Speaker Bios
Dr. Marvin Ellison is a Christian Ethics professor whose research and writing has focused around human sexuality, health care, economic justice, same-sex marriage and gender justice in Protestant Christianity. He grew up in Knoxville, Tennessee, where his early faith journey was heavily influenced by the Civil Rights Movement of the 50s and 60s. His PhD work at Union Theological Seminary brought him in contact with liberation theologians like James Cone, Gustavo Gutierrez, and Elizabeth Schussler-Fiorenza. From 1981-2013, he was professor of Christian Ethics at Bangor Theological Seminary in Maine, and also served on the Presbyterian Church USA’s Special Committee on Human Sexuality. Ellison founded the Religious Coalition Against Discrimination in Maine in 1994 to support civil rights protections for LGBTQ+ people, and also founded the Maine Interfaith Council for Reproductive Choices in 1997. His books include Erotic Justice: A Liberating Ethic of Sexuality (Westminster John Knox Press 1996), Same-Sex Marriage? A Christian Ethical Analysis (The Pilgrim Press 2004), and Making Love Just: Sexual Ethics for Perplexing Times (Fortress Press 2012). Marvin lives in Portland, Maine with his partner Frank, where he continues to write and guest teach.
Dr. Wendy Vanderwal Gritter is the Executive Director at Generous Space Ministries. Read more about her here!
Robbie Walker is a PhD student studying Queer theology and ethics. He lives with cerebral palsy as a queer, mostly-cisgender man, and is a poet, Trekker, Gleek, Pentaholic, and avid reader when he’s not up to his eyeballs in schoolwork. Above all, he wants to radiate God’s joy into the world.
Workshops
WORKSHOP A – Saturday, 2:30 – 3:30pm
Engaging the Church – Wendy Vanderwal-Gritter
Local congregations are made up of people with different experiences and perspectives on the intersection of faith, gender, and sexuality. How can we open deeper dialogue that will encourage unity and maturity within our church? This session will invite us to share best practices, lessons learned, and map out a positive way forward.
Dr. Wendy Vanderwal Gritter is the Executive Director at Generous Space Ministries. Read more about her here!
Embodied Justice in Community: Finding our Feet – Eric Van Giessen & Becca Sawyer
Justice is a term that is widely used in both secular and religious circles. Yet, while we often find situations of injustice easy to identify, it can be difficult to articulate what communities and relationships marked by justice might look like. In this dialogue-based introductory workshop, we’ll consider the different factors that have influenced our conceptions of justice/injustice, examine and deconstruct current terminology used in social justice conversations, imagine what just friendships and communities might look like, and identify questions we’d like to explore about how to better embody justice in our lives.
Eric Van Giessen is the Manager of Operations at Generous Space Ministries. Read more about him here!
Becca Sawyer calls herself an ambivert, is an enneagram 2, and a humanitarian in the making. She is a recent graduate from Wycliffe College at UofT with a Masters in Urban and International Development. Her thesis focused on home building with refugees and the narratives we tell about home. Becca is a queer woman who loves to travel, play her ukulele (Cecilia), and hang out with her dog (Presley) and fianceee (Mary). You can find her quoting Gilmore Girls, making up alternative lyrics to songs, and eating peanut butter cups on the regular.
Creating Generous Narratives – LA Henry
In this workshop you will have an opportunity to learn about how story-telling, or the making of narratives, opens up or closes off ways of understanding ourselves. You will have a hands-on opportunity to reflect on your own “coming out” story, and how that fit (or failed to fit) within the church narratives available to you at the time. You will have an opportunity to reflect on ways that you might create a more authentic and generous narrative for yourself, and also challenge some of the limitations on narrative imposed both within the church and within the LGBTQ+ community. If there is interest, discussion of the process by which the Canadian legal process comes to recognize identities within the common law may be included.
LA is a practicing lawyer in Fredericton N.B., and has previously taught English Literature at both St. Stephen’s University and the University of New Brunswick. She is a member of the LGBTQ+ community, and has been involved in building bridges between the LGBTQ+ community and the church through Integrity (Anglican group), Fredericton Pride, and the United Church. She has spoken on numerous panels about queer and trans rights. She is the mother of four adult children and lives in Harvey Station, N.B. She attends church at St. Andrew’s United Church in Harvey, and also at the St. Croix Vineyard in St. Stephen N.B.
