[The Episcopal News] Two Sunday-afternoon online forums titled “Losing Truth: The Critical Cost to Our Lives and Future” will be presented Sept. 15 and 22, 2 – 4 p.m. via Zoom by the diocesan Program Group on Ecumenical and Interfaith Life. All are welcome, and attendees are asked to register here.
Former broadcast journalist Dot Leach will moderate both panel presentations.
“Recently we’ve seen truth manipulated with misinformation, disinformation, malinformation, and just plain old lies,” notes program group chair Dot Leach, a lay leader at Orange County’s St. John Chrysostom Episcopal Church in Rancho Santa Margarita, who also invokes a quote from the late N.Y. Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan: “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”
With opening remarks from Bishop Diocesan John Harvey Taylor, the first panel will feature insights presented by journalists and a cyber liaison officer, while the second webinar’s panelists will be a psychologist, a theologian, and a retired federal district court judge. Leach, a former broadcast journalist and former member of the Orange County Human Relations Commission, will moderate both panel presentations.
“By presenting this two-part forum, we hope to bring light to a dark and critical issue that affects us all,” Leach told The News. “Through the expertise and experience of our panelists, we will seek ways to interrupt the circuitry of lies and avoid consequences that could put us and the future in harm’s way.”
Confirmed panelists to date include:
- Jill Castellano, Consumer Affairs data reporter specializing in politics, extremism, and misinformation.
- The Very Rev. Paul Daniels, dean of Bloy House, the Theological School at Los Angeles and rector of St. Mary in Palms Episcopal Church, Los Angeles.
- Farrah Fazal, Emmy-winning documentary producer and war correspondent.
- The Hon. Andrew Guilford, a retired U.S. district judge of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California and a member of St. John Chrysostom Episcopal Church in Rancho Santa Margarita.
- Lance Larson, cyber investigator with the Orange County Intelligence Assessment Center (OCIAC), a certified local fusion center designated by the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security.
- Lois M. “Lo” Sprague, Ph.D., president of The Guibord Center: Religion Inside Out and a Jungian-oriented psychotherapist whose background and focus are on the cutting edge of human capacities and the nature of consciousness.
The upcoming webinars follow the program group’s well-attended 2023 hybrid forum keynoted by Episcopal priest-psychologist Pamela Cooper, author of the book The Psychology of Christian Nationalism: Why People Are Drawn In and How to Talk Across the Divide. A YouTube link to the 2023 forum, titled “From Swords to Plowshares: Our Need to Address White Christian Nationalism,” is here.
This story was updated on Aug. 28 with additional panelist information.