Online Workshop Series: Dear Fellow White Christians
Hosted by Peace Lutheran Church – Austin, Texas in collaboration with The 787 Collective of Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary
You are invited to join Lutheran campus minister, author & activist Elle Dowd for a series of 3 workshops on leveraging white privilege in spiritual community. Register here
Please plan to attend all three sessions if you can!
October 13, Wednesday, 6:00 pm to 7:30 pm on Zoom
Storytelling as a Tool to Leverage Your White Privilege in the Church
Narrative is one of the most important tools at our disposal to dismantle white supremacy. Join Elle Dowd (she/her), author of Baptized in Tear Gas, for an interactive workshop on framing our stories to inspire transformation.
October 16, Saturday, 12:00 pm to 1:30 pm
Author’s Event – Baptized in Tear Gas: From White Moderate to Abolitionist
In Baptized in Tear Gas, minister and activist Elle Dowd (she/her) tells the gripping story of her transformation into an Assata Shakur-reading, courthouse-occupying abolitionist with an arrest record, hungry for the revolution. Thanks to deep relationships with people in Ferguson and St. Louis, and to experiencing a fraction of the system for herself–including the fear of rubber bullets, the shock of sound cannons, and running from tear gas–Dowd fully committed to the work of anti-racism and abolition. Now she wants to help other white allies do the same.
October 20, Wednesday, 6:00 pm to 7:30 pm on Zoom
Spiritual Imagination and Social Change
Scripture tells us that our spiritual ancestors dreamed of a world where everyone will have what they need to thrive – a world without white supremacy, where people are healed, the hungry are fed, captives are liberated, and prisoners are set free. Elle Dowd (she/her) will lead us in a workshop on the role of the Church in our collective liberation and teach us about the steps needed to move our dreams into action.
Bio: Elle Dowd (she/her/hers) is a bi-furious recent graduate of the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, a current PhD student at the Chicago Theological Seminary, the campus minister of South Loop Campus Ministry and a candidate for ordained ministry in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Elle has pieces of her heart in Sierra Leone, where her two children were born, and in St. Louis where she learned from the radical, queer, Black leadership during the Ferguson Uprising.
She was formerly a co-conspirator with the movement to #decolonizeLutheranism and currently serves as a board member of the Euro-Descent Lutheran Association for Racial Justice, does community organizing in her city as a board member of SOUL, serves on the Clergy Advocacy Board for Planned Parenthood, writes regularly as part of the vision team for the Disrupt Worship Project, and facilitates workshops in both secular conferences and Christian spaces. In 2021 she published a book with Broadleaf, Baptized in Teargas, about her conversion from a white moderate to an abolitionist is available now in print, e-book, or audiobook.
To get in touch with Elle and to keep up with updates, you can visit her website www.elledowd.com and subscribe to her newsletter. You can also see her online ministry via Facebook.com/elledowdministry, or follow her on Twitter/SnapChat/Insta @hownowbrowndowd, or on TikTok @elledowdministry
And order her book Baptized in Teargas: From White Moderate to Abolitionist here
Or download the audiobook here