Q & R with Dr. Marvin Ellison – Marvin Ellison
Dr. Marvin Ellison is a Christian Ethics professor whose research and writing has focused around human sexuality, health care, economic justice, same-sex marriage and gender justice in Protestant Christianity. He grew up in Knoxville, Tennessee, where his early faith journey was heavily influenced by the Civil Rights Movement of the 50s and 60s. His PhD work at Union Theological Seminary brought him in contact with liberation theologians like James Cone, Gustavo Gutierrez, and Elizabeth Schussler-Fiorenza. From 1981-2013, he was professor of Christian Ethics at Bangor Theological Seminary in Maine, and also served on the Presbyterian Church USA’s Special Committee on Human Sexuality. Ellison founded the Religious Coalition Against Discrimination in Maine in 1994 to support civil rights protections for LGBTQ+ people, and also founded the Maine Interfaith Council for Reproductive Choices in 1997. His books include Erotic Justice: A Liberating Ethic of Sexuality (Westminster John Knox Press 1996), Same-Sex Marriage? A Christian Ethical Analysis (The Pilgrim Press 2004), and Making Love Just: Sexual Ethics for Perplexing Times (Fortress Press 2012). Marvin lives in Portland, Maine with his partner Frank, where he continues to write and guest teach.
WORKSHOP B – Saturday, 3:45 – 4:45pm
Sexual Ethics: A Centred-Set Approach – Wendy Vanderwal-Gritter
Many in the Generous Space community find themselves needing to reflect, revisit, and potentially reconstruct their sexual ethics in light of coming out, theological shifts, or evolving expressions of faith. This year, we will dedicate three workshop spaces to this important work. For this reason, we’re planning a whole stream of sex ethics workshops at this year’s retreat.
In this workshop, we’ll consider different factors that have influenced our understanding, convictions, and beliefs. With time for both individual reflection and collaborative learning, we’ll map where we’ve been and what continues to influence our discernment.
Dr. Wendy Vanderwal Gritter is the Executive Director at Generous Space Ministries. Read more about her here!
Experiencing Grief – Mary Pepper & Eric Van Giessen
Grief… sigh…it sucks. We have all had run-ins with grief. Maybe grief has been brief and circumstantial for you, or maybe it’s been hanging around for a while like a heavy dark cloud. What does grief mean to you? How have you
been shaped by grief? What have you lost? What grief work are you currently doing? How has being LGBTQ+ enlightened your understanding of grief or added to your grief? These are some of the questions we will explore together in this workshop. We will come together in a low-key space to reflect on and talk about how we have come to know and experience grief. This workshop will be a space to bring our unsure selves, tired selves, and confused selves and join in friendship to understand grief in the context of community.
Mary Pepper lives in Toronto, ON with her dog that she hopes her fiancée Becca will let her get if she talks about it enough. She experiences her gender and sexuality in all sorts of queer ways and uses she and they pronouns. After finally finishing her Diploma in Community Services and Addictions Work, Mary is wondering what she wants to do with her life. Grief has become a lens that Mary has used to make sense of her 20s as she experienced mental illness, journeyed through coming-out, and faced the death of her mother in 2017. Mary is a self-proclaimed badass at doing self-care and happily calls herself an introvert. When she’s not doing boring adult stuff, Mary checks in on her Instagram-famous dog fam, and makes good use of her Netflix subscription.
Eric Van Giessen is the Manager of Operations at Generous Space Ministries. Read more about him here!
Hermeneutics: Interpreting Scripture in our Practice of Generous Space – Robbie Walker
This interactive workshop will explore biblical and theological hermeneutics–the decisions we make about how to do theology and Bible-reading before, during and after those tasks. What sources of authority are important to us? How do we rank their importance? How do different hermeneutical decisions influence how we deal with controversial issues in the church? And how do we determine if our hermeneutics are ethical (ie, they contribute to flourishing)?
Robbie Walker is a PhD student studying Queer theology and ethics. He lives with cerebral palsy as a queer, mostly-cisgender man, and is a poet, Trekker, Gleek, Pentaholic, and avid reader when he’s not up to his eyeballs in schoolwork. Above all, he wants to radiate God’s joy into the world.
Queer Celebration – Marie Raynard
Most LGBTQ2 folks in Christian communities have not spent a lot of time actively celebrating their queerness with other Christians. That is exactly what this workshop is about! Come excited to share and rejoice in the beautiful, unique aspects of being queer.
Marie Raynard is a theatre artist and fairy tale enthusiast living in Halifax, Nova Scotia with her spouse Keanan and cats Scout & Charlie. She loves being queer.