The Samuel DeWitt Proctor Institute for Child Advocacy Ministry
Friday, July 14, 2006

Religious leaders, seminarians, Christian educators, and other faith-based advocates for children come together for five days of spiritual renewal, networking, movement building workshops, and continuing education about children's needs.

In many religious congregations, summer is a traditional time for hosting a Vacation Bible School, and every year children from the congregation and community look forward to these traditional weeks of sharing fellowship, faith, and fun. Every July for the last twelve years, the Children’s Defense Fund’s Haley Farm in Clinton, Tennessee has hosted its own kind of summer school for faithful adults who work with and for children: our Samuel DeWitt Proctor Institute for Child Advocacy Ministry. The Proctor Institute is similar to the summer sessions offered at many seminaries, but it provides something too few seminaries do: theological, biblical, and practical grounding on child advocacy as a ministry of the Church. Here, religious leaders, seminarians, Christian educators, and other faith-based advocates for children come together for five days of spiritual renewal, networking, movement building workshops, and continuing education about children’s needs.

Haley Farm is the spiritual, intellectual, and leadership development home for the 21st century children’s movement. Those who gather for the Proctor Institute have the chance to explore how their faith relates to justice and children; hear inspiring preaching about children’s concerns; gain accurate, up-to-date information on children’s needs; and participate in workshops to acquire new skills, best practices, and strategies to implement programs to help children and strengthen families in their own congregations and communities. All of this takes place in an idyllic setting, on the Tennessee farm that once belonged to Roots author Alex Haley. The rustic cabins that Mr. Haley and his friends and family used are still there, and they have been joined by beautiful additions like the Langston Hughes Library and the Riggio-Lynch Chapel, both designed by Maya Lin. The Chapel’s simple, soaring shape evokes the ark of protection, the fishermen’s boats that figured in Jesus’ ministry, and the small boat drawn by seven-year-old Maria Coté featured in the Children’s Defense Fund’s logo.

People come to the Proctor Institute prepared to worship, fellowship, learn, and be equipped and inspired for action when they return home. Our sessions this year will include morning devotions led by the Revs. Dr. Otis Moss, Jr. and Otis Moss III; Bible studies by Dr. Fred Craddock; plenary discussions on urgent children’s concerns; and workshops on everything from how congregations can provide tax clinics for low-income families to how congregations can work to reduce violence in their communities. Many of this year’s workshops focus on two special emphases: how people of faith can build a united voice to ensure every uninsured child health care, and how we can work together to stop the Cradle to Prison Pipeline® crisis that is destroying the hopes and futures of so many poor and minority children.

Other workshops will help participants learn how their congregations can work with CDF to sponsor Children’s Defense Fund Freedom Schools® sites and provide positive alternatives for children during summer and after-school hours, or how they can use our resources to plan National Observance of Children’s Sabbaths® activities in their congregations and communities. Throughout the week, several hundred young leaders from CDF’s youth development networks will also be attending a Young Adult Leaders Training. They will participate in the Proctor plenaries, and give participants a chance to hear their perspective about the breakdown of parental and elder responsibility for children and how they believe adults and faith communities can better fulfill their responsibilities to the next generation. Noted historian Howard Zinn and Ruby Bridges, who at age six desegregated the New Orleans public schools, will be among the speakers at the young leaders’ training.

A highlight of each year’s Proctor Institute is our Great Preachers Series, where each night a different minister offers a prophetic word about how we can faithfully serve children. This year’s preachers include the Rev. Dr. Joanna Adams, the Senior Pastor of Morningside Presbyterian Church in Atlanta; the Rev. Dr. William S. Epps, Senior Pastor of Second Baptist Church in Los Angeles; the Rev. Dr. James Forbes, Jr., Senior Minister of The Riverside Church in New York City; and the Rev. Dr. Eileen W. Lindner, Deputy General Secretary for Research and Planning at the National Council of Churches USA, who is concluding her three-month service at Haley as the Riggio-Lynch Chapel’s inaugural Dean.

The people of faith who join us each year at the Proctor Institute may come tired, depleted, or even discouraged by the challenges of so many competing needs in their congregations, their communities, and our country and world. But they leave renewed and restored, with the words of great preachers and singing ringing in their ears; with new hope and inspiration, new passion and commitment brimming in their hearts; and with a new sense that they are not alone in their struggle to realize God’s justice and righteousness for America’s children.