Hosted by Nate DeGroot, Director, The Shalom Center
and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, Executive Director, Kairos Center for Religions, Rights, and Social Justice
In this session, we will explore the common language that is inspiring belonging and action among faith-based communities. How are leaders and organizations using spiritual values to motivate and create community? How are we relating to each other? How do we hold the tension between the particular of our own traditions and the broader world? This sense-making dialogue will draw from participant wisdom to explore what is the role of faith in collective thriving and to what extent are our faith practices contributors to world wisdom.
This dialogue will further consider what spiritually-driven activism looks like. In particular, what does an alternative of faith-based political action rooted in compassion and connection look like? What can we learn from the field about how we handle spiritual bypass on the one hand and political bypass on the other? Exploring the wisdom of our broader community, this session will attempt to understand how we can better support the role of spiritual values in creating powerful systems of ethical accountability at the grassroots level – the foundation for any larger, systemic change.
Zoom links will be emailed within 24 hours of registration. Please contact us at events@garrisoninstitute.org with questions.
HOSTS
Rabbi Nate DeGroot, Director, The Shalom Center: Rabbi Nate DeGroot became The Shalom Center’s new Director in October of 2024, when, after 41 years at the helm, Reb Arthur Waskow passed the organization’s leadership to Nate. As Director, Nate is helping to steward the organization into its next chapter, reimagining Jewish holidays as portals for public prophetic action and building a national movement of sacred justice rooted in the Jewish calendar. Before becoming Director, he served as The Shalom Center’s National Organizer and Associate Director, supporting the organization’s generational transition. Ordained at Hebrew College in 2016, Rabbi DeGroot has served as Associate Director, Spiritual & Program Director at Hazon (now Adamah) in Detroit and as a Jewish Emergent Network Rabbinic Fellow at IKAR in Los Angeles, where he had also served as Rabbinic Intern. While in rabbinical school, DeGroot founded a grassroots cooperative Jewish community in Portland, OR, called Mikdash: Portland’s East Side Jewish Cooperative. Nate has served as a facilitator with Encounter, he was a Rabbinical Student Year in Israel Fellow with T’ruah, and he has worked with AJWS, the Amir Project, and more. He has been published in various articles and book chapters, and was an invited speaker at The Chautauqua Institution. Living in Detroit, Michigan with his wife and two kiddos, Nate also serves locally as a part-time congregational rabbi, educator, and service-leader.
Rev. Dr. Liz , Ph.D., Executive Director, Kairos Center for Religions, Rights, and Social Justice: The Reverend Dr. Liz Theoharis is a theologian, pastor, author, and anti-poverty activist. She is the Director of the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights, and Social Justice and Co-Chair of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. Rev. Dr. Theoharis has been organizing in poor and low-income communities for the past 30 years. Her books include: You Only Get What You’re Organized to Take: Lessons from the Movement to End Poverty (Beacon, 2025), We Pray Freedom: Liturgies and Rituals from the Freedom Church of the Poor (Broadleaf Press, 2025) and Always with Us?: What Jesus Really Said about the Poor (Eerdmans, 2017) and she has been published in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Politico, Sojourners and elsewhere. Rev. Dr. Theoharis is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA) and teaches at Union Theological Seminary. She has been awarded the Freedom Award from the National Civil Rights Museum, the Selma Bridge Award, the Women of Spirit Award from the Presbyterian Church (USA) and many others.