Beloved Community,
Recently, some disturbing revelations have come to light about Isaac Bonewits, founder of ADF. Mountain Ancestors, a church fully committed to right-action, social justice, and community engagement, formally denounce his actions and stands in support with his victim. We offer our support and prayers to Moira for her continued healing after a tragic childhood.
Bonewits left ADF in 1996, and since then, we have done a tremendous amount of work both within ADF and in the greater religious community—without him. Locally, Mountain Ancestors has grown from the eight high days to include services for full moons and other holidays. We also provide community education via workshops and our annual Symposium. This is a legacy built upon our own work, not that of the founder of the overarching organization, and we will continue to provide these as well as additional services as the needs of our folk grow. We have evolved past Bonewits' original vision, and Gods be good, we will especially continue to do so in light of these revelations.
We are committed to creating a formal sexual misconduct policy to accompany our existing Anti-Harassment policy. We are committed to providing additional training to our clergy and leaders via avenues such as consent culture courses at Cherry Hill Seminary and Mental Health First Aid training, which our priests have already attended. We are also committed to bringing consent culture to all our events moving forward through workshops, consent agreements for festivals, and zero-tolerance policies for breach of consent up to and including banning from future events and legal action. We will also aid other groups in creating these types of policies and documents for themselves.
Finally, to those who need an ear or a shoulder, please contact one of your priests via whatever means of media or in-person chat you feel comfortable using for this type of discussion.
May we all use this opportunity to become better than we were before, may our Gods inspire us, and may our Ancestors guide us.
Yours in service,
-The Priests, Board of Directors, and Leaders of Mountain Ancestors Grove, ADF
Recently, some disturbing revelations have come to light about Isaac Bonewits, founder of ADF. Mountain Ancestors, a church fully committed to right-action, social justice, and community engagement, formally denounce his actions and stands in support with his victim. We offer our support and prayers to Moira for her continued healing after a tragic childhood.
Bonewits left ADF in 1996, and since then, we have done a tremendous amount of work both within ADF and in the greater religious community—without him. Locally, Mountain Ancestors has grown from the eight high days to include services for full moons and other holidays. We also provide community education via workshops and our annual Symposium. This is a legacy built upon our own work, not that of the founder of the overarching organization, and we will continue to provide these as well as additional services as the needs of our folk grow. We have evolved past Bonewits' original vision, and Gods be good, we will especially continue to do so in light of these revelations.
We are committed to creating a formal sexual misconduct policy to accompany our existing Anti-Harassment policy. We are committed to providing additional training to our clergy and leaders via avenues such as consent culture courses at Cherry Hill Seminary and Mental Health First Aid training, which our priests have already attended. We are also committed to bringing consent culture to all our events moving forward through workshops, consent agreements for festivals, and zero-tolerance policies for breach of consent up to and including banning from future events and legal action. We will also aid other groups in creating these types of policies and documents for themselves.
Finally, to those who need an ear or a shoulder, please contact one of your priests via whatever means of media or in-person chat you feel comfortable using for this type of discussion.
May we all use this opportunity to become better than we were before, may our Gods inspire us, and may our Ancestors guide us.
Yours in service,
-The Priests, Board of Directors, and Leaders of Mountain Ancestors Grove, ADF
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