Aissia Richardson, Director of Outreach and Community Development Office of State Senator Sharif Street, and Ethical Society Member Aissia will talk about the successful campaign to have Juneteenth recognized as a statewide holiday and the ongoing effort to make it a paid day off of work. This Zoom (only) program will be at:   www.tiny.cc/phillyethics

AEU Assembly Platform: All Hands on Deck! (The Importance of the Work of the Many Volunteers Across the Ethical Movement) To celebrate the importance of volunteerism to the Ethical Culture movement, Leader Jone Johnson Lewis will discuss the work of Anna Garlin Spencer and how her work for social justice in the early years of [...]

Living our values means “talking the talk” and “walking the talk.” In that regard, Society member Nick Sanders will say a bit about his values and how he tries to manifest them beyond the Ethical Society in his immediate neighborhood and in the wider world … with a little existentialism and values clarification orientation as [...]

Ruth Dubinsky, PES Member Crucial Conversations – Tools for Talking when the Stakes are High is a go-to resource for navigating the tough conversations that occur in every aspect of life.  Ruth will offer a summary of this step-by-step path to more productive dialog. This Zoom (only) program will be at:  www.tiny.cc/phillyethics

Ken Greiff, PES Member In these days of struggle, it is fitting and proper that we remind ourselves of hopeful strategies, strategies for (as Martin Luther King would put it) the creation of the Beloved Community. The reading for this colloquy will be from a Gandhian website called Soulforce.  The readings are: (1) A Credo [...]

Erik Younge and ERTF members Please join us for an exciting, inspiring, informative program of poetry and discussion on what it means to be Woke...how to ask the hard questions. How to stand up for what is right - even when it is difficult and scary. Ending Racism Task Force members recite poems written from [...]

Christian Hayden In a strange turn of events, Toni Morrison's Pulitzer Prize winning Beloved became fodder for a political ad in the gubernatorial race of Virginia in 2021. Though it is somewhat unsurprising that targeting literature crafted by a Black woman could score easy political points, nevertheless it is unsettling that one of the greatest [...]

Hugh Taft-Morales Leader, Philadelphia Ethical Society This week we return to the archives with a platform, on Zoom, first presented on September 4, 2016. Felix Adler, the founder of Ethical Culture, chose as his first lieutenant John Lovejoy Elliott: a man best known for building caring relationships and friendships that served the marginalized of New [...]

Hugh Taft-Morales Leader, Philadelphia Ethical Society As a society with more weapons than people, the United States clearly has a “gun culture.” Does that explain the plague of mass shootings, crime-related killings, accidents, and suicides by bullet? Causes proffered for this epidemic include mental illness, toxic masculinity, economic desperation, and profiteering by weapon manufacturers, as [...]

Sarah Barringer Gordon University of Pennsylvania Are we heading toward a theocracy and Christian nationalist state? Sarah Barringer Gordon, the Arlin M. Adams professor of constitutional law and a professor of history, is renowned for her work on the ways that religious liberty developed over the course of American history. A frequent media commentator, she [...]