PRAYING WITH OUR FEET 2024

2024 4-Day Travel Seminar
Travel seminar to Montgomery, Selma and Birmingham during the Presidents' Day weekend

​This is a 4-day ecumenical program in justice-seeking Christian theological education. Our goal is to help you explore theological questions and perspectives in a supportive, mentoring community where your views, talents, and insights are respected and encouraged.
Program Details
  • February 16-19, 2024
  • For 9th-12th graders
  • Sliding scale fee ($50-560)
  • Application Deadline: January 5, 2024
We will depart from the Emory University campus by chartered bus to explore iconic civil rights sites in Montgomery, Selma, and Birmingham. Our hope is that the rich experience of these places will bring a depth and energy to the process of learning about the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Imagine reading Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” near the site of the historical Birmingham jail or following a viewing of the film, Selma, by stepping off the bus to walk across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. In the midst of our historical exploration, we will dig into the theological tools civil rights leaders used to make sense of their struggle. 

We will each have the opportunity to reflect on the usefulness of these and other theological tools for our own time and struggles. We will grapple with the context and challenges of our own time, hoping that each of us will end our trip with new courage and insight.
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As with all our programs, a key component of your learning process involves each other. Because we bring together youth from diverse racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, national, denominational and religious backgrounds, you’ll learn about other people, and learn how to engage honestly and respectfully with people  whose experiences, commitments, and perspectives are different from yours. The ways you will grow from this aspect of your experience will serve you in countless ways throughout your life. 
Why does faith lead some people to fight for civil rights while seeming to lead others to fight to restrict those rights?
The Types of Questions We Explore During This Program:
  • What happened in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s? 
  • What can that era teach us about our own time?
  • What does the Civil Rights movement look like today and what does it have to do with theology?
  • Why wasn’t Martin Luther King, Jr. consumed with rage for those who did such horrible things? Was he “just a saint” or did he have special tools for rising above hatred, fear and anger? 
When I marched in Selma, my feet were praying. —Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel