All of the individuals listed below have served on the Core Team of EcoFaith Recovery and in leadership of various Initiatives of EcoFaith Recovery. They may be available to speak or present about EcoFaith Recovery as well as their own unique perspectives on eco-theology or praxis. To be put in touch with one of them, please contact office@ecofaithrecovery.org.
Rev. Dr. Daniel Brunner is an ELCA pastor and professor of Christian History and Formation and Director of Christian Earthkeeping at George Fox Evangelical Seminary. In 2010, he founded the Christian Earthkeeping program at George Fox, a 12-credit regimen of four courses taken over a two-year period. With some of his former students, Dan has been developing each of the courses which comprise the program: Theology and Stewardship of Creation; Theology and Ethic of the Land; Eschatology, New Creation and Communal Ethics; Poverty and Restorative Earthkeeping. Dan is co-author (with Jennifer L. Butler and A.J. Swoboda) of Introducing Evangelical Ecotheology: Foundations in Scripture, Theology, History, and Praxis.
Dick Harmon is a member of the Leaven Project community in Portland. He is two years into retirement, from 45 years of organizing, mostly with the Industrial Areas Foundation. His entire family is engaged in a number of aspects of creation-centered work. He is currently at work on two books about the relationship of our economic and ecological systems, and how that relationship might be changed at local and regional levels. He teaches a class Organizing in the Biocommons for the Leaven project. Dick’s primary interest on this question is how it can help transform civil sector mediating institutions, which include congregations; especially how it can re-connect Boomers and post-Boomer generations and move from a dysfunctional congregational culture, of strangers and “program, to a new organizational culture, of relational power.
Rev. Robyn Hartwig serves as part-time pastor/organizer for EcoFaith Recovery and part-time associate pastor for St. Andrew Lutheran Church of Beaverton, Oregon. She is passionate about starting groups and cultivating congregational cultures that deepen community and foster spiritual recovery from consumerism’s addictive and devastating effects upon our lives and the life of our Earth home. Her leadership of EcoFaith Recovery has been greatly enhanced by her training as a GreenFaith Fellow in 2009 -2010, her participation in the 2008 training of 150 religious community leaders by former vice-president Al Gore’s Climate Project, and her previous training and experience as a high school economics and government teacher. She was also trained by Lutherans Restoring Creation to serve as a “Green Congregations trainer and by the Industrial Areas Foundation in its week-long Northwest Regional Leadership Institute to enhance her abilities as a faith-based organizer. In her free time Robyn reconnects with the natural world through drumming and hiking with her spouse, Rev. Dr. Janet Parker of First Congregational United Church of Christ in Salem, Oregon.