Fred Bahnson – Watershed Discipleship

by Cherice Bock and Nurya Love Parish

In 2014, Rev. Nurya Love Parish began organizing a network she called the Christian Food Movement, and started a farm-based ministry called Plainsong Farm in Michigan. A former Unitarian Universalist and now Episcopal priest, Parish preached on ecology, food, and faith as far back as 2002, but her vision for putting the themes of faith and ecology together in her life and ministry began to coalesce in 2014 when she encountered Fred Bahnson’s Soil & Sacrament: A Spiritual Memoir of Food and Faith, which led her to Wake Forest School of Divinity’s Food, Faith, & Religious Leadership Initiative. There, she heard about watershed discipleship, and hatched the idea for catalyzing a Christian Food Movement that connects Christians who are integrating food and faith, in the style of the Jewish Food Movement. Read more →

The latest issue of Orion Magazine, a special 35th anniversary edition, contains several articles that may be of interest to those practicing watershed discipleship, such as “Women and Standing Rock: where does the body end and sacred nature begin?” by Layli Long Soldier (this page contains a number of articles, poems, and photos on a similar theme), and “One Good Turn” by Kathleen Dean Moore, the story of five activists getting in the way of the Keystone XL Pipeline. There’s also a great piece called “The Soldier and the Soil” about an Iraq war veteran who is dealing with his post-traumatic stress through organic farming. This issue of Orion alone could keep you in excellent reading material for the entire holiday season!

Wake Forest School of Divinity professor Fred Bahnson

I point our readers particularly to “The Ecology of Prayer” by Fred Bahnson. It’s a beautifully written essay that moves through the wonder of a tide pool to the startling emptiness of a faith-based climate action rally, he draws us into the poignancy of the emotional and spiritual states many of us find ourselves in when we contemplate creation, and our impact on it. Using the metaphor of moving on to Easter Sunday too quickly without fully experiencing the deep and awful power of Good Friday, Bahnson wrestles with how to best deal with the startlingly intense human reactions to the natural world in all its beauty and loss. How do we grieve well? Read more →

Tag: Fred Bahnson

Christian Food Movement: an interview with Nurya Love Parish

Eco-contemplation and Action: Bahnson on the Ecology of Prayer