About The Center for Sustainable Justice

Our Story
Watch the Table to Action process here.

The Center for Sustainable Justice was started by Lyndale United Church of Christ in the Spring of 2015. Its primary purpose is to help build the movement of religious leaders and communities working together on racial, pro-LGBT, food and environmental justice in the Twin Cities and across the Midwest. It does so with a special emphasis on work at the intersections, relationship-building over the long-haul, connecting and building coalitions between people and organizations. An example of this multifaith, intersectional justice is our leadership in bringing Table to Action to Minnesota.

The Center for Sustainable Justice emerges out of the reality that much religiously-based justice work is “siloed.” Folks tend to either work in ecumenical and multifaith ways around one justice issue or within one movement (ex. Pro-LGBTQ, environmental justice, racial justice) or they work within their own religious community on one or a variety of justice issues. But there are not many spaces where people are invited together around an ecumenical and/or multifaith vision of justice that includes the dreams of many different people and bodies (in other words, that is intersectional). This is true in the Twin Cities, in the Midwest and nationally.
As we seek to be spiritually and religiously-rooted people doing the work of justice, it is important to name the realities of what oppression has sought to destroy: our very bodies, the land, our stories. But, too often, we only tell the stories of the death-dealing, the stealing, the destruction and we forget to name and claim the resistance, the healing, the reclamation. Sacred Places, Sacred Stories: A Reclamation Journey into Healing Justice, our second Annual Movement-Building gathering, was an opportunity to both name the context of colonization– of bodies, land and stories– that White Supremacy has wrought and tell the stories of successful healing, resilience and resistance.
As we are working for sacred justice amidst this time of oppression and growing political tyranny, the work of gathering for spiritual sustanence for the task of resistance and justice-making is critical.
In this time of COVID-19, The Center for Sustainable Justice continues its intersectional, religiously-rooted justice work. For Good Friday 2020, we planned and coordinated an ecumenical Walk for Justice: Stations of the Cross service at B’dote/Fort Snelling/Whipple Building. In this 40-minute virtual Good Friday Walk for Justice, Christian congregations are invited to consider the historic and present-day manifestations of crucifixion as it manifests in attempts at indigenous genocide, slavery, deportations and other forms of systemic violence. Journey with us as we bear witness to the ongoing violence, oppression and death that Good Friday represents and as we seek to resist in sacred ways.

Our Commitments

Explore Our Core Values

LGBTQ Justice

 

Racial Justice

 

Food Justice

 

Environmental Justice

 
We are committed to LGBTQ Justice

Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer people, theology and action are at the heart of the Center for Sustainable Justice. That means we are committed to understanding the world in queer ways:

  • Disrupting that which the world says is the “Center” and “the Margins”
  • Refusing to operate using the dominant understandings of binaries (male/female, gay/straight, dominance/submission, rich/poor, sacred/secular)
  • Valuing all relationships of love and chosen family

We partner closely with churches, synagogues, mosques, sanghas and circles which extravagantly welcome the presence and leadership of queer people and their families.

We are committed to Racial Justice

Racial Justice, valuing the lives of people of color and working against White Supremacy are at the heart of the Center for Sustainable Justice.  That means we are committed to acting against racism and for in building a movement for racial justice that includes all. We seek to partner with Black Lives Matter Minneapolis, Honor the Earth, the Peoples Movement Center, Neighborhoods Organizing for Change, Auburn Seminary and the Kaleo Center, among others.

We are committed to Food Justice

What we eat, how we grow it,  whose cultural practices we follow; food deserts, the impact of racism on nutrition, what is considered food and what are “weeds”…..These are all questions we seek to engage at The Center for Sustainable Justice as we work with others to build a world of food security, food beauty, food justice, food sustainability

We are committed to Environmental Justice

Honoring the earth, the air, the water and the animals as deeply connected to humanity and all as gifts from God are core to the Center for Sustainable Justice’s work. Stopping the destruction of the planet and seeking, instead, to work in concert with creation are concrete pieces of what we do.

