Due to the success of its Creation Care Certificate program in 2020-21, LTS has created a Masters in Pastoral Studies with a track in Creation Care and Ecotheology that prepares students with the necessary biblical and theological tools to articulate and carry out a cogent plan of Creation care and justice for their congregations and communities. This new program will launch in 2022-23. Find out more here: https://lextheo.edu/academics/degree-programs/mps/creation-care-and-ecotheology/
GTF prioritizes justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion through courses that equip students to address climate change and local environmental issues through intersectionality. Our course offerings include “Church, Society, and the Ethics of Global Warming,” giving students an ethical framework to discuss climate change in their congregations; “Food and Faith,” helping students grapple with hunger, agribusiness, community gardens, global and local economies from the perspective of Christian wisdom; “Witness and Testimony in Appalachia,” an immersion course to study the complexities of environmental devastation in the coal regions of Kentucky; and “Ecowomanism and Environmental Justice,” exploring environmental injustice on the basis of race, class, and gender-based disparities.
In addition to education, LTS has focused on modeling how to reduce ecological impacts on people, land, air, and water through implementing practices and programs such as:
- leading Creation-centered worship services for the seminary community
- working with employees and the building manager of the complex in which we lease space to reduce energy consumption
- using cloth napkins and reusable dinnerware for community meals
- serving Fair Trade coffees and teas
- recycling
- composting
- working with local environmental advocacy groups
- hosting Earth Day events and programs for employees in our office complex.
Want to find out more? Want to join the work of the GTF? Contact: Dr. Leah Schade, Chair of the Green Task Force, lschade@lextheo.edu.