Exceptionalism lies at the root of the climate crisis.

Many of us are steeped in human separateness – the belief that we stand alone in dominion over other creatures. The BTS Center chooses instead to foreground the sacred kinship of all creation. Interdependence and reciprocity inform our theological understandings, our spiritual practice, and our life in community.

In this spirit, we offer programs that deepen our understanding of humanity as part of nature. We seek to strengthen our relationships with one another and with all creation.

In line with our mission, we craft programs and other offerings to “catalyze spiritual imagination.” As UK scholar Rob Hopkins notes, we are living in a time of imaginative decline at the very point in history when we need to be at our most imaginative. A failure of spiritual imagination has caused us to be complicit in our extractive, dominant systems.

In imagination lie the opportunities to dismantle these systems of death and cultivate life-giving, justice-oriented ways of being.

The BTS Center’s programs are grounded in an understanding that some of the deepest work we can (and must) engage around climate change is to recognize, express, and honor our grief at the devastation of our times. Grief is a portal to authenticity and a faithful reckoning with reality.

We seek to offer ritual, reflection, and space for lament in community, as well as opportunities to support those who hold the grief of others.

Drawing on the work of Debra Rienstra, author of Refugia Faith: Seeking Hidden Shelters, Ordinary Wonders, and the Healing of the Earth, The BTS Center cultivates space to fortify resilience, honor uncertainty, and connect with community.

The biological concept of refugia — places of shelter that endure in times of crisis — offers a model for our shared life in a climate-changed world. Like pockets of flora and fauna that endure wildfires, droughts, and even volcanic eruptions, we must nurture our own spiritual refugia. Where life endures, life can regenerate, even as climate change alters so much of our world.

In a world preoccupied with the individual — individual liberty, individual prosperity, individual salvation, and even individual carbon footprint and individual climate action — The BTS Center aims to nurture deepening commitment to the common good. In times of distress and fear, communities have the choice to turn toward one another or to turn against one another. We strive to create spaces for deep reflection and formation that invite people to turn toward one another, to find strength and resilience in community, and to promote collective flourishing. As the climate crisis accelerates, we believe faith communities, rooted in the wisdom of our sacred texts, our spiritual lineages, and our theologies, have a unique role to play in advancing this positive vision for just and joyful common life in a climate-changed world. Through our many programs, we aim to nurture values of justice, compassion, equity, and hospitality, in ways that promote the common good.