Spiritual and ecological innovation

We regularly get calls and emails at the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab from people looking to connect with others around eco-chaplaincy. National Public Radio described how eco-chaplains support people with climate grief in a piece last year, and the BTS Center runs a popular program on Climate Conscious Chaplaincy. When ecologically focused efforts emerged in our recent study of spiritual innovators across the United States, we were not surprised. This research project mapped groups, started since 2008, motivated by spirituality or religion (however defined) to make a change in the world, and eco-spirituality is at the forefront. Interestingly, the eco-focused groups had a wide variety of ways that they formed community and co-created meaning.

Who is doing this work?

Some groups we learned about in this project, like the Center for Transformative Spirituality, focus on education and teaching about how to confront the climate crisis. Part of the Hartford International University for Religion and Peace, the Center fosters conversations about how to live at peace with the natural world and hosts events to help students learn to cope with eco-grief – spiritual distress from the climate crisis – through practices such as contemplative poetry writing. The Center offers an Eco-Spirituality Graduate Certificate, with course offerings in the emerging field of eco-ministry.

Others groups, like Spring Forest in North Carolina, provide hands-on learning experiences in a nature-focused setting. Spring Forest is a working farm that its members call a “farmastery” – a portmanteau of “farm” and “monastery.” In addition to farming, Spring Forest puts on a weekly program called “Grow It” for young children and their caregivers. Participants have the opportunity to feed and care for livestock, pick produce, and learn about organic nutrition, giving them a practical view into sustainable farming. Spring Forest does a hybrid morning prayer that anyone anywhere in the world can join. Modest Family Solutions is another example that helps young people understand the broader significance of individual environmental activism. Through their Ummah Sustained Agroecology Learning Lab in Washington state, designed for K-8 students, participants can become Junior Master Gardeners or a Junior Entomologists learning about how to preserve the earth for future generations.

Other efforts center social action. Some, like Jubilee Justice, actively support Black farmers by educating them about climate-friendly rice-growing processes and allowing them to implement that knowledge through a collectively-owned rice mill. The organization focuses on the Buddhist principle of the sanctity of both people and land, which supports its mission of uplifting marginalized communities through Earth-conscious organic farming. Other groups focus on daily practices like plant-based, vegan eating. The UU Plant-Based Eating Club, based in Massachusetts, seeks to raise awareness of the relationship between the human diet and the environment by holding potlucks, organizing events, and encouraging local churches to adopt sustainable eating habits like having plant-based community meals. Also working on getting people to eat lower on the food chain is the Compassion Consortium, which hosts events and classes that discuss how vegan eating can be a vital part of practicing “interspecies spirituality.” The Consortium also attends conferences and conducts interspecies advocacy work, which has led to the recognition of interspecies spirituality by the Parliament of the World’s Religions.

Land Justice Futures promotes large-scale actions related to land sustainability by working to facilitate the transfer of property from Catholic sisters to BIPOC communities. The transfer process begins with groups of Catholic women religious who are actively discerning the future of their property, which ranges from 900-acre farms to retreat houses and vacation homes. Through Land Justice Futures’ two-year Focus Communities program, different communities of sisters work together to learn about land use and form commitments to climate and racial justice within their local contexts. The program has resulted in a number of sustainable projects, such as an indigenous-run kelp farm built on retreat center land owned by the Sisters of St. Joseph in Brentwood, New York. In this way, Land Justice Futures is addressing both the trend of aging Catholic leadership in the United States and historical land exploitation and dispossession.

Dayenu is a national Jewish organization that seeks to empower individuals across the United States to work towards systemic change through Dayenu Circles, which are place-based groups that put together events and gather to discuss climate action strategies. Dayenu also participates in broader coalitions of environmental justice organizations, reaches out to policymakers and elected officials, and conducts outreach to encourage climate-conscious voting during election seasons.

Networking

A few efforts to network the field are already emerging. For example, the Wild Church Network is creating the foundation for a global network of eco-focused spiritual leaders who are fostering the spread and growth of wild churches, spiritual communities dedicated to bridging the gap between humans and the natural world. By paving the way for wild churches to share best practices and communicate regularly with one another, the Network is establishing a durable ecosystem of environmentally-conscious spiritual communities. Yet despite their incredible work as individual organizations, many of these efforts is largely isolated from the others. It seems as though eco-spirituality is still emerging as a field. There is an incredible opportunity for more networking and community building across efforts. Ecologically-centered efforts can join together and perhaps work alongside traditional religious bodies towards their shared vision of increased climate awareness and sustainability advocacy.

Amy Lawton is Research Manager of the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab.

Hannah Petersen is a PhD student in Sociology, a graduate affiliate with the Center for Research on Educational Opportunity (CREO), and a Burns Fellow in the Program for Interdisciplinary Education Research (PIER) at the University of Notre Dame.