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ITC: New Environmental Justice and Stewardship Initiative

By most any standard, Miriam J. Burnett brings impressive qualifications to her post as director of the new Justice and Stewardship Project: The Environment, a joint initiative of the Interdenominational Theological Center (ITC), Cummings Foundation, and Faith And The City. Burnett is a licensed physician with a background in private practice and public health. Her previous assignments include serving as medical director for the Coweta County Sheriff's Department and as primary care director for the Coweta County Health Department.

Burnett holds the doctor of medicine and master of public health degrees from Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta and the master of divinity from ITC. She completed post baccalaureate studies at Queens College after earning a bachelor's in psychology at York College, both part of the City University of New York. She is also an ordained elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

Hired in January to head the Justice and Stewardship Project, Burnett's primary responsibility is to develop environmental justice and stewardship courses for historically black seminaries.

"It is important to teach seminarians about issues that affect the communities in which they live," said Burnett, describing the project's mission. "The theory that we learn in seminary is useless unless we learn how to implement it in the communities that we serve."

The project has four primary project goals: The first goal is to develop an academic course that integrates environmental justice and stewardship, preparing students to incorporate awareness of the issues into their ministries. The second project goal is to develop a continuing education credit (CEU) course for clergy and laypersons in non-degree seminary programs. Third, the academic course will be modularized for infusion into the several broad disciplinary focuses of most seminaries. At ITC, for example, the areas are biblical studies and languages; philosophy, theology, ethics, and history; persons, society, and culture; and the church and its ministries. Finally, the course will be made available to other historically black seminaries.

The project's first course, "Faith, Justice and the Environment," will be offered this fall at ITC and available through cross-registration to students at the other two Faith And The City partner seminaries, Candler School of Theology and Columbia Theological Seminary. The two-semester course is designed to meet required ministry and context courses at ITC.

"This course seeks to introduce a distinctly African American understanding of the world, the Earth, and the Church," explained Burnett, the lead instructor for the second semester. She emphasized that the course is designed to build the bridge between theory and practice that is essential to effective ministry in church and society.

For more information on the Justice and Stewardship Project, contact Dr. Miriam Burnett at ITC, 404-614-6398, or email her at mburnett@itc.edu.