L. Robert and Marilyn McClean Chair in Ecological Theology and Practice Installation Address Given by Reverend Dr. Timothy Eberhart

In an 8^th century account of the forced conversion of central European Saxons from a mix of nature veneration and folk Christianity to Latin Christianity, we are told that Boniface, an English monk, cut down an oak tree of extraordinary size to demonstrate the victory of the Christian faith over the detestable beliefs and practices of the pagan Saxons. Like indigenous peoples of every continent, the Saxons considered trees, groves, springs, animals, and elements from their environs to be sacred. As Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker note, in their book Saving Paradise: How Christianity Traded Love of This World for Crucifixion and Empire, this particular oak likely represented Yggdrasil, the cosmic world tree, believed to have roots in the underworld and branches in the heavens, with the trunk inhabiting the middle earth of humans. Comparable to the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, this “abomination of desolation” (Matt. 24:15-16) was carried out by soldiers under Charles Martel, grandfather of Charlemagne, whose troops slaughtered masses of resistant Saxons, looted and burned communities to the ground, and forced baptisms under threats of torture and death.[i] This mix – of socio-psychological violence and ecological destruction – marked the spread of imperial Christianity across central and western Europe, as ecological historians note that the path of Carolingian missions among the Saxons coincided with widespread deforestation and the severance of people from cultural ties to the land and the cycles of nature.[ii]

It was spring 2014. I was speaking with a Lakota organizer, Carla Marshall, in Rapid City, SD, my home state, following a panel we were on at First United Methodist Church at the invitation of Garrett alum Rev. Peary Wilson. In the midst of our conversation, one in which I would first learn about the organizing efforts that would lead to the resistance at Standing Rock, she said to me: “You white people need to deal with your own intergenerational traumas. Our people are doing this work. But you European-Americans, you too were cut off from your old traditions. You too lost sacred relationship with the land. There’s so much violence in your histories. And until you find healing for your people, and peace with the land, your people are going to continue to do harm to us others and to the earth.”

My grandparents said we were Swabians, originally from central and southern Germany, which, DNA testing confirms, for what it’s worth. The Suebi – meaning “our people” – are first mentioned by Julius Caesar as a particularly fierce tribe because of their resistance against Roman military incursion – perhaps somewhat like the Maccabees a century before. Tacitus described the tribes of this entire central European region as living in kinship groups, with decisions made by the whole community rather than a single chieftain. For “the power of persuasion,” he wrote, “counts more [for them] than the right to give orders.”[iii] Their lands were held in common,[iv] and hospitality was lavishly shared between friend and stranger.[v] They celebrated women’s bravery in battle, and believed there is “something holy and an element of the prophetic in women,”[vi] something Tacitus saw as a sign of their cultural inferiority.[vii] Of their religious beliefs, he said, “they judge it not to be in keeping with the majesty of heavenly beings to confine them within walls or to portray them in any human likeness.” Rather, “they consecrate woods and groves and they apply the names of gods to that mysterious presence which they see only with the eye of devotion.”[viii] Of the Suebi in particular, he wrote that “they are distinguished by a common worship of Nerthus, that is, Mother Earth, and believe that she intervenes in human affairs and [moves among] their peoples.”[ix] Now, if you know me at all, you’re likely thinking: that sounds a lot like his people!  

In the medieval period, following Charlemagne’s conquest and the rise of the Holy Roman Empire, the lands in this region would have been farmed by peasants, whose bodies and possessions were the property of feudal landlords. Each of these – land, labor, social hierarchy, and religious belief – were sources and sites of intense conflict. As Sylvia Federici describes, groups deemed religious heretics, like the Waldenses, Taborites, and Apostolic Brethren, rose up under conditions of landlessness, chronic debt, forced military service, and economic misery. Their theological denunciation of social hierarchies, the presence of women preachers among them, and their radical calls for the democratization of economic life were direct challenges not just to the nobility but also the Church, the biggest landowner in Europe at the time.[x] During the 14^th to 16^th century peasant rebellions, southern Germany was often ground zero of revolt. Here it’s worth quoting from the 1525 Twelve Articles of the Swabian League, considered one of the first drafts of human rights and civil liberties in continental Europe. Article 3: “Until now it has been the practice that we have been treated like serfs, which is deplorable, since Christ redeemed all of us with his precious blood, both the shepherd and the nobleman, with no exceptions. Accordingly, we hereby declare that we are free and want to remain free.” Article 10: “Many [nobles] have appropriated meadows and fields belonging to the people. We want them returned to all of us in common.”

Federici notes that it’s not an accident that the genocide of European peasants accused of witchcraft at the time of the emergence of capitalism was particularly severe where the rebellions were fiercest. To this day, demonizing a land-based people’s veneration of nature as primitive and evil serves as justification for their displacement from the land and even their eradication. Pagan, from paganus, just means of the country, rustic, rural. Women especially would have been the keepers of the old shamanic and animistic traditions. They would have passed on knowledge of healing roots and herbs, aligned with the lunar cycles, and because their daily lives and livelihoods were so intimately tied to the land, they often instigated and led the revolts. Many of the techniques of torture developed in this time, Federici says, were then adapted and amplified in the conquest of the Americas and the brutalization of enslaved Africans. So, at same time the European elite were profiting from the slave trade and the conquistador’s search for gold in the supposed “New World,” several hundred thousand peasants in Europe, it is estimated, were being tried, tortured, burned alive, drowned, and hanged, with a primary target being rural women.[xi]  

Just a few centuries later, in the late 1700s – and this is where the ancestral story that I heard growing up begins – waves of Swabian Germans, mostly farmers and artisans, migrated to Bessarabia north of the Black Sea in what is now Ukraine and Moldova. Exhausted by the Napoleonic Wars, threatened by widespread famine, and inspired by the communitarian visions of Pietist theologians like Spener, Franke, and Zinzendorf – all figures who also inspired John Wesley – entire villages followed the Danube River southeast toward the Black Sea, where Catherine the Great had promised land, freedom from military service and taxation, and the ability to live out their religious commitments to democratic governance.[xii] And for about a century, they did, maintaining cultural continuity within relatively enclosed agrarian colonies. But beginning in the 1870s, with the Russian Czar’s imposition of universal military service for the lower classes, and with the passage of the Homestead Act in the U.S., another wave of migrations took place, one that included my great and great-great grandparents, who settled in the central Dakotas from the late 19^th through the early 20^th centuries.

