![]() | This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page . (Learn how and when to remove these template messages)
|
![]() | |
Founded | 2001 |
---|---|
Founder | Rev. Dr. Debra Haffner & Rev. Dr. Larry Greenfield |
Location |
|
Key people |
|
Website | religiousinstitute |
The Religious Institute, Inc. is a progressive American multi-faith organization dedicated to advocating for sexual health, education, and justice in faith communities and society. [1] It was co-founded in 2001 by Debra Haffner, a Unitarian Universalist minister and sexologist, and Larry Greenfield, an American Baptist minister and theologian.
The Religious Institute's initial purpose is "to change the way America understands the relationship of sexuality and religion". Among its objectives are building a network of clergy and other religious leaders who are dedicated to sexual justice, promoting sexuality education in faith communities, and educating policymakers and the general public about a progressive religious view of sexuality.
At its inception, the Religious Institute was a program of Christian Community, Inc. That organization became defunct in February 2012. In March 2012, [2] the Religious Institute incorporated as an independent organization, Religious Institute, Inc, and received IRS recognition as a non-profit educational organization shortly thereafter.
The Religious Institute addresses a variety of sexual and reproductive justice concerns through advocacy, education, and development of resources as well as through partnerships with clergy and congregations, national religious organizations, and sexual and reproductive health organization.
The Religious Institute staff work with clergy, congregations, and denominational bodies on a one-time, short-term, or long-term basis to address sexuality issues. Staff can help choose or plan curricula, develop safe congregation policies, identify local consultants or referral sources, and respond to difficult situations and circumstances around a sexuality issue.
The Religious Institute provides keynote speakers and workshop leaders for congregations as well as regional and national meetings on sexuality, spirituality, and religion; sexuality education for youth, parents, and adults; building sexually healthy faith communities; and other sexuality and religion topics.
Religious Institute staff assist the media in identifying spokespeople from various denominations to speak on sexual justice issues.
The Religious Institute's clearinghouse includes information on sexuality and religion, including practices, resources, trends, and current controversies.
Unitarian Universalism is a liberal religious movement characterized by a "free and responsible search for truth and meaning". Unitarian Universalists assert no creed, but instead are unified by their shared search for spiritual growth. Unitarian Universalists do not have an official, unified corpus of sacred texts. Unitarian Universalist congregations include many atheists, agnostics, deists, and theists; there are churches, fellowships, congregations, and societies around the world.
A religious order is a lineage of communities and organizations of people who live in some way set apart from society in accordance with their specific religious devotion, usually characterized by the principles of its founder's religious practice. It is usually composed of laypeople and, in some orders, clergy. Such orders exist in many of the world's religions.
The United Church of Christ (UCC) is a socially liberal mainline Protestant Christian denomination based in the United States, with historical and confessional roots in the Congregational, Restorationist, Continental Reformed, and Lutheran traditions, and with approximately 4,600 churches and 712,000 members. The UCC is a historical continuation of the General Council of Congregational Christian churches founded under the influence of New England Puritanism. Moreover, it also subsumed the third largest Calvinist group in the country, the German Reformed. Notably, its modern members' theological and socio-political stances are often very different from those of its predecessors.
The mainline Protestant churches are a group of Protestant denominations in the United States and Canada largely of the theologically liberal or theologically progressive persuasion that contrast in history and practice with the largely theologically conservative Evangelical, Fundamentalist, Charismatic, Confessional, Confessing Movement, historically Black church, and Global South Protestant denominations and congregations. Some make a distinction between "mainline" and "oldline", with the former referring only to denominational ties and the latter referring to church lineage, prestige and influence. However, this distinction has largely been lost to history and the terms are now nearly synonymous.
In Christianity, a minister is a person authorised by a church or other religious organization to perform functions such as teaching of beliefs; leading services such as weddings, baptisms or funerals; or otherwise providing spiritual guidance to the community. The term is taken from Latin minister. In some church traditions the term is usually used for people who have been ordained, but in other traditions it can also be used for non-ordained.
The Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (RCRC) is an abortion rights organization founded in 1973 by clergy and lay leaders from mainline denominations and faith traditions to create an interfaith organization following Roe v. Wade, the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion in the U.S. In 1993, the original name – the Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights (RCAR) – was changed to the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice.
Unitarian Universalism, as practiced by the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA), and the Canadian Unitarian Council (CUC), is a non-Creedal and Liberal theological tradition and an LGBTQ affirming denomination.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ+)-affirming religious groups are religious groups that welcome LGBT people as their members, do not consider homosexuality as a sin or negative, and affirm LGBT rights and relationships. They include entire religious denominations, as well as individual congregations and places of worship. Some groups are mainly composed of non-LGBTQ+ members and they also have specific programs to welcome LGBTQ+ people into them, while other groups are mainly composed of LGBTQ+ members.
The United Church of Christ is a Christian denomination. Periodically, bodies within the United Church of Christ issue resolutions for various reasons. These statements may or may not be representative of the United Church of Christ. This article documents notable resolutions from the various formal bodies of the United Church of Christ.
Debra W. Haffner is co-founder and president emerita of the Religious Institute, Inc. A sexologist and ordained Unitarian Universalist minister, she was the endorsed community minister with the Unitarian Church in Westport, Connecticut. Haffner retired from the Religious Institute on April 30, 2016. She became the settled minister at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Reston, Virginia in August 2016 and served there through June 2021. Under her leadership, UUCR was named a breakthrough congregation by the UUA for her creation of the first Pride Festival in Reston. Since 2022, she has been the interim minister at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Huntington, NY.
Pullen Memorial Baptist Church is a Baptist church known for its progressive theology located in Raleigh, North Carolina, US, right beside North Carolina State University. Pullen, called "a fiercely independent Baptist church" whose traditions have "earned it a reputation far and wide as the South's premier liberal church," has a long history of civil rights activism, and is currently a leader on key issues of the day, from LGBTQ rights to activism in Moral Monday protests to alliances with like-minded people in distant places from Cuba to Nicaragua to Georgia in the Caucasus Mountains and Black Sea.
Reproductive justice is a critical feminist framework that was invented as a response to United States reproductive politics. The three core values of reproductive justice are the right to have a child, the right to not have a child, and the right to parent a child or children in safe and healthy environments. The framework moves women's reproductive rights past a legal and political debate to incorporate the economic, social, and health factors that impact women's reproductive choices and decision-making ability.
The multilateral foreign policy of the Holy See is particularly active on some issues, such as human rights, disarmament, and economic and social development, which are dealt with in international fora.
Historically speaking, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people have not been given equal treatment and rights by both governmental actions and society's general opinion. Much of the intolerance for LGBT individuals come from lack of education around the LGBT community, and contributes to the stigma that results in same-sex marriage being legal in few countries (31) and persistence of discrimination, such as in the workplace.
A Sex education curriculum is a sex education program encompassing the methods, materials, and assessments exercised to inform individuals of the issues relating to human sexuality, including human sexual anatomy, sexual reproduction, sexual intercourse, reproductive health, emotional relations, reproductive rights and responsibilities, abstinence, birth control, and other aspects of human sexual behavior.
Sexual and reproductive health and rights or SRHR is the concept of human rights applied to sexuality and reproduction. It is a combination of four fields that in some contexts are more or less distinct from each other, but less so or not at all in other contexts. These four fields are sexual health, sexual rights, reproductive health and reproductive rights. In the concept of SRHR, these four fields are treated as separate but inherently intertwined.
Aahung is a non-governmental organisation which aims to improve sexual and reproductive health. It is based in Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan. It was established in 1994, and in 2013 was awarded the annual Human Rights Tulip prize by the Dutch government.
Northwest Unitarian Universalist Congregation (Northwest) was organized in 1969. The organization of Northwest was the result of action taken by the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Atlanta (UUCA) to establish a new congregation in the northwest suburbs of Atlanta.