Our Projects

See What We're Up To

Sacred Reckonings: White Settler-Colonizer Churches Doing the Work of Reparations

Emerging out of deep relationship and listening with Black and Indigenous elders, and the friendship and support of BIPOC and white settler-colonizer colleagues, Sacred Reckonings: White Settler-Colonizer Churches Doing the Work of Reparations is a congregational guide for the organizing and education needed to help accompany white settler-colonizer congregations through a reparations process. Its central teaching is the Reparatory Eco-Map which focuses our work in the overlapping circles of Truth Telling, Relationships, Political Solidarity, Spiritual Practices, and Wealth Return.

Written and compiled by Rev. Dr. Rebecca Voelkel and Jessica Intermill, Esq and supported by grants from the Louisville Institute and the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, Sacred Reckonings is rooted in a posture of calling in and an understanding that the work of reparation is liberatory and healing for white settler-colonizer folx as well as BIPOC communities.

​To listen to a Nurture the Soul: Sacred Reckonings, a conversation between Rev. Traci Blackmon and Rev. Dr. Rebecca Voelkel about Sacred Reckonings, click here.

Find the curriculum and training opportunities

Across Race: Leadership Conversations

Responding to the ask for a research-based resource to guide conversations between pastors of color and white-founded congregations, Across Race: Leadership Conversations covers ten topics identified by pastors in a nationwide cross-case study. A white author and a Black colleague ground and explore Christian essentials and opportunities in a process designed for lay and clergy partnership over the course of a year.

Authors: Malcolm Himschoot and Renée C. Jackson. This research and publication was made possible by relationships across the United Church of Christ, the Methodist Theological School of Ohio, and the Center for Sustainable Justice. 

Across Race: Leadership Conversations can be found and freely-shared in this Google Drive folder

We're writing the book.

Experiences are powerful educators. This anthology compiles the experiences, lessons, and visions of queer leaders into the fundamentals of being part of an embodied, intersectional movement.
Click here to learn more.

Our Annual Reports

Here's what we've been up to in the past few years

2022

This report highlights the work of The Center for Sustainable Justice in 2022. It represents the time and energy of the staff at Lyndale (Rev. Dr. Rebecca Voelkel, Allison Connelly-Vetter and, for the first half of the year, Rev. Ashley Harness) and it represents many hours of faithful, strategic work by the membership and colleagues of Lyndale UCC and our ecumenical and multifaith partners.

Read the report

2019

As we continue to work together in the creation and work of the Center for
Sustainable Justice, this report seeks to highlight our shared work in 2019.

It represents the time and energy of the staff at Lyndale and it represents many, many hours of faithful, strategic work by the membership and colleagues of Lyndale UCC.

Read the report

2016

As we embark on our second full year of work as The Center for Sustainable Justice, here is a reminder of what our work entails.

Read the report

2021

This report highlights the work of The Center for Sustainable Justice in 2021.

It represents the time and energy of the staff at Lyndale and CSJ (Rev. Dr. Rebecca Voelkel, Allison Connelly-Vetter and Rev. Ashley Harness) and it represents many hours of faithful, strategic work by the membership and colleagues of Lyndale UCC and our ecumenical and multifaith partners.

Read the report

2018

As we continue to work together in the creation and work of the Center for
Sustainable Justice, this report seeks to highlight our shared work in 2018.

It represents the time and energy of the staff at Lyndale and it represents many, many hours of faithful, strategic work by the membership and colleagues of Lyndale UCC.

Read the report

2020

As we continue to work together in the creation and work of the Center for Sustainable Justice, this report seeks to highlight our shared work in 2020.

It represents the time and energy of the staff at Lyndale (Rev. Dr. Rebecca Voelkel, Daniel Romero and Rev. Ashley Harness) and it represents many hours of faithful, strategic work by the membership and colleagues of Lyndale UCC.

Read the report

2017

As a way to further clarify the work of the Center for Sustainable Justice (CSJ), and its role both inside Lyndale and out in the world, we are sharing some of the writing we did for two successful grants: from the UCC New and ReNewing Church Fund and the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation. We hope this helps illuminate further the work of CSJ and inspire us even more.

Read the report