Creating Social Health: Strengthening Democracy at its Roots

This third annual Baumheier Conference is in loving memory of Edward Baumheier who, at age 87, discovered and became a passionate advocate for social threefolding. At his request, he was cremated holding a copy of Rudolf Steiner’s The Social Future.

Our two presenters this year are Virginia Solomón and Gerald Häfner. The conference will be moderated by Timothy Kennedy. The discussion between the presenters will be followed by substantial time for Q&A from you, our audience.

Virginia Kase Solomón is a nationally recognized leader who has dedicated her career to fighting for social justice and civil rights. As President and CEO of Common Cause, Virginia leverages her 30 years of experience in advocacy, organizing, and policy to deliver pro-democracy wins at every level of government. She is the organization’s tenth president, fourth woman, and first Hispanic person to lead in the permanent role.

Gerald Häfner is the leader of the Social Sciences Section at the Goetheanum, former member of the German and European Parliaments, and cofounder of the Green Party in Bavaria as well as of More Democracy, an international advocacy organization. He is one of the world’s leading authorities on social threefolding.

Timothy Kennedy seeks to incorporate and embody anthroposophy in all aspects of modern life, which has included co-creating the largest natural building and design company in the United States for 24 years. He is especially active with the Social Sciences Section coordination in North America and the Economics Conference of the Goetheanum. He also teaches entrepreneurship and financial literacy as an inner and outer path of service, especially to the younger generations.

Background

Common Cause is a nonpartisan, grassroots organization dedicated to upholding the core values of American democracy. Its members work to create open, honest, and accountable government that serves the public interest; promote equal rights, opportunity, and representation for all; and empower all people to make their voices heard in the political process. Their headquarters in D.C. and their 25 state offices work at every level of government on priorities including defending the right to vote, limiting big money’s influence on our elections, and holding public officials accountable.

The basic vision of social threefolding, which was introduced in Europe by Rudolf Steiner (founder of Waldorf schools) in 1919, is to create three independent governments—political, cultural, and economic—which uphold the ideals of equal rights, freedom of thought, and brotherhood/mutuality, respectively. Just as our country’s founders envisioned the separation of church and state, we believe the time has come to separate church (and all of culture), state, and the economy into independent yet connected entities to achieve a healthy, balanced society. Steiner recommended the separation of state and economy as "the very first of necessary priorities for public life today" in The Core Points of the Social Question.

Event organizer Linda Lingane trained as a Waldorf teacher in the late 1990s only to get more understanding of her son’s schooling. In 2014 she heard “threefolding” whispered lightly as a message from the future. Upon investigating, she realized that this would be the focus of the rest of her life. In 2024 she retired from her administrative work at Stanford University in order to concentrate full-time on threefolding. She is part of one study group, and facilitates meetings of two groups that are devoted to finding ways to implement social threefolding.

We hope you will come to the conference and be inspired toward your next steps in creating a bright future for all of us!