Empowering Resilient Racial Justice Leadership

We help justice advocates sharpen their understanding of the social realities that maintain injustice while also stimulating the soul’s enormous capacity to resist and transform those realities.

OUR VISION + MISSION

The Center for Justice + Renewal is a call to social action and spiritual vigor. Our mission is to create a more equitable and inclusive world by nurturing skillful justice advocacy and the depth to act on it. At the Center for Justice + Renewal, we help justice advocates sharpen their understanding of the social realities that maintain injustice while also stimulating the soul’s enormous capacity to resist and transform those realities.

Every day it seems we are waking up to another mass shooting, report of racialized police brutality, or visceral evidence of our ongoing climate crisis. And as we grow in our awareness of social inequity, we begin to see it everywhere: in our places of work, neighborhoods, schools, congregations, and beyond. These realities can be scary, perplexing and intimidating, but as Jenifer Lewis teaches us, "These are not dark times, these are awakening times."

During this extraordinarily difficult era, we can awaken to a courageous practice of justice that is sustained by love and not fear, a oneness that affirms the particularity of individual experiences as well as the common humanity of us all, a razor-sharp sociological imagination that illuminates how social identity and social location propel or impede our movement in the world, and a sustainable embodiment practice that humbly drinks from the many rivers that lead to abundance.

Empowering Authentic and Courageous Racial Justice Advocacy

OUR PROGRAMMING

SHAMELESS LIBERATION

Many of us long to be agents of racial justice who can skillfully and courageously liberate ourselves, our communities, and our world. But time and again, shame – the belief that we are unworthy of love and belonging – has prevented earnest people from doing the actual work of racial liberation. Not surprisingly, as we awaken to the reality of white supremacy and how it impacts us, we and those we lead experience quite a bit of shame. But unlike guilt, which often motivates us to authentically tend to relationships, shame penetrates our core and makes us want to hide our truest selves from others. Regardless of our racial identity or the specific shame we carry – when we most need help, when we feel hindered in our liberation work, when we are afraid, when we don’t know what to do next, or when we have caused harm and don’t know how to make amends – it is SHAME that prevents us and people in our communities from reaching out to ask for help. Yet there is good news: since shame is a learned behavior, it can be unlearned and even transformed!

Shameless Liberation is a series of programs that strategically empower justice leaders to cultivate racial identities that are free of shame and other toxic emotions while also sharpening their resilient leadership skills so that they can lead others into shameless liberation too.

Resilient Racial Justice Leadership Certificate Program 

Though injustice runs deep in our society, the soul’s capacity to resist and transform injustice runs even deeper. Indeed, as Black poet and activist Langston Hughes chronicled his own journey toward liberation, he summarized by saying “My soul has run deep like rivers.”

We at the Center for Justice + Renewal believe that resilience is the embodied evidence of souls that run deep like rivers. With 20+ years of racial justice leadership experience among our team members, we have come to believe that resilience is the key to effective, long-term racial justice leadership. When we are free of toxic emotions like fear and shame, supported by somatic and spiritual practices that reliably connect us to hope, empowered by cutting-edge social science research that illuminates and demystifies the structural impediments to liberation, and resourced with practical and accessible tools for liberating ourselves and others – we begin to embody the resilient hope that King and Hughes modeled for us. Like King and Hughes, we can boldly face the injustice around us without losing hope, we can speak truth to power without fear, we can navigate complex and confusing white supremacist systems without becoming overwhelmed, we can carve a justice path that suits our personal strengths and vulnerabilities without feeling isolated, we can spearhead and collaborate on justice initiatives without succumbing to internalized white supremacy, and we can honestly assess our missteps on the road to liberation without shame.

Integrating social science research, dynamic storytelling, playful body movement, and mindfulness practices, the Resilient Racial Justice Leadership Certificate Program supports holistic, integrated and long-lasting transformation.

MEET THE JUSTICE + RENEWAL TEAM

DIRECTOR + FACILITATOR

Christena Cleveland, Ph.D. is a social psychologist, public theologian, author, and activist. She is the founder and director of the Center for Justice + Renewal which supports a more equitable world by nurturing skillful justice advocacy and the depth to act on it.

DR. CHRISTENA CLEVELAND

  • A weaver at heart, Dr. Cleveland integrates psychology, theology, storytelling, and art to help justice seekers sharpen their understanding of the social realities that maintain injustice while also stimulating the soul’s enormous capacity to resist and transform those realities. 

    Dr. Cleveland holds a Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of California Santa Barbara, a B.A. from Dartmouth College where she double majored in Sociology and Psychological and Brain Sciences, as well as an honorary doctorate from the Virginia Theological Seminary. An award-winning researcher and author, Christena is a Ford Foundation Fellow who has held faculty positions at several institutions of higher education — most recently at Duke University’s Divinity School, where she was the first African-American and first female director of the Duke Center for Reconciliation, and also led a research team investigating self-compassion as a buffer to racial stress. In 2022, she published her second full-length book, God is a Black Woman (HarperCollins), which details her 400-mile walking pilgrimage across central France in search of ancient Black Madonna statues, and examines the relationship among race, gender, and cultural perceptions of the Divine.  Her work has been featured in a number of major media outlets including the History Channel, PBS, Essence Magazine, the Washington Post, NPR, and BBC Radio.

    Though Dr. Cleveland loves scholarly inquiry, she is also an avid student of embodied wisdom. She recently completed the Art & Social Change intensive somatic training for millennial leaders, and is currently deepening her mind-body-spirit integration in a year-long embodied leadership cohort for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color.

    A bona fide tea snob, lover of Black art, and Ólafur Arnalds superfan — Christena makes her home in Boston.

OPS ARCHITECT

Renee Barreto is an operations strategist, avid learner, and care conjurer. She collaborates with the teachers, healers, and world-builders to operationalize liberatory values in business practices and creative projects. 

RENEE BARRETO