Registration is Open! Dates for 2025 are February 9th through the 14th, 2025
Speakers for 2025 are Barbara Rossing and Ben Stewart!
The Rev. Dr. Barbara Rossing is retired from her position as Professor of New Testament at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, where she has taught since 1994. An avid environmentalist, Rossing directs the seminary’s Environmental Ministry emphasis and teaches with colleagues in diverse fields through the Zygon Center for Religion and Science. She was a participant in the three-year, multidisciplinary Enhancing Life Project, jointly sponsored by the University of Chicago and Ruhr-University Bochum in Germany. Her ministry experience includes serving as pastor of a congregation in Minnesota, Director of Global Mission Interpretation for the American Lutheran Church, pastor at Holden Village Retreat Center in Chelan, Wash., and Chaplain at Harvard University Divinity School. She has served on several denomination-wide groups including the ELCA’s Executive Committee and the Council of the Lutheran World Federation (2003-2010), and as Chair of the Lutheran World Federation’s Theology and Studies Committee. As a public theologian, she has appeared in media including CBS “60 Minutes,” the History Channel, National Geographic, “Living the Questions,” and numerous other print and radio interviews.
Her publications include The Rapture Exposed: The Message of Hope in the Book of Revelation (Basic Books, 2004); The Choice Between Two Cities: Whore, Bride and Empire in the Apocalypse (Trinity Press, 1999); two volumes of the New Proclamation commentary (Fortress Press, 2000 and 2004); a nine-session Bible study, Journeys Through Revelation: Apocalyptic Hope for Today (Presbyterian Women, 2010); and articles and book chapters on the Apocalypse and ecology.
Her publications include The Rapture Exposed: The Message of Hope in the Book of Revelation (Basic Books, 2004); The Choice Between Two Cities: Whore, Bride and Empire in the Apocalypse (Trinity Press, 1999); two volumes of the New Proclamation commentary (Fortress Press, 2000 and 2004); a nine-session Bible study, Journeys Through Revelation: Apocalyptic Hope for Today (Presbyterian Women, 2010); and articles and book chapters on the Apocalypse and ecology.
The Rev. Dr. Benjamin Stewart is the Gordon A. Braatz Associate Professor of Worship and Director of the Zygon Center for Religion and Science at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, where he has taught since 2008.
Dr. Stewart's academic work illuminates how various forms of liturgical participation are theologically generative, especially for the work of liberation and renewal, and for everyday life in the world.
In addition to his contributions to churchwide liturgical resources and other academic and public scholarship, Ben is author of A Watered Garden: Christian Worship and Earth’s Ecology (2011). His current book project is a liturgical ecotheology of funeral practices, tentatively titled Returning to the Earth: the Spiritual Wisdom of Natural Burial.
Ben recently completed his second, three-year term as convener of the Ecology and Liturgy seminar of the North American Academy of Liturgy.
A Lutheran pastor, Ben served as pastor to a small congregation in the Appalachian region of Ohio and as village pastor to Holden Village retreat center in the Glacier Peak Wilderness of Washington, where he now serves on the board of directors.
An avid backpacker and fan of poetry read aloud, Ben lives in the Chicago suburbs with his spouse, Dr. Elizabeth Stewart, who works in population health nursing.
Dr. Stewart's academic work illuminates how various forms of liturgical participation are theologically generative, especially for the work of liberation and renewal, and for everyday life in the world.
In addition to his contributions to churchwide liturgical resources and other academic and public scholarship, Ben is author of A Watered Garden: Christian Worship and Earth’s Ecology (2011). His current book project is a liturgical ecotheology of funeral practices, tentatively titled Returning to the Earth: the Spiritual Wisdom of Natural Burial.
Ben recently completed his second, three-year term as convener of the Ecology and Liturgy seminar of the North American Academy of Liturgy.
A Lutheran pastor, Ben served as pastor to a small congregation in the Appalachian region of Ohio and as village pastor to Holden Village retreat center in the Glacier Peak Wilderness of Washington, where he now serves on the board of directors.
An avid backpacker and fan of poetry read aloud, Ben lives in the Chicago suburbs with his spouse, Dr. Elizabeth Stewart, who works in population health nursing.
