“Thinking About Family, Thinking About War: A Picture Worth a Thousand Tears.”

Jon Herman is a recently retired associate professor of religious studies at Georgia State University, where he taught classes in Asian religion, comparative mysticism, and critical theory in the study of religion. He is the author of Taoism for Dummies, and several articles on topics such as interfaith dialogue, contemporary conceptions of “spirituality,” religious studies and public education, environmentalism, Neo-Confucian mysticism, and the late science fiction author Ursula K. Le Guin. He is currently researching for a book on the Jewish existentialist author Martin Buber’s unpublished lectures on the Taoist classic, the Tao Te Ching.

During his retirement, Jon has been authoring “Herman’s Toteboard,” a (liberal) blog offering election analysis and political commentary. You can find the blog at www.thetoteboard.org.

Jon’s wife Ellen has recently retired as the coordinator of Threshold Ministry, an organization providing assistance to the homeless and those suffering other effects of poverty. She had previously worked in religious education, and university, prison, and hospital chaplaincy, and is still working tirelessly to combat homelessness. Jon and Ellen are the parents of two young adult daughters, both adopted from China. Molly is the director of communications and children’s ministry at St. Martin in the Fields Episcopal Church in Brookhaven, and Carly is a student at UGA, studying public health.

• Facilitator – Marsha Mitchiner
• Musician – Kathy McGuire

“Is it hot or is it just me? Some thoughts on perspective”

Our Fellowship Minister, Rev. Marsha Mitchiner, has served the Congregation for
over two decades, since ordination by us, following her study with Lanier Clance.
She counsels, connects, and contacts members and friends, and for those who need it,
performs the laying-on of hands in her role as a massage therapist. Many of us can
vouch for the quality of her work, and appreciate the wisdom, restraint, and compassion
she brings to the job of caring for our Congregation. Marsha speaks once each quarter, and helps smooth the functioning of the Congregation innumerable times in between.

Facilitator: Patton White
Musician: Charli Vogt

‘A Trojan Horse in the News: Neoliberal Academics as “Credible” Sources’

My talk is about how academic scholars — supported by billionaire-funded libertarian and
neoliberal foundations and centers – have become go-to experts for mainstream news
organizations (including the New York Times and Washington Post), and in that capacity
have been able to promote neoliberal ideas and beliefs.

Marian Meyers is a professor emerita in the Department of Communication and a former
affiliate of the Institute of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Georgia State
University. Her most recent scholarly work has focused on neoliberal ideology in
mainstream media and how the media are complicit in promoting and naturalizing neoliberal beliefs and values. Her research interests also include the media’s portrayal of women and other socially marginalized groups from an intersectional perspective that views race, class, gender and other markers of social identity as inextricably connected. She has published articles and books on topics ranging from the status of women in higher education, the portrayal of women in the media, how African American women journalists cover the news, and neoliberalism and the media.

• Facilitator: Libby Ware
• Musician: William Chelton

“The strange origins of religious tolerance in North America”

Dr. H. Robert Baker is Associate Professor of History at Georgia State University and is
the author of Prigg v. Pennsylvania: Slavery, the Supreme Court, and the Ambivalent
Constitution (2012) and The Rescue of Joshua Glover: A Fugitive Slave, the
Constitution, and the Coming of the Civil War (2006). His scholarly articles have
appeared in the Law and History Review, Common-Place, and the Journal of Supreme
Court History. He holds a Ph.D. in History from UCLA, where he studied with Joyce
Appleby. He has been a Fulbright Fellowship and has been a fellow at the Institute for Constitutional Studies. He also writes about wine, law, and contemporary culture for the blog Tropics of Meta.

• Facilitator: Jan Lister
• Musician: Mick Kinney

“What’s on your Bucket List?”

Don Perryman is a graduate of Georgia State U. and a retired teacher of English and gifted ed at high schools around Fulton County. His interests include meals out with relatives and friends, low-stress hiking and camping, philosophizing, swimming laps at our city pool – and poetry. Last year he self-published Hearts Bigger than Brazil, a mostly autobiographical collection of poems written over a lifetime. He currently lives in Roswell with his husband, Gilson Satel.

