Friday, October 19, 2018 – Sunday, October 21, 2018 All Day

Location
St. Laurence Anglican Church
5940 Lakeview Drive SW
Calgary, Alberta
T3E 5S8, Canada

Speaker/Facilitator:

• The Rev. Laurel Dykstra

Please plan on joining us as we welcome The Rev. Laurel Dykstra http://salalandcedar.com/about/rev-laurel-dykstra/ to Calgary for a three-day event Friday, October 19-Sunday, October 21.  Laurel serves as the founder and Priest of Salal and Cedar, an environmental justice ministry in the Anglican Diocese of New Westminster.  Laurel is an anti-racism trainer and served as the Anglican representative on the planning team for the BC Truth and Reconciliation Commission National Event.  She has been involved in activism and community organizing from a faith perspective since high school in the 1980s and spent more than a decade in Christian intentional communities including L’Arche and the Catholic Worker.  She is a community-based popular educator and has written several books and many articles on the Bible justice.  She has lived most of her life on Coast Salish territory and is an enthusiastic amateur naturalist and birder.

Laurel’s publications include:

• Liberating Biblical Study: Scholarship, Art and Action in Honor of the Centre and Library for the Bible and Social Justice
• Set Them Free: The Other Side of Exodus
• Christians and Feminism: A Guide for Personal Reflection and Group Discussion
• Bury the Dead: Stories of Death and Dying, Resistance and Discipleship
• Wrongs to Rights: How Churches Can Engage the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

We are pleased to be able to offer free registration for students or anyone else in significant need.  Please email [email protected] and we will be happy to register you for a reduced or complimentary rate.

Friday, October 19. 7:30 pm. St. Laurence Anglican Church.  Public Lecture: Reading the Bible in Public.  In a society that is increasingly secular, in neighbourhoods and communities where there are many faith traditions, in a time when punitive legislation and social policy is described as biblical, how can justice-loving people read scripture with integrity?  This lecture will be followed by a wine and cheese reception.

Saturday, October 20. 9:30-3:00 St. Laurence Anglican Church.  The Bible and our Lives: Engaging Scripture as Sacred Story.  Come and spend a day engaging with beloved parts of scripture and with texts of terror.  How can we read the Bible without cherry picking, proof texting, literalism or creating a canon within the canon?  Using poetry, movement, popular education techniques and the tools of biblical scholarship we will grapple with the challenges, beauty and relevance of our inherited tradition.

Sunday, October 21 at 10:00 am. St. Laurence Anglican Church.  Laurel will preach at the worship service.

Early bird registration until October 1st.  Both Friday/Saturday (including Saturday lunch) $50.  Friday only $15; Saturday only $40.

After October 1st, Friday tickets will be $20 and Saturday tickets will be $50.

To help prepare for Laurel’s visit, The Rev. Anna Greenwood-Lee will be offering a two-week study of some of Laurel’s work.  This will take place on Tuesday evenings, September 18th and 25th from 7:30-9:00 as well as on Wednesday afternoons, September 19th and 26th from 1:00-2:30.  Both of these sessions will take place at St. Laurence Church and are free.  The first session will be an overview of Old Testament History.  In the second week, we will look at an article from Laurel’s book, Liberating Biblical Study: Scholarship, Art and Action in Honor of the Centre and Library for the Bible and social Justice.  Copies of the book will be available for purchase for $30 (it is also available as an e-book from Amazon for $10).  It is recommended (but not required) that you purchase a copy for the study.