Midwest Symposium on Ecologically Informed Theological Education 10/2017

When: October 17-19, 2017

Where: Methodist Theological School in Ohio, Delaware, OH 

We were pleased to partner on The Midwest Symposium on Ecologically Informed Theological Education, which was held on the Methodist Theological School in Ohio’s (MTSO) campus in Delaware, Ohio from October 18th to 19th with 75 people in attendance from seminaries around the Midwest and beyond.

The Symposium began with an optional morning tour of the Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center at The Ohio State University. Participants walked through freezers and saw first-hand the climate record of the past million years contained in glacial ice core records. Dr. Lonnie Thompson, Distinguished Professor of Earth Sciences at OSU and one of the leading climate scientists in the U.S., provided a keynote address on climate science. For many faculty it was the first time they heard from a climate scientist in-person.

The symposium continued with a five-person panel of scientists on other ecological issues like algal blooms in Lake Erie and food security in Ohio.

The second day began with an interfaith panel with representatives from Islam, Judaism, Shinto, Unitarian Universalism and indigenous traditions. The third panel explored strategies for integrating ecological themes into theological education. It involved Christian professors of eco-theology and others.

The symposium also included two series of breakout workshops on place-based education, mountain top removal, the Earth Charter, urban farming, and other topics. The symposium concluded with a keynote by MTSO Dean Valerie Bridgeman, focusing on theological education in the context of ecological challenges.

The Symposium was co-organized by MTSO, the Green Seminary Initiative, and our organization, based on support from the Henry Luce Foundation and The Julia Burke Foundation.

The Southeast Symposium on Ecologically Informed Theological Education was held in March 2018 at the Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, Georgia (near Atlanta, GA). Click on the button below for more information.

Impressions