Where We Come From
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Our organization was started by David Gamble (they/them) in 2015 in response to the needs of the Pittsburgh community at the time. David came from a cross-cultural background and saw that the cultural practices their family passed to them were needed, but really didn’t adapt to this country, culture and land completely. David had a background working in religion and spirituality from 1995 forward. In 2010, David had a vision in which their God shattered His own face and put pieces of His reflection in many places. David was told to go out and learn to see His face in the hearts of many people through their spiritual practice. In the process of doing this, by the time the All Faiths Movement was founded, David had served in many Christian, Interfaith, Pagan, Taoist, African, and Native American places of worship, even traveling internationally for training, but felt that something new was needed, something for these people in this place at this time.
David prayed to their God and offered to be the “boots on the ground” if their understanding of these needs were right and a new path needed to be made. Promptly after making this prayer, they fell into a sickness of shaking and sweating in which David experienced themself tied by the ankle upside down to a yew tree with their body cut. As the blood flowed out and nourished the tree, the space made in David was filled with the teachings and structure of the All Faiths Movement, which flowed down from the tree into the open spaces as light. Immediately upon coming out of the visions, David gave thanks, wrote down everything they could remember from the teachings, and founded the organization. David had already been continually re-writing and teaching a program to prevent abuse resulting from pseudo-shamanism. This became the introduction class that is one year long. At the same time this was being developed, David established a board to limit their own power in the organization. Our organization continues to be managed by the structure David set up, which occurred in the original vision. Our board consists of three members who are voted on by the community. In the instance of communities of 200 people or more, a team of seven is also established to make the work load manageable. All decisions are made by the board of three, team of seven, and/or community vote, depending on what needs decided. Many of our members are part of smaller, local satellite communities under the direction of larger groups.
The first years of our organization were bumpy but beautiful. David had offered to be the boots on the ground for what they thought would be a small group learning in their living room. Instead, the group was a little over 100 people in the first year and all decisions were made via a community vote, including the choosing of our former name which was The American Shamanism Movement. We also developed our first satellite group which was in Haiti (and is now dissolved). Our group exploded the second year and we had 400 members stretching throughout 9 countries. We went through an intense transformational phase where people who had come in for the wrong reasons left, people joined us for the right reasons, and many more shuffled in and out. Through this, a more mature organization with mature members emerged. At Ram’s Day 2020, we announced a name change to the All Faiths Movement and Community, or AFM/AFC.
As of this writing in 2021, we are a recognized spirituality group in the process of qualifying as a religious organization separate from our mother church and university. We provide four years of training for the public, both private and public ceremony, and several meetups a month including our Journey Group (our first meetup, running since 2015), a Men’s Circle (since 2016), a Woman’s Circle (since 2020), a monthly River Blessing (since 2021), and others. We are about 340 regular attendees strong and have transformed into a collective of small groups overseen by our Pittsburgh community. We're still based in Pittsburgh, but are in the process of forming a second base in West Virginia which, once completed, will include multiple places of worship in tandem with a woodland non-profit farm and green building research site. It's already in the works, so there are lots of volunteer opportunities opening up all the time as we work with international communities to access earth-healing technology not otherwise being practiced in the United States.
We believe that through the outsourcing of American culture around the world via the internet, we have also spread imbalances and sickness unique to western culture. We are dedicated to "sweeping our own back porch" and healing America so that healing can spread outwards too. What we've learned in the process of that is that our methods are easily adaptable anywhere and that people all over the world from many cultures are also interested in duplicating our work. As of this writing, we are entirely volunteer run, but we're doing our best to meet those interests and needs.
If you're interested in getting to know us better, why don't you come to one of our meetups to see if we're a good fit?
David prayed to their God and offered to be the “boots on the ground” if their understanding of these needs were right and a new path needed to be made. Promptly after making this prayer, they fell into a sickness of shaking and sweating in which David experienced themself tied by the ankle upside down to a yew tree with their body cut. As the blood flowed out and nourished the tree, the space made in David was filled with the teachings and structure of the All Faiths Movement, which flowed down from the tree into the open spaces as light. Immediately upon coming out of the visions, David gave thanks, wrote down everything they could remember from the teachings, and founded the organization. David had already been continually re-writing and teaching a program to prevent abuse resulting from pseudo-shamanism. This became the introduction class that is one year long. At the same time this was being developed, David established a board to limit their own power in the organization. Our organization continues to be managed by the structure David set up, which occurred in the original vision. Our board consists of three members who are voted on by the community. In the instance of communities of 200 people or more, a team of seven is also established to make the work load manageable. All decisions are made by the board of three, team of seven, and/or community vote, depending on what needs decided. Many of our members are part of smaller, local satellite communities under the direction of larger groups.
The first years of our organization were bumpy but beautiful. David had offered to be the boots on the ground for what they thought would be a small group learning in their living room. Instead, the group was a little over 100 people in the first year and all decisions were made via a community vote, including the choosing of our former name which was The American Shamanism Movement. We also developed our first satellite group which was in Haiti (and is now dissolved). Our group exploded the second year and we had 400 members stretching throughout 9 countries. We went through an intense transformational phase where people who had come in for the wrong reasons left, people joined us for the right reasons, and many more shuffled in and out. Through this, a more mature organization with mature members emerged. At Ram’s Day 2020, we announced a name change to the All Faiths Movement and Community, or AFM/AFC.
As of this writing in 2021, we are a recognized spirituality group in the process of qualifying as a religious organization separate from our mother church and university. We provide four years of training for the public, both private and public ceremony, and several meetups a month including our Journey Group (our first meetup, running since 2015), a Men’s Circle (since 2016), a Woman’s Circle (since 2020), a monthly River Blessing (since 2021), and others. We are about 340 regular attendees strong and have transformed into a collective of small groups overseen by our Pittsburgh community. We're still based in Pittsburgh, but are in the process of forming a second base in West Virginia which, once completed, will include multiple places of worship in tandem with a woodland non-profit farm and green building research site. It's already in the works, so there are lots of volunteer opportunities opening up all the time as we work with international communities to access earth-healing technology not otherwise being practiced in the United States.
We believe that through the outsourcing of American culture around the world via the internet, we have also spread imbalances and sickness unique to western culture. We are dedicated to "sweeping our own back porch" and healing America so that healing can spread outwards too. What we've learned in the process of that is that our methods are easily adaptable anywhere and that people all over the world from many cultures are also interested in duplicating our work. As of this writing, we are entirely volunteer run, but we're doing our best to meet those interests and needs.
If you're interested in getting to know us better, why don't you come to one of our meetups to see if we're a good fit?