Rev. Mark Koyama shares strategies deployed by faith communities to use participatory art to deepen understanding and reflective action on pressing social justice issues. Mark will reflect on his journey with the Sacred Ally Quilt Ministry project that he jointly curated and toured nationwide together with Harriet Ward and Kathy Barrett Blair from 2020 to 2023, and continue with the Crisis Liturgy project using prayer flags to commemorate people who have died in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody in the most recent phase of deliberate state cruelty against immigrant communities and allied activists.

The evening presentation will be paired with a daytime group project to jointly create a prayer flag that will be hung ceremonially at WFC in advance of the 250th Anniversary of the “independence” of colonial settlements on Turtle Island.

Rev. Mark Koyama grew up in South East Asia and New Zealand before coming to live in the United States in 1980. He was educated at Bates College, Union Theological Seminary (MA 1992), University of Massachusetts Amherst (MFA 2010) and Yale Divinity School (MDiv 2015). Mark teaches literature and religious studies at Northfield Mount Hermon School, and is the settled pastor at the United Church of Jaffrey, in Jaffrey New Hampshire. Click here to watch “Claustrophobia,” Mark’s July 2020 sermon about the origins of the quilt project.