Faith, Food, and Environmental Justice Certificate

Program Code: D-FFEJ-C
Degree Designation: Certificate
Department: Divinity School
Website: divinity.duke.edu/academics/certificates/food-faith

Program Summary

The certificate is for students seeking training in and preparation for engaging faithfully in environmental justice work, agricultural production, healthy food access and food systems, creation care ministries, land use issues, policy advocacy, and environmental management. The context of such work might be a congregational ministry, working in not-for-profit organizations, farming, triple-bottom-line enterprises, or governmental agencies. Or it may be that students have a more general interest in addressing the array of urgent challenges related to the ecological crisis, rural precariousness, resource conflicts, the anthropocene, animal suffering, climate change, environmental racism, and industrial agriculture.

Alongside access to some of the leading environmental theologians in the world, the certificate provides opportunities for learning from and engaging with the broader university and the surrounding community. The certificate provides opportunities to take courses at the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University, Duke Farm, and the World Food Policy Center (Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke). North Carolina is an ideal location to undertake this kind of formation. Not only is it a vibrant center of the food and faith movement, with numerous farms connected to the Divinity School, it is also the birthplace of the environmental justice movement, with its roots in the rural Black Church.

Lists of electives that count for certificates can be found on certificate websites (divinity.duke.edu/academics/certificates) and in Stellic (duke.stellic.com).