Christian ethicist Melanie Harris says that the first step of an eco-womanist methodology involves the “process of uncovering one’s own environmental familial roots and spiritual connections,” by “investigating one’s family story and connection with the earth.”[xiii] I’ve shared enough that you shouldn’t be surprised to learn that I grew up in a family that highly values land, farming, the soil, gardening, and food preservation, that my dad is never happier than when he’s under the big Dakota skies walking the fields with his brothers, or that my mother was ordained a United Methodist pastor in the 1970s, not long after I was born, having been inspired by what she understood to be the call of the Spirit through the feminist movements of that time. Both are graduates of Evangelical Theological Seminary of the Evangelical United Brethren Church, which traces back to figures like the Wesleys, Spener, Franke, and Zinzendorf. I have been pleasantly surprised, the more I’ve learned about my ancestral roots, to discover that the eco-feminist, radical pietist, anti-hierarchical, and communitarian-socialist sensibilities of my adult years happen to run very, very deep. Actually, if you ask my parents about the time I staged a protest outside my mom’s office related to family chores, they’ll probably say those sensibilities were there from the beginning.  

What also runs deep are many, many wounds, and a restless longing to be at home, in a place, among a community of people, with intimate cultural ties to the land. This longing, though, is not unique to me. All of us, each one, live in the aftermath of so many disconnections, so many estrangements, and so many traumas. Though the histories of our ancestral displacements are quite distinct, and although the resultant reconfigurations of power, access, and ownership are profoundly uneven, what we share, in our bodies and psyches, are grieved remembrances of being at home, once upon a time, in and with and of the earth. Eco-psychotherapist Francis Weller names this as one of the five primary gates of grief. It is the mourning, he says, often unconscious, of our connection with the natural world as the primal matrix out of which “our entire psychic, physical, emotional, and spiritual makeup was shaped.” We no longer live, he says, “with a sensuous intimacy with the wind, rivers, rainfall, and birdsong…The multicolored world of animals, plants, streams, hills, and sky has faded from our attention.” And in this loss, cut off from cultural traditions attuned to the cycles of nature and cut off from spiritual practices formed, like we humans, from the land itself, “we are left with a profound loneliness and isolation…we rarely acknowledge.”[xiv]

So there really aren’t any words left to name how bad it is. Ecological Armageddon. Climate Catastrophe. Biotic Holocaust. Another UN climate report comes out, and our young adult children text us: “I guess our generation can throw away those lists of favorite baby names.” A recent study of 16-25 year-olds worldwide found alarmingly high rates of “eco-anxiety” among our young people. “The countries with the highest proportion of respondents who felt ‘very worried’ or ‘extremely worried’…were the Philippines (84%), India (68%) and Brazil (67%), nations that have been hard-hit by climate change.”[xv] The most common emotions named were sadness, anxiousness, anger, powerlessness, and a prevailing sense that their urgent environmental concerns are being ignored by older generations. Our young people know. They know it in their hearts, their minds, and in their nervous systems.

Of course, there are the many numbers: 350, 1.5, 2, 2030, 2050. I’ve been teaching and workshopping on the numbers, charts, and graphs for over a decade, and what they point to and can illumine is important. But the growing accumulation of parts of carbon dioxide per million in the atmosphere is a problem that began in the alienation of humans from the material ground of our being. The accelerating rate of species extinctions, and the global deterioration of land, air, and water health, is ultimately about an estrangement from the plants, insects, animals, and elements who are our earthly kin. What the numbers reflect is a fundamental disconnect from reality.

And that is a theological and a spiritual problem, both of which are always political. To be more specific, the ecological crises we face are grounded in the centuries-long spread of imperial conquest justified by conquest theologies and conquest spiritualities. When John Stuart Mill wrote that “the ways of Nature are to be conquered, not obeyed” and that “her powers are often toward man in the position of enemies, from whom he must wrest, by force and ingenuity, what little he can for his own use,”[xvi] he was following Immanuel Kant’s determination that humans are under no moral obligation to plants, animals, and the elements of nature, because only rational beings, he believed, are worthy of moral considerability, whereas non-human life forms and inanimate objects “are there merely as a means to an end.”^[xvii] Kant, thinking himself unfettered from Christian dogmatic influence, was of course perpetuating the prevailing medieval European cosmology of the Great Chain of Being in which humanity, just lower than the angels, rule over animals, who rule over plants, who rule over inanimate matter, which hovers just above nonbeing. Thomas Aquinas is representative, arguing that only the human, “has dominion over its own act,” whereas “every other creature is naturally under slavery,” such that it is not at all “wrong for man to make use of them, either by killing or in any other way whatever.”^[xviii] As ecofeminists and ecowomanists have long noted, the Great Chain of Being, historically, has functioned to undergird social dualisms and hierarchies as well. Alongside the human/nature binary, dominant western thought has upheld the related hierarchal dualisms of male/female, mind/body, reason/emotion, free/slave, white/black, civilized/savage, each sanctioning endless manifestations of social inequity, violence, and oppression. As faculty emeritus Rosemary Radford Reuther, who taught at Garrett for over 2 decades, often quipped, “The Great Chain of Being is the great chain of command.” It is the logic of feudalism, but also that of the empires it followed, whether Roman, Greek, Persian, Babylonian, or Egyptian. And, it is the theo- or the cosmo-logic of global capitalism and its legion of intersecting supremacies. 

To be freed from these chains, which now threaten the sustainment of planetary life in any recognizable form, we will need to break free from top-down, command-and-control systems and instead cultivate mutualistic, synergistic, and radically democratic worldviews and practices of deep solidarity. What Leonardo Boff calls “Socio-Cosmic Democracy,” or Vandana Shiva “Earth Democracy.” It’s not enough to deconstruct and dismantle. We must also actively seek the ways that make for peace – within ourselves, with one another, and with the land. Only then, Reuther affirmed, will we experience genuine healing. For “the liberating encounter with God/ess,” she wrote, “is always an encounter with our authentic selves resurrected from underneath the alienated self. It is not experienced against, but in and through [co-equal] relationships, healing our broken relations with our bodies, with other people, [and] with nature.”[xix]

Now, to be a creature is to be finite. And to be a finite creature is, at every moment, to inhabit a particular environs. The fact that we live dis-placed lives caused by centuries of alienating uprootedness does not alter this basic reality. Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s interpretation of Genesis chapter 3 is instructive here. It is the sin of Adam and Eve, he said, to attempt to become like God by placing themselves at the center, which is where only the Tree of Life properly belongs. But transgressing creaturely limits by seeking to be gods only causes estrangement, disorder, and explusion from the garden, followed by bloodshed, thorns, and sorrow. To be saved, then, means being re-situated, by being put back into our proper place as creatures oriented first and foremost not toward ourselves, incurvatus en se, or against one another, but in right relationship to the source, the Tree of Life.[xx] To quote Wendell Berry, it is in “understanding accurately [our] proper place in Creation” that we “may be made whole.”[xxi] And that cannot and will not happen abstractly or even globally per se. As my mentor Sallie McFague taught, although we are called to love the whole world, “no one loves the whole earth except [they] love a particular [place within] it.” It is impossible, in fact, to care for the earth “if one has never cared for [any part] of it.”^[xxii] In other words, to be saved, we, the peoples of the earth, will need to become, as Wes Jackson has suggested, native to our environs.[xxiii] Our healing – socially and ecologically – will depend in part upon our becoming indigenous, again, to the many places we collectively inhabit.

