Online Zoom Forum: Earth-based Spirituality and Activism: Values, Practices, Vision, and Actions.
Date: Wednesday 12 November 2025.
Time: 7pm-9pm (UK time).
Event Description:
Format: There will be five talks, each of 12 minutes, followed by discussion among the speakers and the chair, followed by Q & A.
Chair:
Dr Nadine Andrews:
Bio: Dr Nadine Andrews is a mindfulness, nature-connection and Qi Gong teacher, and a researcher and facilitator of climate and eco psychology processes. She works part-time in the Scottish Government as a systems thinking and learning lead for strategic organisational change. With her work she aims to help people live in deeper connection and harmony with nature, addressing root causes of the climate and nature crises and contributing towards a life-friendly world.https://lifefriendly.earth/
Speakers:
Prof Leslie E. Sponsel:
Title: Reflections on Sacred Earth Activism.
Description: First, sacred Earth activism is addressed by quoting the profound wisdom of prominent elders in responding to the values, practices, vision, and actions needed for engaging the challenges of environmental crises and most of all the existential threat of global climate change. Second, on this basis several key conclusions are drawn and then elaborated on toward stimulating subsequent discussion and debate.
Bio: Leslie E. Sponsel, with the B.A. in Geology from Indiana University and the M.A. and Ph.D. in Biological Anthropology from Cornell University, is Professor Emeritus at the University of Hawai`i. From 1974 to 1981, Sponsel conducted several trips to the Venezuelan Amazon to study biological and cultural aspects of ecology with Yanomami and other Indigenous societies. Since 1986, he usually visits annually Thailand to study Buddhist ecology and environmentalism, in recent years focusing on sacred caves. Among his books are Indigenous Peoples and the Future of Amazonia: An Ecological Anthropology of an Endangered World, Yaomami in the Amazon.
Dr James W. Waters:
Title: Native-Christian Collaboration at Standing Rock:
#NoDAPL and Interreligious Resistance to Eco-Fascism
Description: During 2016-2017, news coverage in the US captured disturbing and moving images from the Standing Rock reservation as Indigenous and non-Indigenous water protectors clashed with private security firms hired by Energy Transfer Partners (ETP) and the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE). ETP and USACE planned to build a pipeline that would cross the sacred waters and land of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe (SRST), and the SRST, along with many allies, were willing to fight fiercely to stop it. Since then, scholars of social movements and activism have documented many aspects of the events that happened over those 18 months at the construction site. This presentation, however, aims to frame the #NoDAPL movement as an interreligious example of how religious groups might resist ecofascist regimes in collaborative and mutually enriching ways. It first explains why this encroachment is an ecofascist land grab. Second, it describes how Lakota religious principles guided the activist network. Last, it considers how Christian groups involved in #NoDAPL sought to respectfully and collaboratively follow these Lakota principles, resisting the ecofascist overreach of the state, helping the SRST practically, and working toward repentance for the Christian Church’s historical role in erasing Indigenous people in North America. I argue that the #NoDAPL is an essential example of interreligious resistance to ecofascism for Christian groups seeking to support marginalized people in an increasingly authoritarian and anti-green political moment.
Bio: James W. Waters, PhD, is a Catherine of Siena Scholar in the Ethics program at Villanova University. A religious ethicist by training, his research foci include Native American religious traditions and ethics; religion and ecology; and faith, activism, and social change
The Rev Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, Ph.D.:
Title: Emotional and Spiritual Resilience in Days of Trouble.
Description: Amidst news of ecological and climate breakdown, how do we maintain courage and hope? What practices and perspectives can help us move through despair and denial and become active agents of healing? Rev Margaret will sketch what she calls “a framework for heart” to hold our concern for Earth and all its inhabitants, human and more-than-human.
Bio: The Rev Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, Ph.D., is an Episcopal priest, author, retreat leader, and climate activist. Co-editor of Rooted and Rising: Voices of Courage in a Time of Climate Crisis, until retiring in 2024 she worked for the Episcopal dioceses in Massachusetts to mobilize a faithful response to climate emergency. She has been a lead organizer of many Christian and multi-faith events about care for Earth, and she leads spiritual retreats on spiritual resilience and resistance in a climate emergency. Her website, RevivingCreation.org, includes blog posts, sermons, videos, and articles.
