Sunday, June 29
9:00am - 9:45am
BIG IDEA SERIES: The Future of Civic Power: How Humanists Can Reimagine Democracy
What if democracy could be...better? In this session, longtime humanist activist and ethicist Sharon Welch introduces generative democracy: a people-powered vision built on connection, shared leadership, and long-term transformation. Drawing on real-world examples and decades of movement work, Welch lays out a clear, compelling framework for how humanists can build the future of democracy from the ground up. Come ready to rethink what’s possible—and leave with new ideas for how humanists can not only protect our democracy, but tranform it into something better.
Speaker
Sharon Welch
Sharon Welch is a social ethicist, academic and lifelong activist. She retired from Meadville Lombard Theological School in 2017 after having served as Provost and Professor of Religion and Society for ten years. She held faculty and administrative positions at the University of Missouri-Columbia from 1992-2007. From 1982-1992 she was assistant and associate professor of Theology and Religion and Society at Harvard Divinity School. She received her Ph.D. in theology from Vanderbilt University in 1982, and was named Distinguished Alumna of the year in 2019. Welch is now a member of the Commission on Social Witness for the Unitarian Universalist Association, the Advisory Council of the Community-Based Global Learning Collaborative, and is a board member of the Chicago League of Women Voters.
Welch is the author of six books, her most recent being After the Protests Are Heard: Enacting Civic Engagement and Social Transformation (NYU Press, 2019). She is also a contributor to the Oxford Handbook of Professional Economic Ethics (2016) and the Oxford Handbook of Humanism (2021).