Clare Butterfield

Reverend Clare Butterfield is a Unitarian Universalist Community minister from central Illinois and executive director of Faith in Place, a project that partners with religious congregations to promote clean energy and sustainable farming.

Biography

Rev. Clare Butterfield's ministry is a call to all people of faith to reflect on religious teachings about environmental stewardship and to come together to act on those teachings. She directs Faith In Place, whose initiatives include: a consumer cooperative that provides meat raised humanely and locally that meets Islamic dietary requirements; an Urban Agriculture program for youth; and "Illinois Interfaith Power & Light," a religious response to global warming that is part of the national Interfaith Power & Light initiative. Faith In Place has helped over 250 congregations educate their members about the religious responsibility to care for Creation, to reduce their energy use, to support sustainable farming and more. Most recently, a partner congregation in Chicago became the first local congregation to go solar, and many more projects at congregations are in development. Prior to entering the ministry, Rev. Butterfield had a career as a tax and corporate attorney. She has an M. Div. from Meadville Lombard Theological School (2000), a J.D. from the University of Illinois College of Law (1983), a B.A. in History from the University of Illinois (1980), and she is currently working toward at Ph.D. at Chicago Theological Seminary. She is the community minister for Unity Temple in Oak Park, Illinois.

Works

*"World On Fire" (Sermon for Unity Temple Unitarian Universalist Congregation January 11, 2004)
*"Ecology and Worms in Humboldt Park" (Seeding the Snow, Fall-Winter 2003)
*"Winds of Change" (Sermon for Unity Temple Unitarian Universalist Congregation June 15, 2003)
*"The Flow of the Real" (Sermon for Unity Temple Unitarian Universalist Congregation December 29, 2002)
*"Building Faith in Place" (Getting Smart, Volume 5, Number 4, 2002)
*"The impact of gentrification on the client base of the settlement houses of WestTown and Humboldt Park" (Interreligious Sustainability Project, Center for Neighborhood Technology 2002)

References

*"Chicago Daily Herald", July 6, 2007, "Faith in the Earth; Religious groups incorporate environment into their beliefs"
*"Scarborough Evening News", June 9, 2007, "Generations in the running for charity"
*"Chicago Tribune", March 11, 2007, "Home & Garden to do list"
*"The Star-Ledger", November 30, 2006, "Unitarian minister ordained before her flock and her planet"
*"Chicago Daily Herald", October 4, 2006, "Churches to show Al Gore's movie"
*"Chicago Daily Herald", February 20, 2006, "Interfaith workshop to focus on caring for earth"
*"The Leader-Post", October 29, 2005, "Hurricanes reveal religion's needed role in ecology"
*"Religion News Service", September 28, 2005, "Hurricanes Reveal Religion's Needed Role in Ecology"
*"Sojourners Magazine", September 1, 2005, "In the fields of the Lord"

External links

* [http://www.faithinplace.org Faith in Place]