Now, a word of caution. There will be no reconciliation with the land, or true peace in the land, apart from a truthful accounting of and a host of reparative responses to the histories of bloodshed that cry out – like the blood of Abel – from the ground.^[xxiv] In order for my great great-grandparents to be granted land in North and South Dakota – the land which is the literal ground upon which everything I have been privileged to enjoy in my almost 50 years of life on this continent – and this was true for millions of European immigrants with respect to their farms, communities, businesses, churches, colleges, universities, and seminaries, in order for any of these to grow up from the land, first, there was the genocidal displacement of the first peoples – in this bioregion, the Ojibwa, Potawatomi, Ottawa, Mandan, Pawnee, Omaha, Sioux, and many more – and there was the fracturing of their cultural traditions, social structures, and sacred relationships to these places. First, there was the slaughtering of the buffalo, an “abomination of desolation” analogous to the cutting down of the sacred trees in old Europe. Then there was the Homestead Act of 1862, which granted these stolen lands to European immigrants, at the same time of the revocation in 1865 of the “forty acres and a mule” program in the South for liberated African Americans, which denied land, and thus accumulated generational wealth, social access, and political power to millions of black Americans. And there was the building of the transcontinental railroad across this region for transportation, for the sale of farm commodities, railroads built by Chinese laborers paid far less than European workers, forced to sleep outside or in tents, while others slept in train cars. The land still holds these grievous histories, and so many more, layers upon layers of geo-psychic hauntings and socio-material inequities. Were we to sit in place, and listen, deeply – and if just peace is our aim, we must – we would eventually hear the question the Lord God posed to Cain: “What have you done?” Listen, the blood of your kin cries out from the ground” (Gen. 4:10). What have we done? And what is to be done?      

The mission of the Center for Ecological Regeneration is “to spread regenerative eco-theological understandings, earth-based religious practices, and cooperative solidarities for the just healing of wounded socio-ecological relationships in the Midwest bioregion and beyond.” The work of justly repairing the good earth for the flourishing of all will need contributions from all the world’s religious, philosophical, and wisdom traditions. We who are stewards of the Christian traditions have our own tasks. How have our theologies – about who and how God is, about what it means to be human, about the nature of sin and salvation, about this world and the world to come – how has Christian doctrine been complicit in the death-dealing logics and operations of conquest? But so too, what in our traditions – past, present, and yet-to-be claimed – might nurture a regenerative, a reparative, and yes a radical conversion of both social and ecological relationships at this Kairos time of multiple pandemics? And not just our beliefs, but our practices as well. How shall we baptize in water and the spirit in an age of runaway climate change marked by both draught and deluge? How will we gather together in table fellowships marked by loving relationships in an age of extreme excess and profound hunger? What forms of discipleship and spiritual formation will foster a deep reverence for the animating presence of God’s Spirit in all our relations? There are many who conclude that Christianity is too deeply enmeshed in the ways and means of empire to be of any earthly use. I understand, but I also disagree. I believe the resilient wisdom of the Jesus traditions, born within the context of imperial conquest and renewed in each generation by the Spirit of Life, from the ground, the grassroots, by the resurrecting spirit of uprising, has much yet to offer. But it’s also true that Christianity cannot and ought not to do this work alone. Neither should a center or a seminary or a denomination do this work alone. Our only hope is to join together, rooted in our respective places, in deeply cooperative solidarities – interracial, multi-ethnic, ecumenical, interfaith, interspiritual, inter-national, and interspecies solidarities. This is the work ahead.

Let me conclude with this. Around the time of Charlemagne’s death, amidst continued Saxon resistance to the colonialization of their native ways of life, an unknown Saxon author crafted a retelling of the Gospel stories in a poem called the Heliand, which means “Healer.” In it, Christ is described as “the Best of healers, come to the middle world to be a help to many” (Song 1), and he’s given the name drohtin, which is the term used for the tribal chieftain, who rules well, remember, not by giving orders, but through the power of persuasion (Song 5). Throughout the poem, the primary beneficiaries of Jesus’ ministry are peasants, and the story of Herod’s slaughter of the innocents clearly parallels the Saxon’s sufferings under Charlemagne. “The king’s warrior-companions did this horrible deed,” it tells. “Never before or since has there been a more tragic departure for young persons…The murderers…didn’t think a thing about the evil they were doing” (Song 11). In the telling of the crucifixion, the cross is erected on sandy gravel, the native landscape of the North Sea. The cross itself on which “the Best of all healers” hung, by rope, is called a tree (Song 66), a clear reference to the cosmic tree at the axis of world, the one Boniface had cut down, and the one Woden had hung on for 9 days, by rope, at the end of the world (Ragnarök). Jesus’ followers bury his body in a Saxon grave – an earthen mound covered by a stone slab (song 67) – a depiction written in clear defiance of the Carolingian law against pagan burial practices. On the day of resurrection, the spirit, the holy breath, it says, bypasses the soldiers guarding the grave and, as “God’s child of peace” is raised up, his garment like “winter-cold snow,” the locks and bars of the underworld are broken, and the road to the green fields of paradise is opened, the bifrost in Nordic myth, a rainbow bridge joining heaven to earth (Song 68).[xxv]

We followers of Jesus who seek to become native again to our respective places are invited, I would suggest, to follow a similar path. By throwing off conquest theologies, supremacist spiritualities, and colonial forms of governance in all their anti-democratic, command-and-control forms. By seeking healing for our bodies, for our psyches, and for our ancestors, as we make just amends, ceremonial offerings if you will, in repentance of their sins and in recognition of the sufferings they endured and passed on to others. By re-membering and preserving the old knowledges, the indigenous wisdoms of every continent, of how to dwell rightly, reverently, in the land, and by teaching them to our young people, to give them hope, and to our children’s children, to the seventh generation. In a place like this, at Garrett, on behalf of Christian traditions pursuing justice and peace worldwide, that may mean drawing inspiration from the Saxon Savior alongside Jame’s Cone’s Black Messiah, the Corn Mother Christ of Native American Christianity[xxvi] with the Jesus M’agyenkwa of African indigenous Christianity,[xxvii] the Buddha Christ and Krishna Jesus of Asia[xxviii] with the Chacana Christ of South America, envisaged as the cosmic cross linking East to West, North to South, as the transcendent-animistic-human one at the center of the great medicine wheel of life.[xxix] All together, in and through the Spirit, a rainbow bridge of healing Christianities, offered alongside other paths, other ways, to guide us from where now are, truly at the end of the world, to the many paradises on this good earth that can still be our sacred home.  

May it be so.

