Sacred Earth Sacred Action

Camille Dungy is the author of Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden which features the nexus of nature writing, environmental justice, and prose to encourage you to recognize the relationship between the peoples of the African diaspora and the land on which they live, and to understand that wherever soil rests beneath their feet is home. Dungy’s interest in the intersections between literature, environmental action, history, and culture led her to edit Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry (University of Georgia Press: 2009), the first anthology to bring African American environmental poetry to national attention. Dungy is a University Distinguished Professor at Colorado State University, Dungy’s honors include the Academy of American Poets Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an American Book Award, an Honorary Doctorate from SUNY ESF, and fellowships from the NEA in both prose and poetry.

Co-founder of Eloheh Indigenous Center for Earth Justice, author of Indigenous Theology and the Western Worldview A Decolonized Approach, and recently retired Distinguished Professor of Faith and Culture and Director of Intercultural and Indigenous Studies at Portland Seminary

Dr. Heidi Steltzer is an environmental scientist, a theologian and a mystic who has been studying the planet for 30 years. She has served as faculty at Fort Lewis College (Durango, Colorado), lead author of the High Mountain chapter for the 2019 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, as an author on scientific publications on the function of High Mountain and Arctic ecosystems in a changing world, and then she had an epiphany. What if there are ways to know without seeing? Ways to be in relationship with all? Ways we are guided as we explore in us and our world? Which led to Iliff and pursuing a Master’s in Theological Studies here.

Hernández joined the Iliff faculty in 2001. He teaches courses in the history of Christianity from Medieval to Early Modern times with additional expertise in the history of the ancient Hellenistic-Roman period. His research and teaching areas include the history of mysticism and pneumatology; Muslim and Christian relations beginning with the Crusades; religious diversity in medieval Iberia and the Spanish Empire; and the history of medicine and pandemics. Hernández led the faculty design team that created the Authentic Engagement Program™ focusing his contribution on human flourishing and the philosophy of Happiness.

Hernández is the author of Subversive Fire: The Untold Story of Pentecost (Emeth Press), and co-author with Miguel De La Torre of The Quest for the Historical Satan (Fortress Press), a theological best-seller exploring Satan’s story and the problem of evil.

Timothy Beal is Distinguished University Professor and Florence Harkness Professor of Religion at Case Western Reserve University. He has sixteen books, most recently When Time Is Short: Finding Our Way in the Anthropocene (Beacon, 2022), and has published essays on religion and culture for The New York Times, The Christian Century, The Wall Street Journal, Harper’s Magazine, and The Chronicle of Higher Education, among others.

Thomas Weiler is a Denver resident, husband and father of two, and Lead Organizer with Together Colorado.  Thomas graduated from the University of Notre Dame where he majored in Political Science and International Peace Studies.  Since 2012, as a faith-driven community organizer and labor organizer – Thomas has worked to organize communities to fight the systemic roots of injustice and put their faith into action to address threats to human dignity and the planet.

Janel Apps Ramsey is the moderator of the Climate Justice Committee with Together Colorado. She is also Co-Director of Brew Theology, an organization that facilitates interfaith discussion groups. She loves her family, mountains, and doing paper crafts.

Rev. Kelly Dignan is a Unitarian Universalist (UU) minister and the Executive Director of UU Ministry for Earth. She also offers spiritual direction to individuals and teaches UU History at Iliff School of Theology where she earned her MDiv in 2013.

Ramon serves as an assistant professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at Naropa University. His scholarly, contemplative, creative and community interests range from rites of passage and initiation, dance and embodiment, creative ceremony, food and environmental justice, restorative and transformative justice, counter-cultural histories, pre/post modern cosmologies, Afrofuturism and collective liberation.