Center for Process Studies Process & Faith

Our Process & Faith (P&F) program provides educational resources and opportunities for spiritual discovery in pursuit of more meaningful lives. In 2023, we organized 7 "Process Pop-Ups" (1hr public webinars) between June-December, on a range of topics including The Secular as Sacred: Taoism and Confucianism and Spirituality and Psychedelics. These webinars were conducted in collaboration with the Cobb Institute, and averaged around 50 attendees each. We also partnered with the Center for Open & Relational Theologies (CORT), on a project called God After Deconstruction. Initiated as a 2-year pilot project, deliverables include a podcast series, a set of conferences, an online course, and a book publication. The purpose of this project is to explore a de(re)construction of the notion of God informed by inclusive values, and concern for the common good. We anticipate engaging over 100,000 religious scholars and practitioners by the time of program is completed in 2024. P&F totaled $64,609.64 which covered salaries for program staff and marketing, and a $30,000 grant to CORT.

Our China Project facilitates international, intercultural, and interdisciplinary collaboration to promote ways of understanding and living that can advance social and environmental wellbeing. To this end, in 2023 we engaged in a number of scholarly and educational activities. This included partnering with the new Whitehead Research Center at United International College (UIC) in China to organize an Int'l Symposium on Process Philosophy and Chinese-Style Modernization, which took place Dec. 17 at UIC in Zhuhai. The event included lectures from a dozen scholars, and engaged over 100 attendees (in-person and online). We gave $1000 to UIC as a sponsor of this event. We also partnered with Pu'er University in China on a Green Development Forum, Dec. 20 in Pu'er. It featured talks from a dozen scholars to an auditorium of approx. 150 students. Due to significant media coverage, we estimate the livestream reached around 70,000 viewers. We also organized a series of 10 webinars between June-Dec on topics like eco-education, eco-business, eco-farming, eco-economics, and more; featuring professors from Yale University, Hendrix College, and others. In 2023 we estimate having reached a total of 35 million people through media coverage and recordings from our events. In total, we spent $45,361.48 on China Project activities, which covered the salary of program staff, marketing, and some travel, and included a $1,000 grant to United International College.

We partnered with the Center for Christogenesis and Villanova University to organize a 3-day in-person conference called "Whitehead & Teilhard: Convergences, Divergences, and Integrations." This event took place September 21-23, 2023 and featured talks from 15 scholars from 3 countries engaging the intersection of philosophy, religion, and science by comparing the thought of Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) and Pierre Teilhard De Chardin (1881-1955). Roughly 150 people attended the event (either in-person or through the live stream). We are also working on an edited book publication out of this event, anticipated for a 2024 or 2025 publication date. Expenses of $24,104.57 covered salary for program staff, marketing, conferences speaker travel and accommodations, and a portion of the cost for video production and facilities.

We published two issues of our peer-reviewed academic journal called Process Studies. Together, this included a total of 14 scholarly articles and 5 books reviews, covering a range of topics including: philosophy, physics, psychology, ecology, and more. The journal is published in print and online, and distributed to university libraries and roughly 500 individual subscribers worldwide. Expenses totaled $11,444.49 included payment to University of Illinois Press for printing and distributing the journal, and for managing institutional and individual subscriptions. We also received $9,370 in revenue is from institutional and individual subscribers.

Our Korea Project works to create a more sustainable and equitable society in Korea and beyond. In 2023 we collaborated with EcoCiv Korea at Hanshin University to organize a series of webinars, including an East-West Dialogue on Ecological Civilization. We also translated a book on ecological civilization into Korean. Korea Project program expenses totaled $22,571.32, which covered salary for program staff.

As part of our efforts to promote scholarship in process studies, and cultivate a network of scholars and educators, we co-organized the International Whitehead Conference in Munich, Germany. The 3-day conference took place July 26-39, 2023 and brought together Whitehead scholars from more than a dozen countries. In total, we spent $10,093.67 on the event, which included salary for staff as well as travel, lodging, and food expenses for two of the presenters.

As part of our effort to promote the role of art, beauty, and creativity in society, we hired an independent contractor for $6000 to create a strategic plan for our arts program, including the planning of a Common Good Film Festival.

As part of our work to better understand the complexities of human experience, we partnered with Dreamshadow Inc for a Holotropic Breathwork and Transpersonal Psychology event in Vermont. Our expenses included $656.57 for participant travel.

Some of the program work we did in 2023 was for activities that won't be realized until 2024 or later. This includes future conferences, several book publications, a new suite of online courses, several more translations projects, etc. We had $27,432.68 in 2023 expenses for future programming, which covered salary for staff. We also had $10,577.44 in revenue through conference registrations for these future events, including a 2-day conference called Metaphysic and the Matter with Things at the California Institute for Integral Studies in San Francisco.