[i] Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker, Saving Paradise: How Christianity Traded Love of This World for Crucifixion and Empire (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2008), 225-233. As a contemporary poet wrote, “What the contrary mind and perverse soul refuse to do with persuasion, Let them leap to accomplish when compelled by fear.” Mary Garrison, “The Emergence of Carolingian Latin Literature and the Court of Charlemagne (780–814),” Carolingian Culture: Emulation and Innovation, ed. Rosamond McKitterick (Cambridge, 1994), 133.  

[ii] See Peter Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity, A.D. 200-1000, 2nd Edition (The Making of Europe) 2nd Edition (Wiley-Blackwell, 2003): “It seems to me that the most marked feature of the rise of the Christian church in western Europe was the imposition of human administrative structures … at the expense of the landscape itself. St. Martin attacked those points at which the natural and divine were held to meet: he cut down the sacred trees, and he broke up the processions that followed the immemorial lines between the arable and the non-arable. His successors fulminated against trees and fountains, and against forms of divination that gained access to the future through the close observation of the vagaries of animal and vegetable life. They imposed rhythms of work and leisure that ignored the slow turning of the sun, the moon, and the planets through the heavens, and that reflected, instead a purely human time, linked to the deaths of outstanding individuals. What is at stake in sixth-century Gaul… is nothing less than a conflict of views on the relations between man and nature” (124-125).

[iii] Tacitus, “Germania,” in Agricola and Germany, Oxford World Classics (Oxford University Press, 1999), 43. 

[iv] Ibid., 50.

[v] Ibid., 49.

[vi] Ibid., 41.

[vii] Ibid., Of a tribe ruled by a woman, he wrote: “They have fallen lower not merely than free men but than slaves,” 61.

[viii] Ibid., 42.

[ix] Ibid., 58.

[x] Silvia Federici, Caliban the Witch: Women, The Body and Primitive Accumulation (Brooklyn, NY: Autonomedia, 2004), pp. 31-36

[xi] Federici, 169. See also: “The counterparts of the typical European witch, then, were…the colonized native Americans and the enslaved Africans who, in the plantations of the “New World,” shared a destiny similar to women in Europe, providing for capital the seemingly limitless supply of labor necessary for accumulation,” 198. And also: “It would be a mistake…to conclude that the integration of slave labor in the production of the European wage proletariat created a community of interests between European workers and the metropolitan capitalists…In reality, like the Conquest, the slave trade was an epochal misfortune for European workers…Let us remember that it was the intensity of the anti-feudal struggle that instigated the lesser nobility and the merchants to seek colonial expansion, and that the conquistadors came from the ranks of the most-hated enemies of the European working class. It is also important to remember that the Conquest provided the European ruling class with the silver and gold used to pay the mercenary armies that defeated the urban and rural revolts; and that, in the same years when the Arawaks, Aztecs, and Incas were being subjugated, workers in Europe were being driven from their homes, branded like animals, and burnt as witches,” 105. 

[xii] Ute Schmidt, translated by James T. Gessele, edited by Elvire Necker-Eberhardt, Nancy Herzog, and Alexander Herzog, Bessarabia: German Colonists on the Black Sea (Fargo, ND: Germans from Russia Heritage Collection, North Dakota State University Libraries, 2011), 6-11.

[xiii] Melanie L. Harris, Ecowomanism: African American Women and Earth-Honoring Faiths (Orbis Books, 2017), 7.

[xiv] Francis Weller, The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief (North Atlantic Books, 2015), 49-52.

[xv]

[xvi] John Stuart Mill, On Nature (New York: AMS Press, Inc., 1970), 20.

[xvii] Immanuel Kant, Lectures on Ethics (London: Taylor and Francis Books, 1930), 239. 

[xviii] Thomas Aquinas, The Summa Contra Gentiles, Part II, Book 3, Chapter CXII (London: Burns, Oates & Washbourne Ltd., 1928), 88-92.

[xix] Rosemary Radford Ruether, Sexism and God-Talk: Toward a Feminist Theology (1983)

[xx] See Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Creation and Fall: A Theological Exposition of Genesis 1-3 (Fortress Press, 2004).

[xxi] Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture (San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1977), 98.

[xxii] Sally McFague, Super, Natural Christians: How We Should Love Nature (Augsburg Fortress Press, 1997), 26-27.

[xxiii] Wes Jackson, Becoming Native to This Place (Counterpoint, 1996).

[xxiv] See Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor (Harvard University Press, 2011): “The environmentalist advocacy of an ethics of place” and the “literature associated with bioregionalism tends toward a style of spiritual geography that is premised on…spatial amnesia,” which “has all too often [reflected] hostility toward displaced people,” both past and present, 238-239.

[xxv] See G. Ronald Murphy, S.J., The Saxon Savior: The Germanic Transformation of the Gospel in the Ninth-Century Heliand (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989). See also Nakashima Brock and Parker, Saving Paradise, 240-248.

[xxvi] See Clara Sue Kidwell, Homer Noley, and George E. Tinker, Native American Theology (Orbis Books, 2001).

[xxvii] See Mercy Amba Oduyoye, Beads and Strands: Reflections Of An African Woman On Christianity In Africa (Orbis Books, 2004).

[xxviii] See R. S. Sugirtharajah, ed., Asian Faces of Jesus (Orbis Books, 1993).

[xxix] See Nicanor Sarmiento Tupayupanqui, O.M.I., Andean Christian Theologies, Elements of a Rainbow of Theological Voices of the Indigenous Peoples of Abya Yala: A Missiological and Anthropological Study of the Andea Trilogy, Dissertation, Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, CA, 2011, 215-116.

The post “The Just Healing of God’s Creation for the Flourishing of All” appeared first on Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary.

Rev. Dr. Timothy R. Eberhart, associate professor of theology and ecology at 91PORN, has been appointed to the Murray H. Leiffer Chair of Public Theology and Ministry, effective immediately. Formerly held by Rev. Dr. Richard D. Tholin (1985-1993) and Rev. Dr. Mark A. Fowler (2000-2016), Eberhart is the third person to be appointed to this chair since its establishment in 1984.

Eberhart joined the faculty of Garrett-Evangelical in 2010 and was promoted to associate professor in the spring of 2020. In 2017, he was named director of the master of arts in public ministry program that he helped design and implement, as well as advisor for a new concentration in Ecological Regeneration.

“I am delighted that Rev. Dr. Timothy Eberhart will become the new inhabitant of our Murray H. Leiffer Chair of Public Theology and Ministry,” said Dr. Lallene J. Rector, president of Garrett-Evangelical. “Dr. Eberhart’s personal history with close ties to the Evangelical United Brethren, his experience and commitment to rural contexts with their unique gifts and challenges, and his vision for a new MA in Public Ministry all point to a deep resonance with Dr. Leiffer’s theological and scholarly commitments. We are indebted to former President Neal F. Fisher for establishing the chair in 1984 whose purpose remains more relevant than ever!”

