The St. Charles Center for Faith + Action
Welcome to The Center!
At The Center we create spaces for people of all faiths to learn, unlearn and act; building a community grounded in equity and empathy.
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Learning Over Lunch Webinar
With Genocidal Intentions: The History and Harms of Conversion Therapy Today
Conversion practices—commonly referred to as conversion therapy—constitute the damaging efforts to change queer individuals' sexual orientations and/or gender identities and expressions. Despite the common misapprehension—in North America, at least—that conversion practices are a thing of the past, such anti-LGBTQ+ efforts persist and continue to wreak havoc on countless queer and trans individuals, particularly those in high-control religious contexts. As a survivor of conversion therapy himself, Wilson will present a broadened definition of conversion practices before discussing the prevalence of conversion practices in North America. Wilson will flesh out the ways by which conversion practitioners seek the eradication of LGBTQ+ communities in North America and beyond.
Lucas Wilson is a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow at University of Toronto Mississauga and was formerly the Justice, Equity, and Transformation Postdoctoral Fellow at University of Calgary. A current Humanist Thought Fellow through the American Humanist Association, Lucas is the editor of Shame-Sex Attraction: Survivors’ Stories of Conversion Therapy (Jessica Kingsley Publishers). He is also the author of At Home with the Holocaust: Postmemory, Domestic Space, and Second-Generation Holocaust Literature (Rutgers University Press), which received the Jordan Schnitzer First Book Publication Award. His public-facing writing has appeared in The Advocate, Queerty, LGBTQ Nation, and Religion Dispatches, among other venues. He is currently working on two new anthologies: Don’t Ask, Tell All: Stories of Christian Colleges’ Anti-Queer Regimes (under contract with The University of Georgia Press) and Queer and Trembling: Stories of LGBTQ+ Religious Trauma (under contract with Jessica Kingsley Publishers).
Date: June 23rd
Time: 12:00-1:00 P.M.
Register For Free Here
Center Leadership Speaks at Episcopal Deacons Conference
Serving Others: Multifaith Perspectives on Compassion in Action
The Episcopal Diocese of Louisiana deacons are excited to invite the community to a special multi-faith panel and day of exploration on our shared call to serve!
Clergy and lay of all faith traditions and denominations are invited to attend.
“In a world divided by extremism and growing in isolation, our stories can become bridges. Our stories are ways that we can meet one another in empathy and shared purpose. We all play a sacred role in the work of social justice. Faith in action means taking the love we proclaim inside sacred spaces and turning it outward… into advocacy, into creating equitable spaces for our neighbors, and into the daily work of justice.”
- Paige Davis
Guest Speakers:
Aaron Bloch, Jewish Federation of Greater New Orleans
Paige Davis, St. Charles Center for Faith + Action
Rev. Sam Hubbard, Just Love – Greater New Orleans
Date: June 17
Time: 8:00 A.M. - 4:00 P.M.
Register Here
Solitary Gardens
Solitary Gardens: Freedom to Grow
What is a Solitary Garden? Solitary Gardens both directly and metaphorically ask us to imagine a landscape without prisons. We both directly and metaphorically ask us to imagine a landscape without prisons. Solitary Gardens transforms solitary confinement cells into living garden beds. The beds are designed and remotely gardened by incarcerated collaborators, known as Solitary Gardeners and are tended by community members on the outside.
Donate to the Center
As you consider your gifts throughout the year, we hope you will include the St. Charles Center for Faith + Action. Each donation helps create a community that includes less incarceration and more healing.
Our Commitment to Justice
The Center embraces movements for justice and liberation, partnering with leaders from BIPOC communities. We also affirm the following Land Acknowledgment: We acknowledge that we are on Bulbancha, now called New Orleans. Bulbancha, which means place of many tongues, unceded land of the Chitimacha, the Houma, the Chahta, Yakni (Choctaw), the Atakapa Ishak Chawasha, and all Indigenous peoples of this region.