Facilitator: Lorraine Fontana
Musician: Bill Chelton

“… and Another Black Woman Dies”

I recently wrote an essay about being exhausted. Exhausted by hearing how Black women will save the election, how Black women are so strong, and I am tired of being thanked as a Black woman for marching in causes that will save everyone. Too many Black women are dying too young from what is expected of us by our families, by our communities and by those who fantasize about our presumed strength. I am exhausted — but for the sake of saving my own life, those I love as family and holding up community, I pull myself up each day and do my best to help make an unbiased world a reality. The ebb and flow of building a just society is not new. It is not just in the last 50 years or the last 100 years. I reflect on the heightened levels of discrimination and legal wrangling from the 1850s that still resonate with the same elements of discrimination. Diversity then becomes imaginable, but the same stench of ugly hate is repeated. We are once again at a moment in time to ask ourselves what we can do to build what is possible for everyone — and not depend on another Black woman to do it.

Althea Sumpter is a researcher and scholar who focuses on ethnographic documentation and cultural preservation of the Southern story in the United States. With her native Gullah Geechee culture and her historical connection to the story of Reconstruction Era in Beaufort County, SC, she uses her expertise to teach how to research and document stories of a family and a community. She presents talks and workshops on how to find cultural heritage and to make the link to historical context in community. Her research and work can be viewed at: altheasumpter.com.

• Facilitator: Charlene Ball
• Musician: Mick Kinney

“Why We Must Remember Juneteenth”

Rev. Angela Denise Davis, M.Div., M.S., is an ordained minister, public speaker, activist, and community music teacher. She is the founder of Uke Griot, a program that focuses on
awakening musical skills in adults via the ukulele to increase social engagement and foster joy in making music. She also founded Sister Harriet, a spiritual collective created for queer
women to share their best selves and to find meaning in the sacredness of their lives. Her work as a Minister centers on the fusion of art and spirituality to enrich the ways we move in personal and social spaces. In addition, she is the creator, host, and producer of the ZAMI NOBLA Podcast.

As a Blind, Black Lesbian her public speaking centers around justice issues located at the
intersection of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and disability. She believes her call in
life is to facilitate conversations and theological reflections along the fence line of those
differences. She challenges her audiences to wrestle with the difficult and to support each
other ‘s journey into new territory.

She is a graduate of Clark Atlanta University where she earned a B.A. in Art. She also holds a Master of Divinity from Vanderbilt University Divinity School, and a Master of Science in Rehabilitation Counseling from Georgia State University.

• Facilitator- Jan Lister
• Musician- Jean Heinrich

“All The World Is Crazy, Except Thee and Me: Navigating the
Existential Yin-Yang of Tears and Laughter”

Wade Marbaugh, recently elected by the First Existentialist Board of Directors as Chair of the Board, has been a congregation member since the 1990s. An Ohio native who moved to the South as a newspaper reporter, he married the editor who hired him, Stell Simonton. They raised two children, Anna and Olivia Simonton, who were greatly influenced by First E. Wade majored in political science and minored in communications at Defiance College and earned a Juris Doctor degree at Moritz School of Law at Ohio State University. Those academic experiences and his political activism in Ohio, Alabama and Georgia have inspired a lifetime immersion in history, current events and social justice movements, making possible his Celebration of Life presentation, “All The World’s Crazy, Except Thee and Me.” Additionally, he has always been interested in spiritual matters and the great mystery of our existence. He is deeply grateful to his family, teachers and peers who have contributed to this moment, for as a friend once said to him, “Each of us is both a cause and an effect.”

• Facilitator: Robert Stewart
• Musician- Craig Rafuse

“Free of God”

Leon has wandered for 86 years. Good and bad things have happened to him in this journey. The best things have been a wonderful wife of 63 years, three great adult children, seven beautiful grandchildren, and some spiritual and philosophical growth along the way. Leon has had four careers: Christian missionary, pastor, computer programmer, and addictions counselor, but he says that a part-time job of teacher of English to immigrants was the most fun (8 years). He has gone from fundamentalist Christian to evangelical, to liberal Christian, to agnostic/atheist. His goal now is to learn to love more and better.

• Facilitator: Patton White
• Musician: William Chelton