circle Processes by Kay Pranis and in many free online resources.

How does the Circle Process work?

1.   A Circle includes a facilitator and participants. The facilitator is not the leader but rather the person who ensures the agreed-upon processes are followed and shared. The facilitator guides the circle through different questions and mirrors back to participants what is shared. If shared values are disrespected, the facilitator may intervene as part of the process.

2.   If in person, the participants and facilitator of the Circle Process sit together in a circle with minimal distractions. If in an online space, participants gather in one online room. We commit to connecting through shared leadership, storytelling, and listening by gathering in a circle.

3.   Before a Circle opens, shared values are named and decided upon through consensus.

4.   Circles are opened and closed using ritual or activity to gather people and set a shared intention for the time and space.

5.   A talking piece ensures everyone is heard and can speak if they wish to talk or hold silence if they want to maintain silence. Only one person can hold the talking piece at a time, and that person may choose to speak or keep silent as they wish. Both speaking and silence are ways we engage in circles together. In an online circle process, the talking piece might be a raised hand or a mutually agreed upon emoji or symbol accessible to everyone on the screen.

6.   A circle may or may not result in a decision or action. The circle operates by consensus when participants want to move forward with a decision or action.

How to Initiate the Circle Process at REA

Any member of REA can initiate a Circle Process as part of our shared commitment to co-created JEDI. A Circle Process can be initiated with a few or all REA members.

The facilitator of the Circle Process is usually the REA JEDI officer.