Prof Rebecca Kneale Gould:
Title: Responding to Climate Emergency: Shabbat Consciousness as Spiritual Practice.
Description: What is the relationship between spiritual activism and the Holy Pause? In these times of political and climate crisis, does a call for radical rest and spaciousness even make sense? In the face of genuine urgency, how are we called to be activists who are also human, spiritual beings?
This talk will explore the idea (and practice) of Shabbat as a form of eco-Jewish resistance— a practice that is rooted in biblical principles, yet also available — in various forms — to people of all faiths (and none). Building on the work of beloved eco-Jewish activist, Rabbi Arthur Waskow (z”l), founder of The Shalom Center, this talk will explore some key facets of eco-Jewish innovation over the past three decades. We will focus particularly on Shabbat (Sabbath) and Shmita (“release” of the land) as ancient Jewish practices that are being given new meaning and form in the context of environmental and climate crisis. We will examine the ecological potential of these ideas and practices and also ponder together how such practices can be adapted in ways that can keep us hopeful and resilient in troubled times.
Bio: Rebecca Kneale Gould is a Religious Studies scholar and Associate Professor of Environmental Studies (environmental humanities) at Middlebury College.
Gould is the author of At Home in Nature: Modern Homesteading and Spiritual Practice in America, a study of back-to-the-land practices from the mid-nineteenth century to the 1990s. She co-created (with director, Phil Walker) the 2012 documentary short The Fire Inside: Place, Passion and the Primacy of Nature (http://fireinsidefilm.com) and is a consultant for the forthcoming Ken Burns-produced documentary on the life of Henry David Thoreau (Ewers Brothers Productions). She is actively engaged as a researcher for the BTS Center, whose mission is to cultivate and nurture “spiritual leadership for a climate changed world.”
Gould’s research is both historical and contemporary/sociological. Recent publications include “The Whiteness of Walden: Reading Thoreau with Attention to Black Lives” in Thoreau in an Age of Crisis, “The Tent of Abraham: The Emerging Landscape of Jewish, Christian and Islamic Ecological Traditions” (with Laurel Kearns) in Religion and Nature in North America and “Mind the Gap: Understanding Ethnographic Silences” in Interpreting Religion.
She lives in Vermont (USA) with her spouse and seven adorable rescue sheep.
Dr Radhika Borde:
Title: The Demons We Will Become: Forecasting Human-Induced Climate Change and Catastrophe in an Indigenous Indian Myth.
Description: I will discuss how a myth known as the ‘Asur Kahani’ which belongs to the Asur ‘tribe’ from East-Central India, who are known for four things – their ancient iron-smelting craft, their supernatural powers, their myth, and the fact that their name ‘Asur’ or ‘Asura’ means demon in Sanskrit. The ‘Asur Kahani’ is well-known amongst other Indian tribes since it describes the origins of the nature spirits they worship.
The myth describes the Asurs’ hubris around their technocratic prowess. Enamoured of their ability to smelt iron, they work their furnaces night and day and cause the Earth to get very hot. All the animals on Earth complain of the heat, and the drought it has caused – and try and get the Sun God to intercede on their behalf. The Sun God tries, but fails, and finally decides to punish the Asurs – he kills all the Asur men and turns the Asur women into nature spirits, whom other tribes are instructed to worship. I will discuss how the Asurs of contemporary times (who claim descent from the Asurs in the Asur Kahani) engage with this myth, and how they engage with the demonic connotations of their name. I will also talk about how this myth is an analogy for the demonism that characterises our current times.
Bio: Dr Radhika Borde is a Lecturer in Sustainability Transitions and Social Justice at the School of Geography, University of Leeds. She is also a steering committee member of an International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) specialist group on the Cultural and Spiritual Values of Protected Areas and has helped develop a set of IUCN guidelines. Radhika Borde has worked as an activist and social entrepreneur in India. She is also a published author of short fiction and poetry.
An archive recording will be made for the EICSP archive.
NB: There will be no refund if you cancel your booking.
Cost: By Donation:
Contact: Neill Walker, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
NB: This event is not affiliated to Sacred Earth Activism C.I.C and donations are not sent to Sacred Earth Activism C.I.C.
An archive recording will be made for the EICSP archive.
NB: There will be no refund if you cancel your booking.
Booking: By Paypal.
Contact: Neill Walker, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
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