Seven in ten Americans identify as Christian. For a movement like rewilding to gain more traction, it must intersect with the belief systems of the culture at large on some level. I am not a Christian, though I am interested in the intersection of rewilding and christianity. Since I live in the United States, I feel it’s important to understand enough about the dominant cultures here and where to find common ground in rewilding narratives. In this episode I chat with two friends of mine who are both pastors. Solveig Nilsen-Goodin and Aric Clark.
Rev. Solveig Nilsen-Goodin is an ordained pastor in the Lutheran Church, a spiritual director, grief coach, writer, author of the book: What is the Way of the Wilderness: An Introduction to the Wilderness Way Community, and co-editor and contributor to A Grounded Faith: Reconnecting with Creator and Creation in the Season of Lent. Solveig helped found EcoFaith Recovery, and founded and pastored the Wilderness Way Community for eleven years. She and her husband Peter are raising two teenage boys in NE Portland.
Rev. Aric Clark is pastor of Mt. Home and Sherwood United Methodist Churches. He is also a writer, a speaker, and an activist who lives in Portland, Oregon. He is the co-author of Never Pray Again: Lift Your Head, Unfold Your Hands, and Get To Work, a book which challenges readers to embrace a concrete other-centered spirituality, and editor of Faithful Resistance: Gospel Visions for the Church in a Time of Empire. When not pastoring, writing, or protesting he is parenting two teenagers and indulging a love of tabletop gaming.
Our conversation topics range from anarchism, feminism, death, grief, decolonization and the histories of the church, the challenges of working in institutions and much more.
Notes:
- Christian Anarchism
- Bread Not Stone: The Challenge of Feminist Biblical Interpretation by Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza
- Ishmael by Daniel Quinn
- Catholic Worker Movement
- The Smell of Rain on Dust by Martin Prechtel
- Finisia Medrano
- Hildegard Von Bingen
- Believers: Making a Life at the End of the World by Lisa Wells
- Rewilding the Way by Todd Wynward
- Ched Myers
- Watershed Discipleship
- Ecofaith Recovery
- Becoming Rooted: One Hundred Days of Reconnecting with Sacred Earth by Randy Woodley
- A Grounded Faith: Reconnecting with Creator and Creation in the Season of Lent
- The Leaven Community
- What is the Way of the Wilderness?
