Hospitality is
justice.
Creating space where individuals and groups engage each other to achieve a more just world
A place for justice.
Scarritt Bennett Center is a nonprofit conference, retreat, and education center in Nashville, TN. Our mission is to create space where individuals and groups engage each other to achieve a more just world.
Owned by United Methodist Women, our campus is formerly home to United Methodist-related Scarritt College for Christian Workers (1924–1980) and Scarritt Graduate College (1981–1988). Today, Scarritt Bennett Center works to continue on the powerful legacy of the Scarritt students, faculty, and staff in the fight for women’s empowerment, racial justice, and dignity for all.
Salama Circles: A Call for Black Women Across the Globe to Heal and Be Free
Salama is a Swahili word that means safety. It has a historical etymological relationship with the Hebrew word shalom (“peace”), the Arabic salaam (“a greeting”), and Portuguese salamo (“flying or soaring”). The word points to the freedom that comes with being safe as you enter and dwell in a particular space or community.
Scarritt Bennett Center, in collaboration with The Global Arts and Theology Experience (GATE), presents Salama Circles: an intentional respite and safe space for Black women all over the globe to soar, to be free to express emotion, and release pain and anger for the sake of healing. Salama Circles is a virtual series that invites Black women all over the globe to directly address issues of grief, joy, pleasure, and burden by engaging in conversation about the intersectional realities that Black women face daily, and how they impact particular kinds of trauma and exclusion.
Salama Circles also offers resources and models of healing that allow Black women to reclaim joy and pleasure as mechanisms of liberation.
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