Eberhart is the youngest child of two alums of Evangelical Theological Seminary – a predecessor institution of 91PORN – Rev. Emil Eberhart (ETS 1968) and Rev. Penny Eberhart (ETS 1970) of South and North Dakota. While at ETS, Emil and Penny were students of Tholin. Eberhart’s mother later served as a founding member on the first board of trustees for the newly merged 91PORN.

“I grew up hearing stories about Dr. Tholin and the moral and theological impact he had on my parents,” Eberhart says. “After moving to Evanston in 2010, Dick and Phyllis were some of the first to reach out to welcome us, and many of his books in social ethics and community organizing are now on my bookshelves. To be named to the Leiffer Chair, which he first held, is so deeply meaningful to me.”

Eberhart continued, “Dr. Leiffer’s legacy of training religious leaders for both urban and rural ministries, his commitment to rigorous research and practical application for the church and world, and his love of both teaching and service to The Methodist Church, is one that Dick followed through his teaching, writing, denominational work, and public engagement around issues of racial and economic justice, fair housing, rural development, anti-war peace advocacy, LGBTQ rights and inclusion, and ecological renewal. The same is true of Dr. Mark Fowler, whom I consider a friend. I am incredibly humbled by this appointment and inspired to build on this rich legacy at Garrett-Evangelical in a time of so many profound denominational, theological, and social crises.”

Eberhart, who grew up in South Dakota, earned a bachelor of arts in religion from St. Olaf College, master of divinity degree from Vanderbilt Divinity School, and doctor of philosophy from the Graduate School at Vanderbilt University. He has taught courses in theology, Christian ethics, and practical ministry at Dakota Wesleyan University, Vanderbilt University, the Methodist Theological School in Ohio, and Garrett-Evangelical.

A sought-out speaker, Eberhart has lectured and led workshops at institutions and churches throughout the nation in the areas of ecological, economic, agricultural, and racial justice. His publications include Rooted and Grounded in Love: Holy Communion for the Whole Creation (Wipf and Stock, 2017), The Economy of Salvation: Essays in Honor of M. Douglas Meeks (Wipf and Stock, 2015), and chapters on mission, ecclesiology, theological education, and ecotheology.

After coming to Garrett-Evangelical, Eberhart directed the seminary’s Course of Study School from 2012-2015, during which he oversaw the implementation of a new residential/online hybrid model of education. He has led numerous environmental initiatives at the seminary, including Garrett-Evangelical’s founding role in the Seminary Stewardship Alliance and the completion of a three-year Green Seminary Initiative certification as a Green Seminary. He has also participated with students in a variety of protest movements in Chicagoland and beyond, including Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, Standing Rock, and Fridays for Future Climate Strikes.

Eberhart is an ordained elder in the Dakotas Conference of The United Methodist Church and has served in youth, campus, young adult, and congregational ministries and on numerous boards and committees for the denomination. He is the current North American Secretary for the Oxford Institute of Methodist Theological Studies, a co-founder and co-chair of The Institute for Christian Socialism, and a co-founder and Advisory Team member of the UMC Creation Justice Movement. At the local level, Eberhart has served on the steering committee for Leadership Evanston, the board of Citizens Greener Evanston, where he was active with the Environmental Justice Evanston Committee, and the city of Evanston’s Equity and Empowerment Commission.

He, his spouse Rev. Becky Eberhart, and their three children, Henry, Frederick, and Audrey, live in West Evanston, where they enjoy working on home renovations, permaculture gardening, and tending to their six hens. They are active members of First United Methodist Church Evanston and the Abide Sunday School class.

A 1925 graduate of Garrett Biblical Institute (GBI), Dr. Murray H. Leiffer joined the faculty of the Chicago Training School for Home and Missions (CTS) in 1927. Upon the merger for CTS and GBI, Leiffer joined the faculty of Garrett in 1929, specializing in urban ministry, sociology of religion, and Christian social ethics. Leiffer retired in 1970 and was named professor emeritus. The chair in his name was established in 1984 by Dr. Neal F. Fisher, president emeritus of Garrett-Evangelical.

91PORN, a graduate school of theology related to The United Methodist Church, was founded in 1853. Located on the campus of Northwestern University, the seminary serves more than 450 students from various denominations and cultural backgrounds, fostering an atmosphere of ecumenical interaction. Garrett-Evangelical creates bold leaders through master of divinity, master of arts, master of theological studies, doctor of philosophy, and doctor of ministry degrees. Its 4,500 living alumni serve church and society around the world.

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The Board of Trustees of 91PORN have affirmed the promotions of four faculty members to associate professor, effective July 1, 2020. They are Rev. Dr. Reginald Blount (Christian education), Rev. Dr. Timothy R. Eberhart (theology and ecology), Dr. Débora B. A. Junker (Christian education), and Dr. G. Brooke Lester (Hebrew Bible).

Rev. Dr. Reginald Blount
Associate Professor of Formation, Leadership, and Culture

With feedback from internal and external reviewers who wrote with great specificity and conviction about the importance of who Blount is as a mentor, teacher, collaborator, and a model of emancipatory pedagogy, the review committee unanimously recommended Blount be promoted to associate professor. Colleagues commended his contributions to the doctor of ministry program and curriculum, his good citizenship and entrepreneurship within the institution (Lilly Endowment Inc. grants and Children’s Defense Fund Freedom Schools Program), and his distinguished record of service to the African Methodist Episcopal Church and to Garrett-Evangelical.

Blount joined the faculty of Garrett-Evangelical in 1997. He has spoken nationally and internationally at numerous conferences and workshops helping faith communities envision new and creative ways to minister to, with, and on behalf of young people. Blount earned his doctor of philosophy degree from Garrett-Evangelical and Northwestern University’s joint program in religious and theological studies, focusing on the areas of Christian education and youth ministry.

Rev. Dr. Timothy R. Eberhart
Associate Professor of Theology and Ecology

The review committee gave Eberhart the highest recommendation for promotion. Reviewers noted Eberhart’s high professional standards and dedication to the classroom, his recognition within and beyond the seminary for his scholarship, and that he is a committed servant-leader both within the church and in the community. Specifically highlighted as a gift to the church and the academy is his capacity to speak to and to challenge the church, as a grounded United Methodist theologian who is also ecumenical in scope.

Eberhart joined the faculty of Garrett-Evangelical in 2010. He was named director of the master of arts in public ministry program in 2017. Eberhart earned a doctor of philosophy from the Graduate School at Vanderbilt University, master of divinity degree from Vanderbilt Divinity School, and bachelor of arts in religion from St. Olaf College. A sought-out speaker, Eberhart has lectured and led workshops at institutions and churches throughout the nation. His latest book Rooted and Grounded in Love: Holy Communion for the Whole Creation (Wipf and Stock), was published in June 2017.

