Navigating the Storm: Spiritual Resilience for Young Adults in a Climate-Changed World

Sophia Brown is a rising Junior at Haverford College with a major in Environmental Studies and minor in Anthropology. As she reflects on the overwhelming political uncertainty and rapid climatic change, she sees the urgency in developing sustainable, community-driven futures. She wants to continue to explore these necessary perspectives in her education and future career. This summer, Sophia looks forward to working as an Environmental Researcher for Parks and People, which is a non-profit organization in her hometown of Baltimore that seeks to secure safe and equitable community green spaces.

Carlene Gardner is a life-long Unitarian-Universalist with more than 15 years’ experience in youth and young adult programming. She holds a B.A. in French Canada Studies and a Master’s in Teaching and Learning from McGill University. She develops educational and experiential programs, fosters partnerships with religious and spiritual groups on and off campus and advocates for cultures of inclusion for students of all religious, spiritual and secular identities. She is currently furthering her research into young adult spirituality as a PhD student in contemporary religious studies at Université de Sherbrooke. Off campus, Carlene is a member of the Christian-Jewish Dialogue of Montreal, and co-chair of the Canadian Association of College and University Student Services (CACUSS) Spirituality and Religious Pluralism community of practice.

Camille MacKenzie is a rising junior at Haverford College, where she is majoring in Environmental Studies and Fine Arts. Camille grew up in Manayunk, PA and now lives in Glenside. She is passionate about composting, giving objects new purpose, and imagining alternative futures, among many other things. This semester she took a really interesting class (taught by Prof. Josh Moses) called Speculative Environmental Design, in which she proposed a co-curricular practical skills education program that would offer Haverford students the opportunity to learn life skills like growing food or repairing a bike, in the interest of better equipping them to live in ways that are less harmful to the planet.

Joshua Moses is Spielman Professor in the Social Sciences; Associate Professor of Anthropology and Environmental Studies; Chair of Environmental Studies at Haverford College. His community driven research prioritizes partnerships that leverage the resources of higher education to address complex socio-environmental challenges. These include the climate crisis, inequality, and organizational response to extreme events and uncertainty. He has worked with state, local governments and federal governments and non-profits and community organizations, and in the private sector. Through the Philadelphia Area Creative Collaboratives, a program funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, in collaboration with the North Philly Peace Park, Friends of Mt. Moriah Cemetery, East Park Revitalization Alliance, and Philadelphia artist Li Sumpter, he developed the Urban Ecology Arts Exchange.

Most recently, Joshua is putting his energy into the response of educational institutions to climate change and the ways we are preparing students for futures that society itself struggles to imagine. He is a cofounder of Education Ecologies Collective, a network of collaborators facilitating conversations on learning, pedagogy and ecological justice in the context of the climate crisis. He firmly believes that institutions of higher education can play a much greater role in ecological transitions.

The Rev. Alison Cornish serves as the Coordinator of the Chaplaincy Initiative at the BTS Center. Alison spent the first half of her professional life working as an historic preservationist and architectural historian, primarily in New England and on Long Island, NY.  After 20 years of work with museums, municipalities and nonprofit organizations, Alison attended Andover Newton Theological Seminary in response to a felt sense of call directly from Earth to address what is it that we are doing in our daily lives and habits that is destroying the planet that we inhabit. Following CPE, field education in interfaith work and parish ministry, and ordination in the Unitarian Universalist tradition, Alison served congregations on Long Island while also embarking on studies with the Buddhist teacher Joanna Macy and Dominican sister Miriam McGillis. Alison became a GreenFaith Fellow in 2013, and a Climate Reality Project presenter in 2017. She has served as Senior Director of Programs at Partners for Sacred Places, Executive Director of Pennsylvania Interfaith Power & Light, Director of Seminary and Congregational Initiatives at Interfaith Philadelphia, and as the Affiliated Community Minister at First Unitarian Church, Philadelphia.  Alison’s facilitation work includes the Work That Reconnects, training-the-trainers for Civil Conversations, group practice of Nonviolent Communication, and the curriculum “Healthy Congregations.” A Program Consultant for the BTS Center since 2021, her work has focused on ecological and climate grief, religious imagination, and chaplaincy in a climate-changed world. Alison and her husband Pat live in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts, on the unceded lands of the Nipmuc and Pocumtuc peoples, in the watershed of the Connecticut River.  When not working, Alison can be found along, on, and in, a local natural body of water, currently the Deerfield River.

Michael Skaggs, PhD is Director of Programs of the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab, overseeing the Lab’s education and networking initiatives as well as public relations. He is the host and producer of the Lab’s webinar series and editor of the Lab’s eBook series and newsletter.

Trained at the University of Notre Dame as a historian of American religion, Michael has a particular interest in interfaith dialogue and has served in innovative theological education programs. His work has appeared in Sociology of Religion, International Journal of Maritime History, American Catholic Studies, U.S. Catholic Historian, Books & Culture, and elsewhere. He previously served as Communications Director for Transforming Chaplaincy.

The Chaplaincy Innovation Lab (CIL), based at Brandeis University, launched in October 2018 to bring chaplains, theological educators, clinical educators and social scientists into conversation about the work of chaplaincy and spiritual care. As religious and spiritual life continues to change, the CIL sparks practical innovations that enable chaplains to nurture the spirits of those they serve and reduce human suffering.

With roots dating back to 1814, The BTS Center is a private operating foundation in Portland, Maine, building on the legacy of the former Bangor Theological Seminary. Today The BTS Center seeks to catalyze spiritual imagination, with enduring wisdom, for transformative faith leadership. Guided by the vision of human hearts renewed, justice established, and creation restored, The BTS Center offers programs of spiritual and vocational formation — workshops and retreats, learning cohorts, courses, public conversations, and projects of applied research — that aim to cultivate and nurture spiritual leadership for a climate-changed world.