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.

Academic Requirements

• Core Courses (complete any)

  • PARISH 760 (Food, Eating, and the Life of Faith)

  • PARISH 806 (Caring for Creation)

  • PARISH 807 (The Theology and Spirituality of Place)

  • PARISH 808 (Agrarian Theology for an Urban World)

  • XTIANTHE 812 (The Doctrine of Creation and Theological Anthropology)

  • PARISH 820 (U.S. Food Policy)

• Divinity Electives - Topic of related issue (complete 1 course)

  • Approved

    • PREACHNG 775 (Preaching Place: The Challenge and Promise of a Global Gospel)

    • XTIANEDU 765 (Education for Creation Care)

    • PARISH 820 (U.S. Food Policy)

    • PARISH 821 (Global Food Policy)

    • PARISH 822 (Charitable Foods)

    • XTIANTHE 842 (Womanist Theological Ethics)

    • XTIANETH 813 (Listen, Organize, Act: Churches, Politics, and Community Transformation)

    • NEWTEST 783 (Hope for Creation?: An Exilic Perspective)

    • XTIANETH 823 (Food, Faith, and Health)

    • XTIANTHE 812 (The Doctrine of Creation and Theological Anthropology)

  • May be approved - speak with director

    • PREACHNG 802 (Principalities, Powers, and Preaching)

    • XTIANTHE 841 (Political Theology)

    • PARISH 788 (Ethics and Native America: American Indian Literature and Liturgy)

    • OLDTEST 951 (Creation, Cosmology, and World Order)

    • XTIANTHE 814 (Eschatology)

    • XTIANTHE 830 (Theology in Ecological Context)

    • OLDTEST 806 (Biblical Bodies)

    • HISTTHEO 808 (Patristic Readings of Romans 5-8)

    • CHURHST 819 (The Body in Early Christian Thought and Practice)

    • WXTIAN 764 (God's Ministry of Reconciliation: Explorations in Missiology and Ecclesiology)

    • XTIANTHE 843 (Theologies of Liberation in the US)

    • XTIANETH 814 (Christianity and Capitalism: A Theological Exploration)

    • BCS 800 (Black Women, Womanist Thought and the Church)

    • PARISH 787 (Power, Inequality, and Reconciliation)

    • CHURMIN 762 (The Love of God and Neighbor)

    • WXTIAN 811 (Journeys of Reconciliation)

    • PARISH 802 (Prophetic Ministry: Shaping Communities of Justice)

  • Other pre-approved courses may also count

• Non-Divinity Course with clear and identifiable focus on issue

• Conference Attendance 

• For MDVR only: Project or Field Placement

• For MTS only: Thesis Focus

Other pre-approved courses may count; students may consult with the certificate director.

Guidance on Electives and Co-Curricular Requirements:

• One elective course outside the Divinity School should draw from the Nicholas School of the Environment, Kenan Institute for Ethics, Duke Campus Farm, Sanford World Food Policy Center, Cultural Anthropology, or other subject areas that have a clear and identifiable focus on some aspect of environmental, food, or political-ecological theory, policy, and practice and be taught at a master’s level;

• Participation in either an independent environmental engagement/action project or appropriate field education placement that involves some aspect of environmental or socio-ecological witness; and

• Attendance at either the North Carolina Environmental Justice Network’s annual EJ Summit or the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association's annual Sustainable Agriculture Conference at least once over the duration of the student’s program, or an equivalent gathering to be agreed on in advance; as well as participation in at least one action organized by the North Carolina Chapter of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee.