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Vince Palermo

Sojourners’ Jim Wallis to Curate a Timely Interactive Series at the 2016 Wild Goose Festival!

By Goose News

jim wallisAmerica’s Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege, and the Bridge to a New America, the newly released best-selling book by Jim Wallis, Sojourners President and Founder, forms the foundation of the timely interactive series we’re proud to announce he’s curating at the 2016 Wild Goose Festival!

The book is getting enormous traction – Amazon ran out of stock on the first day, it made the Barnes & Noble online top ten, and is number 8 on the Washington Post Top 10 Best Seller list – in just its first week of release.

Join Jim in the conversation at the 2016 Wild Goose Festival (July 7– 10, Hot Springs, NC) as we challenge our community to be more than consumers of information – to be co-creators of a world in which we want to live! Wallis says,

“This conversation—leading to action—on racial justice and healing is critical for the Wild Goose and urgent for the country at this moment. I’m really looking forward to vital discussions and discoveries on the ‘Bridge to a New America’ with the Goose community this summer! Where better to have that discussion?”

America's Original SinBy the way, Amazon has re-stocked and Barnes & Noble is still counting. We encourage you to read and to recommend this important book to literally help launch the conversation that is so painfully timely right now!

Dean Emilie Townes to Present Justice Notes

By Goose News
Dean Emilie Townes Emilie is the new Divinity School Dean. She comes from Yale. (Vanderbilt Photo / Daniel Dubois)

Dean Emilie Townes
Emilie is the new Divinity School Dean. She comes from Yale.
(Vanderbilt Photo / Daniel Dubois)

Imagine taking a walk through five notes on why justice and peace are profound values to hold if we choose to live our lives with passion, commitment, integrity, justice, hope, and love. You’ll have that opportunity at Wild Goose Festival 2016, as Emilie Townes presents, “Justice Notes.”

The Wild Goose is thrilled to welcome Emilie Townes, Dean and Carpenter Professor of Womanist Ethics and Society at Vanderbilt University Divinity School, to the festival this year! Dean Townes is a widely recognized leader, a creative innovator, a clear and certain voice in the pursuit of justice and she will be an important contributor to our community. Dean Townes is the first African American to serve as Dean of the Vanderbilt Divinity School and the first Black woman elected to the presidency of the American Academy of Religion (AAR). The Durham, NC native is an American Baptist clergywoman. She holds a Ph.D. in Religion in Society and Personality from Northwestern University and a Doctor of Ministry degree from the University of Chicago Divinity School. She has taught at Yale Divinity School, Union Theological Seminary, and Saint Paul School of Theology. Townes is the author of four books, including the groundbreaking Womanist Ethics and the Cultural Production of Evil and editor or co-editor of four books.

“We must choose righteous anger that does not excuse inequities, does not tolerate poverty, does not sanction false hopes.  Righteous anger takes to the ballot box, encourages us to claim the responsibility of citizenship and educate ourselves about the issues of the day and also the ways we can address them, works as communities united with a vision that refuses to accept a weary status quo that allows a few to flourish and the rest struggle to survive.”

Read Emilie’s blog.

Professor Emilie Townes speaks of Jesus’ righteous indignation and our need to be angry in the face of injustice.

Triple GRAMMY® Nominee Matt Maher to Play the 2016 Wild Goose Festival

By 2016 Festival, Goose News

matt maherMatt Maher, a Grammy nominated musician whose latest release, Saints and Sinners is a call for social justice rooted in the work of historic faith leaders such as Archbishop Oscar Romero, Martin Luther King Jr., St. Therese of Lisieux, and Mother Teresa, joins the 2016 Wild Goose opening night experience! Many Goose faithful have been asking for Matt for years and we’re excited that we’re finally able to get it done!

Matt is up for three GRAMMY® nominations in tonight’s 58th Annual GRAMMY Awards. He was nominated twice in the “Best Contemporary Christian Music Performance/Song” category and his album, Saints and Sinners, was nominated for “Best Contemporary Christian Music Album.”

Here’s Matt giving the backstory of Sons & Daughters one of the song and his self-described centerpiece of the album:

Moving to Nashville, the South, I encountered a greater understanding that so much of the American tradition of music was born out of the slavery movement- rock ‘n’ roll, gospel, country, R&B, hip-hop. It all goes back to a group of people who were enslaved and who desired freedom. I had been wanting to write a song based on the speech ‘We Shall Overcome’ by Dr. Martin Luther King. I asked a buddy of mine – fellow worship leader and songwriter Ike Ndolo, who grew up in Columbia, Missouri – to write with me.

I took what we had started, and asked Ike to, ‘Draw from your experience as an African-American male living in the shadow of the civil rights movement still praying for all those things to bear their fruit.’ It’s really the job of the church today to finish what was started in the ’60s. Just because you can outlaw racial discrimination doesn’t mean you get rid of it. This heart behind this song was to inspire other people. I have to think that there are other leaders in the church right now who have a burden on their heart to help lead a movement like this. I think it’s the centerpiece of the whole record; it’s a really special moment.

Root for Matt at tonight’s Grammy’s, buy your Wild Goose tickets, tell others about the Goose, and get ready for a wild time this July 7 through 10 in Hot Springs, NC!

Son & Daughters (Lyrics)

How free is anyone, when some are still in chains
Slaves to brokenness, all this blindness
How free is anyone, when all these doubts remain
In the dead of night, no sign of the light
Child don’t grow weary, soon we will see the sun
All my brothers help each other
All my sisters walk together
No one is a stranger
We’re all sons and daughters
Join hands with everyone, don’t you hear the song we sing
Oh there might be tears, but we are more than our fears
We are marching on, but there’s a price we have to pay
For love means taking on, the weight of what was won