Presbyterian & Pluralist Week

10:40-11:40 a.m. – Belk Chapel Rotunda
12:00-1:00 p.m. – Everett Library

Liz Childs Kelly, MA, ’97 is a writer, award-winning researcher, educator, community builder, author of Home to Her: Walking the Transformative Path of the Sacred Feminine, and host of the popular Home to Her podcast, which is dedicated to amplifying the voices of the Sacred Feminine. Her writing has been featured in a variety of online publications, including Forbes, Mashable, Rebelle Society, Human Parts (a Medium publication), and Braided Way, as well as the Girl God Books anthology Just As I Am: Hymns Affirming the Divine Female.

The Sacred Feminine is first and foremost a historical (make that her-storical) fact – as evidenced by an abundance of myths, art and archeological evidence dating back nearly 30,000 years. She is also a powerful spiritual idea in Her own right, with distinct characteristics and principles that distinguish Her wisdom from many of the dominant religious traditions today.

Most importantly, She is the remedy for a world desperately out of balance. Female-identified bodies, along with attributes, emotions and experiences that have traditionally been labeled as “feminine,” have repeatedly and historically been viewed as less important and less relevant than male bodies, attributes, and experiences. The Sacred Feminine represents the drive to restore balance and wholeness first to ourselves, then our communities and our planet.

7:00 p.m. – TBA

Imam Abdullah Antepli will be receiving the 2024 Stan Greenspon Upstander Award which is bestowed upon an individual who has taken great risks and exhibits great courage in responding to hate. His speech that night will be titled, “To Heal Our Broken World: The Role of Interfaith Efforts in Uniting Us.” The program will take place on Tuesday, February 6, 2024 at 7:00 pm at Queens University. Imam Abdullah Antepli is a globally-acknowledged scholar and leader of cross-religious and cross-cultural dialogue in American higher education and in the non-profit world.  His Muslim Leadership Initiative helps young Muslim American leaders understand Judaic and Israeli studies and cultivates compassion in the face of fear and hate.  He has built multiple organizations that facilitate religious and spiritual life on America’s college campuses, sowing seeds of understanding between religions, while upholding their cultural integrity and dignity.  This program is sponsored by the Stan Greenspon Holocaust and Social Justice Education Center at Queens University, the Belk Chapel at Queens University, and Queens Hillel/Jewish Life Program.

10:40-11:40 a.m. – Belk Chapel Rotunda

Rev. LeDayne McLeese Polaski has been the Executive Director of MeckMIN since October 2019. She previously served on the staff of the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America ~ Bautistas por la Paz for 21 years, ending as Executive Director, and she began her career as the Minister of Youth at Myers Park Baptist Church. LeDayne and her husband Tom are active members of Park Road Baptist Church. We are delighted to have LeDayne share her experiences of Interfaith Leadership in Charlotte as part of Presbyterian and Pluralist Week at Queens University.

6:00-8:00 p.m. – Belk Chapel

As a Black woman in this country, with its brutal history of genocide, enslavement, and oppression, Rev. Gail Henderson-Belsito embraces and embodies the hope that empowered her ancestors to endure all that they endured for the sake of future generations. Her antecedents lived with an irrepressible hope for true liberation, if not for themselves, then for their children and their children’s children. Despite the current political and social climate in our world, in our nation, in our city, in our faith communities, and even within ourselves as individuals, Gail remains convinced that, if we are to continue to make progress in the work of peace, liberation, and justice for all, we must exercise muscular hope. Drawing on her faith and her personal story, Gail invites deep reflection about the hope that has “brought us thus far on the way” and challenges us to live into the hope that will guide us forward into the future.

About our speaker: Reverend Gail Henderson-Belsito is a pastor, preacher, teacher, wife, mother, daughter, sister, friend, traveler, and beloved child of God whose deepest desire is to accompany others as they navigate their journeys towards authenticity, belonging, faith, and hope. Among the many things she has done in the church and the world, Gail has served as the associate minister at Caldwell Presbyterian Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, been the keynote speaker at the Montreat Youth Conference, and offered the Tom York Lecture at Knox Presbyterian Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. Gail participates as a member of the Advisory Board for the Katie Geneva Cannon Center for Womanist Leadership at Union Presbyterian Seminary. Before and between all of that, she homeschooled her two children from birth until college, traveled extensively, earned awards and academic scholarships as a student at Union Presbyterian Seminary, learned how to make journals by hand, teaches journaling as a spiritual practice, and owns an impressive collection of Pilot Precise V5 Rollerball pens.

1:00-4:00 p.m. – Uptown Charlotte

Belk Chapel is arranging a trip to the ‘Seeing Auschwitz Exhibit’ in Charlotte. Spaces are limited so sign up if you would like to visit the exhibit.

We will be leaving from the campus at 12:45 p.m. from behind Byrum Parking deck via Turtletop bus.

For more information about the exhibit, go to Seeing Auschwitz: The Exhibition in Charlotte.

Register Now!

6:30-9:00 p.m. – Sandra Levine Theatre

Join us as we screen the documentary, 36 Seconds: Portrait of a Hate Crime, and engage in a valuable discussion with the filmmakers!

Film Description – In 2015, three Muslim-American students were executed while eating dinner in their home in Chapel Hill, NC. In 36 Seconds: Portrait of a Hate Crime, filmmaker Tarek Albaba makes an impassioned case for justice for these innocents and for his community. The film charts the victims’ families’ agonizing overnight pivot from trauma to advocacy as they struggle to prevent their loved ones’ deaths from being dismissed as the result of a random parking dispute.

They courageously speak the truth about the hate crime that has destroyed their lives, about the overt and insidious ways racism plays out in our society and about the need to reform a hate crime system that is broken. This is a project about grace and the will to fight for the truth in the worst of circumstances.