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Important Dates
 
For Students
July 7 Fall registration opens
Jul 19 Insights 2 classes end
Jul 27 Insights 3 classes begin
Aug 23 All summer classes end
Sep 7 Fall classes begin
Sep 16 Drop/Add deadline
Oct 4 Insights 1 classes end
Oct 11 Insights 2 classes begin
Nov 8 Insights 2 classes end
Nov 16 Insights 3 classes begin
Dec 13 Insights classes end
Dec 20 All fall classes end
Jan 18 Spring classes start  
For Faculty
Jun 28 Insights 1 grades due 
Aug 2 Insights 2 grades due 
Sep 6 All summer grades due 
Sep 28 Spring 2016 course proposals due 
Oct 17 Insights 1 grades due
Nov 22 Insights 2 grades due
Dec 27 Insights 3 grades due
Jan 3 All Fall grades due  
Cherry Hill Seminary is the leading provider of education and practical training in leadership, ministry, and personal growth in Pagan and Nature-Based spiritualities.

For more information, visit www.cherryhillseminary.org, or contact CHS@cherryhillseminary.org.



Bron Taylor, Ph.D., keynote speaker for The Greening of Religions: Hope In the Eye of the Storm, is Professor of Religion and Nature at the University of Florida, and has been an Affiliated Scholar with the Center for Environment and Development at the University of Oslo. Working primarily in the areas of religion and ecology, environmental ethics and environmental philosophy Taylor is also a prominent historian and ethnographer of environmentalism, including radical environmentalist movements, surfing culture and nature-based spiritualities.
Taylor is Editor-in-Chief of the Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature. He founded the International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, serving as its President from 2006-2009, and founded the Society's Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, serving as editor since 2007. From Taylor's web site:

"Explore the emotional and spiritual connections people have (and do not have) with nature. Consider the ethical and political dimensions of grassroots environmental movements, including Earth First! and the Earth Liberation Front. Discover what surfing (oceanic not internet) might have to do with spirituality and environmentalism. Analyze how environments shape human perceptions and how human perceptions shape environmental and social systems. Consider whether a new post-Darwinian nature spirituality is emerging that will decisively shape the future of religion and the earth."
Fall Classes Start Sept 7

Master's 14-week Courses - September 7 - December 20: 
Ethics & Boundaries Mondays 6PM ET 
History of Wicca and Paganism (no live meetings) 
Sexuality, Culture & Religion Wednesdays 9PM ET 
Introduction to Military Chaplaincy Thursdays 9PM ET (see below) 
Ministering to Military Families Thursdays 9PM ET (see below) 
Insights 4-week Courses
Session 1 - September 7 - October 4: 
Pagan Consent Culture (no live meetings) 
Voices of Gaia Wednesdays, 9PM ET 
The Secret of Sacred Places (no live meetings)
Session 2 - October 11 - November 8: 
Spiritual Sketchpad Journey (no live meetings) 
Living the Fifth Sacred Thing Tuesdays 8PM ET
Session 3 - November 16 - December 13: 
Course descriptions here 



Laurie Zoloth, bioethicist and president of the American Academy of Religion, has called climate change the greatest moral issue of our time.  Increasingly, voices from a variety of religious and spiritual traditions are bringing the link between religion and climate change to national and international notice, from the Green Seminary Movement, to the recent Papal encyclical, to conferences ranging from the purely academic to those like the World Parliament of Religions, and to the growing emphasis on environmental justice.
 
Our April 1-3 conference welcomes proposals that go beyond acknowledging climate change as a moral challenge to explore if and how religious and spiritual traditions and their practitioners engage with this challenge, its effect on their behavior and thinking, and if theological reflections have been modified in any way to adjust to the climate changes that confront us.
 
We are looking for proposals from a broad understanding of religion, including the Abrahamic, the Dharmic, the contemporary Pagan and the Earth-based, as well as from diverse methodologies: theoretical and practical, qualitative and quantitative, normative and descriptive. Abstracts should be limited to 600 words and are due by September 30, 2015.
 
Don't miss this opportunity to present at conference with renowned scholar Bron Taylor (see column at left), author of Dark Green Religion: Nature Spirituality and the Planetary Future, and Avatar and Nature Spirituality, as well as numerous publications documenting his ethnographic work with Earth First! and the Earth Liberation Front.
 
CHS Peeps In The News

Springer Publishing is currently publishing the book Pagan Ethics: Paganism as a World Religion, by Michael York.

 Wendy Griffin presented a half-day workshop at the beautiful Goddess Temple of Orange County on August 9. The general theme was finding the intersection between what the Earth needs and what each of us can do. "We covered the science of climate change, the cultural and research of denial, the narratives we have been told and tell ourselves that shape our worldviews, the organizations that are particularly involved in combating climate change and the different approaches they use, and then explored each individual's talents and gifts they can bring to the struggle. There was a great deal of personal processing and interaction, typical of a good workshop and everything was done in sacred space."
  
Brendan Myers spent most of the month of July this year in Bohemia, Czech Republic. View his slideshow about the experience here.


Annie Finch, former CHS Artist-in-Residence performed 
August 9 in New York FIVE DIRECTIONS, a ritual theatre and musical performance of poems at Bowery Poetry Club. The show, a collaboration with the Dark Follies ritual bellydance troupe, combined invocation, dance, mask, story, and song with poetry, focusing on her personal journey to become a Witch, and was followed by a tea-tasting of Spells Tea, the first product from Finch's new company American Witch.

Lauren Raine, CHS Artist-in-Residence, has blogged about her years-long project, Masks of the Goddess: Bringing the Divine Feminine to Life. A masks ritual coordinated by Lauren and Macha NightMare will take place at the 2016 Parliament of the World's Religions. 
 

Holli Emore and Interfaith Partners of SC participated in an August 15 school supplies giveaway held by HBC Benedict College.



Email to share your news with us and don't forget that we love to see photos!

Heard in the CHS classroom:

"Those who do not know themselves find these others threatening; those who know themselves can see the image of God in the differentness of others, not their sameness, and can marvel at the variety of God's good creation." (Culbertson, 2000,)

"[W]e no longer live in isolation from each other and must learn how to minister in a multicultural world. Cherry Hill Seminary is helping me be that kind of minister." (student)