Eberhart is an ordained elder in the Dakotas Conference of The United Methodist Church. He has served on various boards and committees of the church, including the Northern Illinois Bishop’s Task Force on Sustainability. He is also the current North American Secretary for the Oxford Institute of Methodist Theological Studies. At the local level, Eberhart is a board member of Citizens Greener Evanston and serves on the Environmental Justice Evanston Committee.

Dr. Débora B. A. Junker
Associate Professor of Critical Pedagogies

The review committee, chaired by Dr. Nancy E. Bedford, fully endorsed the promotion of Junker to associate professor without reservation. “The review letters we received spoke of Dr. Junker in glowing terms and overwhelmingly supported her promotion,” said Bedford. “There was a wide acknowledgement of her competence, compassion, integrity, hard work, and international recognition.” In addition, Junker’s seminal work on Freire, creativity, contributions to scholarship in English, Portuguese and Spanish, and active participation in various US and international guilds all helped to secure the recommendation for promotion.

Junker joined the faculty of Garrett-Evangelical in 2016. She received her doctor of philosophy degree in 2003 from Garrett-Evangelical in education and congregational studies. She also holds a master of arts in Christian education from Christian Theological Seminary and a master in religious science (practical theology) degree from the Methodist University of São Paulo – Brazil. She also received Post-Graduated Specialization in Psychopedagogy of Early Childhood and Adolescence and a Licentiate in Letters from the Methodist Institute of Higher Education of São Paulo – Brazil.

Dr. G. Brooke Lester
Associate Professor of Hebrew Scriptures

The review committee enthusiastically recommended Lester for promotion to associate professor. “Dr. Lester’s work has gone above and well beyond the requirements for promotion,” said Dr. James Papandrea, who chaired the review committee. “He is able to integrate traditional and cutting-edge models of scholarship and teaching, and his future potential for publishing and other contributions is promising indeed. To the committee’s delight, Dr. Lester also spoke of the transition to mid-career in terms of servanthood and the mentoring of the next generation of scholars.”

Lester has served as a faculty member at Garrett-Evangelical since 2007. He earned his doctor of philosophy from Princeton Theological Seminary, a master of theology from Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, and a bachelor of fine arts from Drake University. His research interest centers on inner-biblical allusion as a figurative rhetorical trope.

Lester has published several articles, co-authored Handbook to A Grammar for Biblical Hebrew (Abingdon, 2005), is a contributor to Effective Social Learning: A Collaborative, Globally-Networked Pedagogy (Fortress Press, 2015), and is the author of Understanding Bible by Design: Create Courses with Purpose (Fortress Press, 2014) and Daniel Evokes Isaiah: Allusive Characterization of Foreign Rule in the Book of Daniel (T&T Clark, forthcoming).

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After the successful completion of a three-year strategic plan aimed at deepening the seminary’s environmental ethos and commitments, 91PORN has attained certification from the Green Seminary Initiative as a “Green Seminary.” Through this certification process, the seminary’s Green Team, led by Rev. Dr. Timothy Eberhart, Assistant Professor of Theology and Ecology, and Liz Lwanga (G-ETS 2017), sustainability coordinator, has facilitated the integration of environmentally sustainable practices into areas of education and spiritual formation; liturgy, ritual, and worship; building and grounds management; community life; and public leadership.

“I am thrilled with the progress that has been accomplished in the last three years not only toward our own seminary embodiment of environmentally responsible living, but also for the development of curricular programs that are educating leaders who will be champions for environmental regeneration.,” said Dr. Lallane J. Rector, president of Garrett-Evangelical. “We owe a debt of gratitude to Dr. Eberhart and Ms. Liz Lwanga for encouraging us to join the Green Seminary Initiative and for assisting us in achieving this certification!”

The certification process began in 2017 with the formation of a ‘Green Team’ to spearhead these efforts. Since then, the seminary undertook an extensive energy audit of the seminary’s grounds, implemented a composting program which reduced carbon emissions equivalent to taking 5 cars off the road per year; a K-cup recycling program that has recycled and composted over 150 pounds, addressed major flaws in the seminary’s waste stream, organized innovative chapel worship services, hosted an area interfaith climate summit, partnered with the interfaith environmental non-profit organization Faith in Place, brought numerous speakers and theologians to campus for lectures and conversations, participated in public climate marches, and more.

In addition, the seminary launched a concentration in Ecological Regeneration in 2018 for students in the Master of Arts in Public Ministry and Master of Divinity degrees, with courses offered in ecological theology, regenerative ethics, environmental justice, and congregationally-based earth ministries. Two students in the concentration, Audra Hudson and Joshua Richardson, also provided extensive leadership toward the certification as members of the Green Team.

Reflecting upon the certification process, Eberhart said, “In an age of widespread environmental degradation and injustice, with innumerable implications for the future shape of ministry, we’re poised at Garrett to play a leading role in inspiring communities of faith to draw upon the resources of our traditions in guiding individuals, communities, and society at large to transition toward a more life-sustaining and just future. Achieving certification through the Green Seminary Initiative is a sign of our commitment to this urgent work, but also a motivation to go further. Our future students and the communities they’ll serve deserve, and will demand, nothing less”

Founded in 2007, Green Seminary Initiative encourages schools of theology to be participants in, and keepers of, God’s creation in all its human, biological, geological, and ecological manifestations. To that end, GSI is dedicated to building a nationwide coalition of theological schools that infuse care of the earth into all aspects of theological education. To learn more, go to

To learn more about ecological regeneration at Garrett, go to garrett.edu/sustainGETS.

91PORN, a graduate school of theology related to The United Methodist Church, was founded in 1853. Located on the campus of Northwestern University, the seminary serves more than 450 students from various denominations and cultural backgrounds, fostering an atmosphere of ecumenical interaction. Garrett-Evangelical creates bold leaders through master of divinity, master of arts, master of theological studies, doctor of philosophy, and doctor of ministry degrees. Its 4,500 living alumni serve church and society around the world.

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Interview with Rev. Dr. Timothy Eberhart

There seems to be a lot happening at the seminary around ecological sustainability and justice. Why has Garrett-Evangelical made a commitment to the environment a priority?

At the most basic level, I’d say that a commitment to caring for creation is intimately connected to the central mark of Christian discipleship, which is loving God with one’s whole life and loving one’s neighbor as oneself. I don’t believe you can say you truly love God while neglecting God’s creation, while ignoring the mystery, beauty, and rich diversity of creaturely life and all that sustains life. To affirm with the scriptures that God is Creator necessarily calls for a basic reverence and respect for all that God has brought into being and called good. Similarly, we know that human life is sustained in and through intricate webs of soil, water, air, minerals, plants, animals, and more, and that to do harm to these interconnected webs is to do harm to human beings as well. And so, it also doesn’t make sense to say you love your neighbor, near or far, while undermining the very conditions upon which your neighbor’s life depends.

