About Us

The Green Seminary Initiative is a movement among seminaries designed to foster an ethic of ecological care for God's Creation on our various seminary campuses.

The members of the current steering committee are:

Laurel Kearns, Associate Professor of Sociology & Religion and Environmental Ethics, Drew Theological School, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
David Rhoads, Professor of New Testament, Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Beth Norcross, Adjunct Faculty, Wesley Theological Seminary, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

What is The Green Seminary Initiative?

The Green Seminary Initiative builds on the work of Theological Education to Meet the Environmental Challenge (TEMEC). It is also supported by the Forum on Religion and Ecology (FORE), the Center for Respect of Life and Environment (CRLE), AAR’s Religion and Ecology Group, Drew Theological School and the Lutheran School of Theology Chicago.

The Green Seminary Initiative is premised on two convictions. The first is that the religious community has a unique and significant calling to turn back human-caused environmental destruction and to participate in bringing all of creation into health and wholeness. Religious communities express thanks for God’s creation. We remember that we are called to serve and preserve the earth. We participate in God’s covenant with Noah and all living things. We recognize our human failing in our vocation to care for creation. We gather to reverence the beauty and grieve the destruction. Together, we confront the spiritual crisis and reorient our hearts and minds to simpler, sustainable and just lives and to the vision of a renewed creation.

The second conviction is that seminaries should provide clergy and religious leaders with the tools necessary for them to lead their congregations, communities and organizations in meeting their unique call to protect and restore creation. Specifically, they need a creation-centered education that provides the theological, Scriptural, spiritual and ethical bases of creation care and eco-justice. They need to understand the depth of the spiritual and ethical challenges inherent in the ecological crisis. They need to appreciate the breadth of the ecological challenge and to be prepared to respond to its impact on the least among us.

The Green Seminary Initiative fosters efforts by theological schools to incorporate care for creation into the identity and mission of the institution such that it becomes part of its ethos. Specifically, the initiative encourages schools to work in five program areas: education, worship, building and grounds, community life and personal discipleship, and public ministry.

Through education, seminaries can develop foundational and elective courses to equip each graduate with the intellectual and practical tools they will need. Creation care can become an integral part of courses across the curriculum. Lectures, workshops and retreats are well-suited to such learning. Students may participate in field education experiences through immersion experiences and internship projects. Green seminaries can also become centers of scholarship on creation-related topics.

Through worship, faculty, staff and students come together as a community to celebrate God’s presence in creation and to worship with all living things. Worship also affords opportunities for restoring our relationship with creation through spiritual experience, praise, confession, pardon, and petition. Furthermore, seminaries can provide opportunities to develop creation-care worship resources.

Through energy-efficient and sustainable buildings and environmentally sensitive grounds, seminaries can be a model and a laboratory for seminarians on how to limit their environmental footprint. The seminary can also show at the institutional level how to model conservation of water, paper and energy, and use best practices in offices and the refectory. Seminaries also offer on-the-ground practical instruction on the building, financing and administration of creation-friendly buildings and grounds.

Through community life and personal discipleship, faculty, staff and students are encouraged to adopt personal and communal lifestyles that are simple and light on the earth. Food services, transportation, recycling, energy and paper usage will all respect and honor creation. In public ministry, green seminaries can promote ecological commitment in the broader religious community and in the world by offering creation care conferences, workshops and retreats and by providing printed and online resources. Schools can also offer training to local religious leaders through continuing education and other means.

Specific resources for The Green Seminary Initiative are housed at the Lutheran School of Theology Chicago through the Web of Creation atwww.webofcreation.org. This website will provide resources to assist administrators, faculty, staff and students interested in greening seminaries. It provides reports from a broad spectrum of seminaries on specific actions they are taking, a collection of syllabi for ecological courses as well as resources for more general courses, links to relevant sites and networking opportunities. The site also includes a step- by-step description of how to green a seminary, including a list of “What Every Seminarian Should Learn about Caring for Creation.” To become a contact person for your seminary, to add a report of environmental actions at your seminary, or to submit syllabi, go to www.webofcreation.org, double-click on The Green Seminary Initiative, and follow the instructions.