2495 Fox Gap Road, Bangor, PA, USA
November 14 - 16, 2025
About this Retreat
Bill Wylie-Kellermann is a nonviolent community activist, writer, and United Methodist pastor living in Wawiatanong/Detroit. He is also is part of the Community at Kirkridge. Bill was a friend of William Stringfellow’s and has done several books on him, including A Keeper of the Word: Selected Writings of William Stringfellow (Eerdmans, 1994), William Stringfellow: Essential Writings, (Orbis, 2013), Principalities in Particular: A Practical Theology of the Powers that Be (Fortress, 2017). He was married to Denise Griebler on Advent’s Joy Sunday, 2013. They have five grandchildren.
Rev. Naomi Washington-Leapheart is a Black queer preacher, teacher, strategist, and justice advocate. She is an adjunct professor of theology and religious studies at Villanova University and the Government Fellow for Religion and Public Life at Harvard Divinity School. Rev. Naomi also serves as the first-ever Strategic Partnerships Director at Political Research Associates (PRA), a social justice research and strategy center that provides strategic insights and actionable research that identifies, disrupts, and competes with movements and institutions that undermine democracy, justice, and human rights. In 2021, Rev. Naomi founded Salt | Yeast | Light, an organization that develops spaces of spiritual education, disruption, reflection, transformation, and public action.
Nichola Torbett is a white, queer, raised-working-class spiritual seeker, recovering addict, gospel preacher, racial justice podcaster, and nonviolent direct action trainer. She grew up in a sundown town in Ohio and had no consciousness of racism until she was nearly 25. She is grateful to the powerful BIPOC-led movements of Oakland and San Francisco, California, for her political education and to the friends of color who told her about herself and took a chance on her despite it all. She is committed to helping other white people unlearn internalized supremacy and become part of multiracial coalitions to end racism and white supremacy. She is also the associate director of Kirkridge Retreat & Study Center and serves on the board of GEEZ Magazine.
Details of this retreat
How is direct action or civil disobedience altered when framed in prayerful worship? What dimensions of freedom are then embraced? When public witness tells the story of faith and marks a feast or season, what new depth of communication is opened? When nonviolence is practiced in sacramental forms, how is liturgy itself enhanced?
With examples from the freedom movement, antiwar movements, anti-imperial and decolonizing struggles, and more, this retreat will offer opportunities for the imaginative work of movement action from a Christian perspective.
Join practitioners in re-discerning your own local work. Come as a group to think it through together in story and silence, prayer and listening. Come on your own to connect with like-minded others and find inspiration for bringing folks together back home.