Building Accountability into Spiritual Culture

In November of 2025 I spoke about building structures to support accountability on the part of spiritual teachers at a webinar. This was sponsored by the Association for Spiritual Integrity (ASI), a group with member teachers from a variety of spiritual traditions. You can find a video recording of the talk and the subsequent group discussion here.

Below is the summary of the webinar posted by ASI:

“This ASI webinar features Zen teacher and economist Julie Nelson speaking on spiritual teachers’ responsibility, harm, and genuine accountability within spiritual communities. She shares how repeated abuses of power in her own Zen sangha—financial misconduct, bullying, and sexual exploitation—exposed the limits of ‘good intentions’ and the dangers of idealization, projection, and power imbalance in teacher–student relationships. From there she unpacks what accountability really means, distinguishes it from toxic blame, and explores trauma, spiritual bypassing, and the tendency of teachers to hide behind roles or pedestal status. In the second half she outlines concrete structures and cultures of accountability, from clear ethics policies and grievance procedures at the local level to professional associations and legal recourse, and calls for spiritually mature leaders to welcome feedback, peer oversight, and meaningful consequences as part of their practice.”

Author: Julie A. Nelson

Julie A. Nelson is a writer on gender, ethics, economics, ecology, and Zen; a Professor of Economics, Emeritus; a Zen Sensei; a member of the Greater Boston Zen Center and the Great Plains Zen Center; and mother of two and grandmother of two. View all posts by Julie A. Nelson