Of course, the hard truth is that we are living in an age of immense ecological degradation and injustice. Whether one looks at the realities of climate change, biodiversity loss, or environmental pollution in any number of forms, it’s clear that the capacity of the good earth to sustain life, human or otherwise, is profoundly threatened. And at the moment, it is those already suffering under the burdens of injustice and inequity who have been and are suffering the worst effects — the world’s poor from so-called under-developed nations and rural communities and those whose skin colors are darker hued, including indigenous peoples, women, children, and the elderly.

All of this has enormous implications for the shape of religious education and formation. What does it look like to lead worship and preach about divine will in communities impacted by unprecedented flooding, wildfires, or other disasters? How do you offer pastoral care and counseling to climate refugees? What is the meaning of hope, of repentance, of conversion, of doing justice amidst what some scientists are calling the sixth great extinction event? We think it would be irresponsible as a seminary not to be wrestling with such questions and not to be responding faithfully with resources from the Christian tradition.

Could you say more about the role of religious communities in relation to the broader environmental movement?

What’s interesting here is the growing number of those in the scientific community who are looking to the world’s religious traditions for moral leadership on issues of global environmental concern. It’s one thing to gather and interpret information about the state of the biosphere. It’s another to inspire people around a vision of the common good, to tap into deep motivations for personal and social change, and to mobilize communities for widespread collective action. And just to be clear — that is what we need to do, as quickly and effectively and on as large a scale as possible.

At the same time, those of us who are stewards of a particular religious tradition bear the responsibility of examining how we’ve contributed to the ecological crises we’re facing. For Christians, that means interrogating our most basic beliefs about God’s relationship to the world, about the meaning of salvation, about what it means to be created in the image of God, and about the nature of following Jesus and walking in the Spirit. There are many ways in which Christian beliefs have led people to turn away from the earth and to disregard the sacredness of this earthly life. But we’re also responsible for helping to emphasize the earth- affirming nature of the scriptures and Christian faith — for example, the divine pronouncement of the goodness of creation, the incarnation of God with us in the earthly body of Jesus, and the resurrection of Jesus as the first fruits of a new creation. This is the kind of theological work we’re doing in our new concentration in ecological regeneration.

Tell me about the concentration. What’s involved?

The concentration in ecological regeneration is available to students in several of our degree programs, including the new master of arts in public ministry. The curriculum is organized around a set of core courses in theology, ethics, and the practice of ministry. These courses include everything from engaging in the critical and constructive doctrinal work I was just describing to learning about regenerative practices like permaculture design to practicing methods of community organizing for environmental justice. Throughout the concentration, students are also making connections between addressing ecological degradation and confronting other forms of injustice like racism, poverty, and sexism. I believe this intersectional and integrative approach makes what we’re doing in the concentration unique in theological education today.

I also want to say something about the word “regeneration,” which is a term growing in significance in the environmental movement to describe concepts like regenerative agriculture, regenerative cultures, or regenerative economics. What’s being affirmed here is the need to move beyond the category of sustainability, and even resilience, to claim the importance of actively participating in the restorative healing of landscapes and watersheds and natural systems. Regeneration is also a theological term. In fact, it’s central to the Wesleyan-Methodist tradition and communicates the assurance that God is capable of bringing about new life and new possibilities even amidst the very worst of our sins that lead to death. We very much need that kind of radical hope today.

Finally, tell me about the Hope for Creation Fund.

The aim of the Hope for Creation Fund is to support the institutional structures needed to amplify the work we’ve begun in doing our part to heal God’s threatened creation, to raise up wise and effective leaders for regenerative ministry, and to ensure that Garrett- Evangelical continues to be a leader in the Chicago area, Midwest region, and around the world in faithfully responding to the fullness of the Gospel. We believe in the importance of this work, but we’re going to need everyone’s support. I would encourage everyone to go the seminary’s website — Garrett.edu/GoGreen — to learn more about the Hope for Creation Fund. In addition, I would welcome the opportunity to engage further with our readers about the seminary’s commitment to ecological sustainability and justice.

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How would you define public ministry?

I hesitate to respond with too narrow a definition. And I say that because I believe that public ministry, on the broadest level, is nothing more and nothing less than the common ministry of everyone who seeks to follow Jesus in the Spirit for the sake of the world God so loves. The scope of God’s loving-justice witnessed to in the scriptures isn’t confined to some set-apart private sphere, or just to the interior lives of individuals, or to religious practices narrowly understood. The redemptive work of God is ultimately universal in scope. In that sense, every Christian is called to ministry. All of the baptized are called and equipped by the Spirit to seek God’s justice—at home, in gathering together at church, in the marketplace, in civic life, in neighborhoods and communities, and as global citizens of our common planetary home.

We were very intentional in naming this a degree in public ministry and not one in social justice or public advocacy. We are a seminary of The United Methodist Church rooted in the ecumenical Christian faith. We are equipped to train and to form Christian leaders, and we have long done so in ways that have prepared ordained ministers to serve faithfully and with excellence for the sake of the public good. What we have not done as well, at the curricular level at least, is train and form lay leaders who feel called to live out their vocations in the public realm as a living expression of their Christian faith. So we were clear that this is a ministerial degree, but one that claims and affirms an expansive understanding of ministry for all Christians.

That leads me to my next question, which you’ve begun to answer. Why did Garrett-Evangelical decide to offer a master of arts in public ministry? What was the thinking behind creating this degree?

There are an increasing number of students applying to seminary who are clear they desire a theological education but who do not see themselves fitting into traditional forms of congregational ministry. They’re compelled by Jesus. They care deeply about the state of the world. Many have been shaped by their experiences in the church—some of those experiences being rich and meaningful, others more painful. But they desire to study the Bible more critically, to learn about Christian history in greater depth, to explore questions of spirituality in a community of learning, and to examine the pressing moral issues of our time—even if they’re still discerning where they will end up after graduation.

So how can we extend the many goods of a theological education to the whole church, so that all members of the church body and not just clergy have the opportunity to engage their faith through sustained refection and be equipped for the work of ministry in whatever form that might take? We very much hope that a large number of those who enroll in and graduate from this degree will be laity. And I think the implications of that are pretty exciting—for our churches, our seminary classrooms, and ultimately for the kind of impact they are going to have in the world.

Garrett-Evangelical has also been a leader for a long time in educating United Methodist deacons, those called to ordained ministries that connect the church with the needs of the world. We’ve structured this MA to meet the requirements for deacons, and I’m confident there will be many preparing for diaconal ministries who will find this a compelling degree program.

I also believe there will be some clergy, those who already have a theological education, who will be well served by this degree. Those already engaged in various forms of public ministry will also benefit those who would like to strengthen their capacities to make a difference in their communities. In that case, it’s possible they would be able to transfer in a set number of credit hours.

Why does Garrett-Evangelical think this degree is important and relevant in today’s world?

