About The Center for Sustainable Justice
Our Story
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.
Rev. Dr. Rebecca Voelkel gave the 14th Annual CLGS Georgia Harkness Lecture, titled “Sacred Reckonings with the Doctrine of Discovery’s Betrayal: What Queerness Teaches Us About Strategies of Resistance, Embodied Joy, and Acts of Reparation.” In this lecture, she reflected on her work at the intersection of queer movements and BIPOC-led reparations efforts, the betrayals wrought by the Doctrine of Discovery and its triplet offspring of White Supremacy, Christian Supremacy, and Extractive Capitalism, and how queerness, particularly queer theology, can be a source of luscious resistance, embodied joy, and palpable acts of reparation.
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.
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.
We're writing the book.
Our Annual Reports
Here's what we've been up to in the past few years2023
This report highlights the work of The Center for Sustainable Justice in 2023. It represents the time and energy of the staff at Lyndale and the Center for Sustainable Justice, who included throughout the year Rev. Dr. Rebecca Voelkel, Allison Connelly-Vetter, Rev. Dana Neuhauser, Julica Hermann de la Fuente, Jessica Intermill, Esq. Liz Loeb, Esq. and collaboration with Rev. Joann Conroy, Lyndale’s Interim Minister for Congregational Life. It represents many hours of faithful, strategic work by the membership and colleagues of Lyndale UCC and our ecumenical and multifaith partners.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.