Dr. Timothy Eberhart appointed chair in Ecological Theology and Practice
The installation ceremony was held in the Chapel of the Unnamed Faithful, on the campus of Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary in Evanston, Illinois. Photos from Garrett Evangelical's YouTube channel.
On Earth Day 2022 (April 22), Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary launched the Center for Ecological Regeneration and installed Rev. Dr. Timothy Eberhart as the holder of the Robert and Marilyn Degler McClean Endowed Chair in Ecological Theology and Practice.
Two days of celebratory events in Evanston, Illinois lifted up Dr. Eberhart, a member of the Dakotas Conference, and highlighted his journey, his vision for this center, and his passionate commitment to ecological theology and practice. Eberhart had several occasions, especially in his installation service, in which he shared his theological mission and the urgency of the holistic attention that God’s creation deserves from us as stewards.
In his inaugural address, Dr. Eberhart shared his immediate family roots, as well as the depth of those roots going back generations.
Rev. Dr. Timothy Eberhart gives his installation address at Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary on April 22, 2022.
“You shouldn’t be surprised that I grew up in a family that highly values land– farming, the soil, gardening, and food preservation. That my dad is never happier than when he’s under the big Dakota skies, walking the fields with his brothers, or that my mother was ordained a United Methodist pastor in the Dakotas in the 70s.”
Eberhart then traced his ancestry to Swabia, in central Germany. To escape oppression, wars, and famine in the 1700s, entire villages migrated from Swabia to what is now Ukraine, and settled there until the 1870s, when the Russian Czar’s domination and oppression became too powerful.
When the Homestead Act of 1862 was implemented, Eberhardt shared, “Another wave of migrations took place. One that included my great- and great, great-grandparents, who settled in the central Dakotas in the late 19th through the early 20th centuries.”
He said that those experiences of migratory ancestral roots run very, very deep.
“What also runs deep, are many, many wounds, and a restless longing to be ‘at home’, in a place, among a community of people with intimate cultural ties to the land. This longing, though, is not unique to me. All of us, each one, live in the aftermath of so many disconnections, so many estrangements, and so many traumas.”
Garrett Evangelical Seminary facebook post during the installation service on April 22, 2022.
“Though the histories of our ancestral displacements are quite distinct, and although the resultant reconfigurations of power, access and ownership are profoundly uneven, what we share in our bodies, and our psyches are grieved remembrances of being at home, once upon a time, in and with and of the earth.”
The Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary website explains Dr. Eberhart’s dedication to the center’s challenging endeavor.
“With this endowed chair, along with the center’s launch, Garrett is prepared to play our part in fostering deep cultural change for the just healing of the land and the radical reordering of the systems responsible for fractured social relationships and Earth’s degradation. I am profoundly honored by this appointment and immensely excited about the work ahead. Even more, I am grateful for the hopeful vision and faithful commitment manifest in this gift.”
In continuing his inaugural address, he paid homage not only to his mentors and the McCleans, but to the many theologians who have challenged us all in re-establishing justice for creation.
“To be freed from these chains, which now threaten the sustainment of planetary life in any recognizable form, we will need to break free from top-down, command-and-control systems, and instead cultivate mutualistic, synergistic, and radically democratic world views and practices of deep solidarity– what Leonardo Boff calls, ‘Socio-cosmic democracy.’ It’s not enough to deconstruct and dismantle. We must also actively seek the ways that make for peace- within ourselves, with one another, and with the land.”
Dr. Eberhart later continued with his optimistic view that, “There are many who conclude that Christianity is too deeply enmeshed in the ways and means of empire to be of any earthly use. I understand. But I also disagree. I believe that the resilient wisdom of the Jesus traditions, born within the context of imperial conquest, and renewed in each generation by the spirit of life– up from the ground, from the grassroots, by the resurrecting spirit of uprising –has much yet to offer.”
In closing, Eberhart offered this plea for a holistic approach to turning away from the path of ecological destruction we have all been a part of, for dissolving the barriers that threaten our sustained existence. “Our only hope is to join together, rooted in our respective places, in deeply cooperative solidarities– interracial, ecumenical, multi-ethnic, interfaith, inter-spiritual, international, and inter-species solidarities.”
To view Dr. Eberhart’s complete inaugural address from April 22, 2022, click here.
Dr. Eberhart’s publications are diverse, including:
Rooted and Grounded in Love: Holy Communion for the Whole Creation, and
The Economy of Salvation: Essays in Honor of M. Douglas Meeks.