Public life today is marked by a host of very troubling trends. Some of these are more recent, and others have deep, even ancient, roots. We can name the more visible rise of white supremacist ideologies and racist groups. We can point to the mass incarceration of black, brown, and red peoples in this country. We can identify the obscene gap between the most wealthy and the very poor, the bottoming out of middle class wealth and middle class institutions oriented toward the common good, and the increasing number of those threatened by extreme poverty. Related to this are the growing threats to a democratic society and what the scientific community is telling us about the implications of climate change is terribly disconcerting. So how do we understand these trends, these dynamics that are impacting public life and that are being expressed in the public sphere? Are we able to make connections between them, identify patterns, and see how they reinforce one another? Mental health professions are tracking a rise in
depression and anxiety in the United States, as well as an increase in drug addictions, especially in impoverished communities. Surely, among the many factors involved, there’s a connection here to the feelings of vulnerability that so many are experiencing on so many different levels.

So, what does it mean to believe in the God of Jesus Christ at such a time as this? What is the meaning of Good News today, not just for individuals but for the world? And what role do people of faith have in understanding and addressing these issues in redemptive and transformative ways?

At the same time, there are many signs of hopeful resistance and creative responses emerging all around us. I very much believe that the various crises we are seeing present opportunities for transformative, and even radical, changes to our public institutions and our common life. Again, what role might Christians play in joining together with other faith traditions and with people of goodwill in building and wielding power through movements and organizing and direct service? Do Christians have unique resources and perspectives we might offer at this just time in our history? I believe we do. I know we do.

So one of the things I am most excited about in directing and teaching in this degree is bringing together students for whom racial justice is a primary moral concern with students oriented primarily around issues of climate change, and then others who bring expertise from their experiences in public health professions or the field of education, and then others committed to issues of economic justice who want to bring about change through public policy advocacy. And then exploring, together, the relevance and implications of our shared Christian faith in addressing these overlapping crises. The opportunities for mutual learning and transformation in and out of the classroom are going to make for a very rich educational experience. That is my hope, at least!

What does a degree in public ministry entail exactly? What are the requirements?

To earn the degree, students will be required to complete 56 credit hours, which they can finish in four full semesters over two years. Twenty-four of those hours will be in foundational courses alongside students in the master of divinity program and students from other MA degrees. Those courses are crucial in grounding students at a master’s level in the basics of theological refection, biblical interpretation, historical understanding, personal and contextual awareness, and the spiritual life. That also includes a required field education placement under the direction of a site supervisor and alongside peer group refection. From there, starting from their first semester in the degree, students will be taking 20 of those credit hours in a set of specific public ministry courses: eight of those hours spread out in three courses that all MAPM students will take together, and then 12 hours across four courses for an area concentration. The remaining 12 semester hours are elective hours that students can use to fill in with additional coursework in their area of concentration, to fulfill ordination requirements for deacons, or to take other courses of interest.

Why is the field education component so important?

One of the commitments of the program as a whole is to take seriously the contexts our students will be coming from as they enter the degree and the contexts they will be heading to upon graduation. We know our students bring experiences and expertise that can contribute to the classroom environment, and at the same time, we want to help facilitate critical refection upon where they come from, how they have been formed, and what they believe. The field education experience is crucial in this process because it provides an opportunity for students to be engaged in a form of public ministry while they are earning their degree. That allows for a certain level of experimentation. We want them to ask questions like: Do I like this kind of work? Am I good at it? What are others reflecting back to me? What do I need to learn to be a more effective leader in this environment? What are the challenges and the goods internal to this setting? By being paired with a site supervisor and a peer group for facilitated refection, our students are allowed to think through practical and career-oriented questions at the same time they are engaging at the level of critical theory, ethical analysis, and theological exploration. The great thing about being located in Chicagoland is just how many organizations, initiatives, centers, and movements there are in the region oriented toward social systems, social justice, and the public good. Our field education office works hard to find the right ft for students based upon their prior experiences and vocational interests.

You mentioned the concentrations – tell me about the available concentrations and what students need to do to earn one.

The concentration provides an opportunity for students to engage in a more sustained study of a certain set of public concerns and to be equipped for public ministry in a more specialized way. Right now, we are beginning with three concentration tracks: one in child advocacy, another in racial justice, and a third in ecological regeneration. We are launching with these three because of the growing interest of our students in these areas and our understanding of the importance of all three in the public realm today, but also because we have excellent faculty equipped to teach within and oversee these three tracks. It is also likely we will be adding new concentrations in time as we identify emerging interests and can organize the resources to support additional tracks.

I understand students can propose their own concentrations? How does that work?

Yes. A student can propose a concentration different than those three. It is conceivable that a student might want to focus a concentration around issues of immigration, for example, or homelessness, or economic justice. In that case, we would need to see if we could identify at least four appropriate course offerings either at the seminary, through another seminary or divinity school in the area, or perhaps through courses offered at Northwestern University. A student interested in exploring that option would meet with me, as the director of the program, and we would work together to see what might be possible. I cannot make any guarantees that we would always be successful, but I would hope we could be more often than not.

What kinds of careers would these students pursue?

We anticipate our graduates will pursue a variety of different career paths, and there will be many who continue on in their existing careers but desire the theological grounding to support and better equip them in what they’re already doing. Many may be people who lead nonprofit organizations, community organizers, and child or family service workers. We may have alums who are politicians or who work in government offices as staff members writing public policy. Others might contribute through think tanks. I could imagine there will be socially minded entrepreneurs who find ways to live out their faith through business models that benefit the common good. Still others might work at a more general level for the church, working on public advocacy and justice issues for their particular denomination or through ecumenical work. And I’m sure there will be careers that we haven’t even though of that our alums will pursue—or maybe even create!

One of the commitments I have in directing this degree is to find ways of staying connected with our alums in ways that support them in their public ministries but also in ways that impact the degree program in terms of what we teach, how we teach, what we can learn from their experiences, how we can build power together through their networks, and how current students can connect with their work.

Who will benefit from this degree?

Ultimately, I hope those who benefit from this degree will be the people and the places our graduates end up serving in public ministry. I hope vulnerable children benefit. I hope incarcerated populations benefit. I hope black neighborhoods and communities and individuals and institutions benefit. I hope poor rural communities struggling amidst drug addictions and high cancer rates benefit. I hope degraded landscapes and threatened wildlife and polluted waterways benefit. If we can look back in 20 years at the impacts our graduates of this degree have had in the public realm, and if we can point to specific lives and particular organizations and particular places that are flourishing because of their work, then we’ll know we’ve succeeded as a school through this degree program.

And that gets back to who we understand God to be and what God is doing in the world. This is a theological matter. Christians affirm that God so loves the world—the whole of it and every part. So to follow a call to serve in public ministry is to participate in God’s aim to heal the world— the whole of it and every part. And in that sense, I am very much looking forward to being wonderfully surprised at the unexpected benefits that might come about as a result of this degree.

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