Adult Religious Education
Activities to help us connect, reflect, stretch, and grow.
Email ARE@wildflowerchurch.org for more information about these programs or to suggest new ones.
Book and Study Groups
Facilitator: Susie Epstein
Occurs the 1st Wednesday of each month from 7-8 p.m. on Zoom.
Wildflower’s Adult Religious Education Book and Discussion Group meets online the 1st Wednesday of every month. We discuss a new book each month. Many (but not all) of the books we select are available at no cost through Austin Public Library’s “Libby” app and can be viewed as either print online or as audio book. Many of the authors we read are from marginalized and oppressed identities.
To respect the busy lives of our book club members, we will be breaking each book into thirds and examining the segmented portions across three meetings. Our upcoming books are:
July 2nd:
Border and Rule, Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism by
In Border and Rule, one of North America’s foremost thinkers and immigrant rights organizers delivers an unflinching examination of migration as a pillar of global governance and gendered racial class formation. Harsha Walia disrupts easy explanations for the migrant and refugee crises, instead showing them to be the inevitable outcomes of the conquest, capitalist globalization, and climate change that are generating mass dispossession worldwide. Border and Rule explores a number of seemingly disparate global geographies with shared logics of border rule that displace, immobilize, criminalize, exploit, and expel migrants and refugees. With her keen ability to connect the dots, Walia demonstrates how borders divide the international working class and consolidate imperial, capitalist, and racist nationalist rule. Ambitious in scope and internationalist in orientation, Border and Rule breaks through American exceptionalist and liberal responses to the migration crisis and cogently maps the lucrative connections between state violence, capitalism, and right-wing nationalism around the world. Illuminating the brutal mechanics of state formation, Walia exposes US border policy as a product of violent territorial expansion, settler-colonialism, enslavement, and gendered racial ideology. Further, she compellingly details how Fortress Europe and White Australia are using immigration diplomacy and externalized borders to maintain a colonial present, how temporary labor migration in the Arab Gulf states and Canada is central to citizenship regulation and labor control, and how racial violence is escalating deadly nationalism in the US, Israel, India, the Philippines, Brazil, and across Europe, while producing a disaster of statelessness for millions elsewhere. A must-read in these difficult times of war, inequality, climate change, and global health crisis, Border and Rule is a clarion call for revolution. The book includes a foreword from renowned scholar Robin D. G. Kelley and an afterword from acclaimed activist-academic Nick Estes.
Future Reads:
We will be working through the Austin Public Library’s Banned Books Kit!
All are welcome to join us for a friendly and relaxed conversation as we review this book. Come join us!
Contact ARE@wildflowerchurch.org with questions and to get the link to the online meeting.
Tarot Circle for Intuitive Transformation!
Facilitator: Melissa Meeks
Occurs the 3rd Wednesday of each month from 7-8 p.m. on Zoom.
Wildflower’s Adult Religious Education Tarot Circle meets online the 3rd Wednesday of every month. Come and explore your spiritual life through the lens of the Tarot.
Questions or to register: ARE@wildflowerchurch.org
Past Classes
UU Elevator Pitch
Facilitator: Simone Monique Barnes
Have you ever panicked when someone asks you “What’s a Unitarian Universalist?” How can you answer that question in a brief but meaningful way? UU Elevator Speech is a 3-session series that seeks to help you articulate your UU faith. It is called an elevator speech because, on an elevator ride when someone asks you, “What is UU?” you only have a short time to make a meaningful statement.
This class will help participants feel confident about articulating Unitarian Universalism, empowering them and helping them feel ownership.
It also prepares leaders to live and speak about their faith in the larger community.
Session 1:
It’s Not A Credo
Session 2:
Writing Your UU Elevator Speech
Session 3:
Sharing Your UU Elevator Speech
Click here to register for our upcoming session
Choose from:
Thursdays, 12 pm – 1 pm on Zoom – October 3, 10, 17
or
Orientation to Membership
Facilitator: Director and the Membership Team
Curious about Unitarian Universalism? Wonder what Wildflower Unitarian Universalist Church is all about? Interested in becoming a Voting Member of Wildflower UU Church?
Attend an Orientation on Wednesday, October 9, 7pm-8:30 pm on Zoom. We’d love to get to know you better!
Past Book Club Reads
2025
2024