Hello NES Community
When I refer to the NES community, I am referring to the broad Ethical Culture membership, because indeed, ALL Ethical Culture members are members of the National Ethical Service! It is one of the goals that I hold as the current NES president to try to amplify this awareness and activate it. I also am addressing an esteemed cluster of organizational allies and partners working for peace, and collaborating through the United Nations and in many other ways. Among them is a broad interfaith community with whom NES represents Ethical Culture as a faith in humanity itself, a non-theistic religion as it were.
As 2025 has set off at an intense speed of change in our political society, may our rooted devotions to social justice and humane action ground us in ethical solidarity. I’d like to share just a little bit about myself, as NES’s current president, and a little bit about what NES has endeavored upon in the last few months. I hold this role at NES as I wear several other Ethical Educator hats through the New York Society for Ethical Culture. At NYSEC, I coordinate and create ethical education programming and usher children, youth, teens and families into Ethical exploration; at campuses, I represent Ethical within interfaith advisory circles; at the American Ethical Union, I orchestrate the Ethical Education Committee. I come from a background in visual and performing arts and have a masters degree in Educational Curriculum and Instruction. I have been in the Ethical movement for almost a quarter century.
Currently honored with holding the presidency of NES, I join a lineage of minds I’ve admired and learned from who have done this work. I’d like to lift up inspiration from my earliest years of working with the Ethical Culture movement (through the Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture). As a young teaching artist, I found two inspirations whose “ethical spirituality” literally shined in my view. I looked up to these wide minded people: Martha Gallahue and Kurt Johnson. I studied them with awe for the very unique and sacred quality of ethical energy that they stirred. They, it turns out, were holding and developing this very special globally-minded NES vision.
I invite you to join me in learning more about Kurt Johnson’s work, which was sponsored in part by NES’ Rose Walker Fund last year. The “Deep and Rapid Transformation Convergence”(DRTC) is a massive project that aims to arouse and mature the consciousness shift needed to support humanity in its achievement of the United Nation Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). This is BIG thinking! You can link to an article about this powerful work here. I participated in an incredible conference at St. John the Divine in September 2024 with over 100 thought leaders addressing the question of this transformational engagement.
In November 2024, NES members from many societies gathered at the New York Society for Ethical Culture for a half day conference. This was an open call to invite curiosity, expertise, and interest toward the future of NES. NES’s officers gave speeches. Also, the two most recent grant awards of the Rose Walker Grant gave presentations about their work. That included Muriel Tillinghast, speaking of her work to raise awareness about Haiti, and of course, as previously highlighted, Kurt Johnson sharing news about the DRTC referred to above.
Late November ushered in World Children’s Day (Nov. 20 marking the creation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child), and shortly thereafter, Human Rights Day (Dec. 10). These dates are important NES holidays to amplify and advocate around every year. For World Children’s Day I led a photo awareness campaign. How we face the needs of children in our country and in our world in these changing times – with climate crisis, widening economic disparity, persisting racial inequity, and massive gender strife – are very important questions for us to address together and activate around. On December 10th, through zoom, passionate NES-ers gathered to read the human rights doctrine, and reflect on its importance. We have so much to learn together and from one another in reflecting upon our yet unrealized potential for deeper humanity on Earth.
At last, in December 2024, I had the great honor of representing NES with the United Nations Interfaith community at the pulpit at the UN church. And in January 2025, I created an awareness booth for NES at the Beloved Community Festival held at the New York Society for Ethical Culture on Martin Luther King Day.
As our network of peace-ignited ethical action makers continues to organize, I would like to invite you whose passions align with NES to reach out and connect through NationalEthicalService@gmail.com. Building an activated core for NES is crucial now.
In joy and inspiration,
Audrey Kindred
NES President