This concentration engages learners in a complex interdisciplinary analysis of historical and contemporary social justice struggles and movements. Students will identify and critically evaluate the symbolic systems, power structures, ideologies, values, and religious meanings and practices at play in events and interactions, institutional and social structures, ethical judgments, and living communities, and articulate and enact a vision for increased social justice in these contexts. With a focus on sustainable and community-based practice, the concentration is designed to help people who want to develop an inclusive, collaborative, and justice-based social justice leadership with the cultural capacity and organizational skills necessary for domestic and international religious organizations, diverse non-profit settings, government agencies, educational institutions, the media, and various business and professional contexts.

Demonstrate a complex interdisciplinary understanding of historical and contemporary social justice issues, strategies, technologies, and movements, particularly as they draw upon religious and spiritual values, beliefs, and practices to seek justice.

Engage in contextual analysis of contemporary social justice struggles that demonstrates attention to historical, ideological, political, cultural, racial, gender, economic, religious and other contributing factors that constitute that struggle.

Construct and articulate a contextually-grounded, self-reflexive, and culturally-attentive understanding of social justice that draws on conversation with diverse historical and contemporary theoretical interlocutors.

Identify and employ different ethical frameworks and methodologies employed by individuals, organizations, and communities when determining which praxis to engage.

Identify religious and theological resources, communal and individual practices, and organizing strategies that inform praxis and public leadership towards increased social justice in specific contexts, communities, institutions, and/or policies.

This concentration engages interdisciplinary perspectives on experiences of individual, communal, generational, and historical trauma, including theological, historical, psychological, cultural, and literary approaches. Understanding the structural forces, power dynamics, colonizing practices, ideological and religious beliefs, epidemiological and ecological crises, and psychological factors contributing to traumatic experience will help students recognize, understand, and support/accompany persons and communities who have experienced trauma. Religious trauma, particularly related to expressions of gender and sexuality rejected by some religious communities, will be a particular focus. The wisdom of historical and contemporary survivors of trauma as well as insight from interdisciplinary research will inform constructive practices of lament, recognition, reparation, and healing.

Demonstrate a complex interdisciplinary understanding of human experiences of trauma with depth of knowledge in relation to at least two particular expressions (e.g. generational, historical, religious, psychological, etc.)

Engage in contextual analysis of religious responses to trauma that demonstrate awareness of religion as historically-situated practice and understanding that interacted and changed in relationship to surrounding cultures and subcultures over time, resulting in various expressions located within and influenced by social structures and institutions, historical events, ideologies, and ethnic and cultural worldviews.

Demonstrate knowledge of the inherited wisdom for survival and flourishing of communities of resistance and individual survivors of trauma in conversation with diverse historical and contemporary interlocutors, and articulate one’s own self-reflexive, contextually-grounded, and culturally-attentive vision for religious response to trauma.

Identify religious and theological resources, communal and individual practices, and organizing strategies that enable trauma-informed praxis towards lament, recognition, reparation, healing, and support as an informed interdisciplinary response to trauma in specified contexts, communities, and/or institutional settings.