"Rooted Faith is a timely field guide for getting to know God by getting outdoors. With passion and practical know-how, Sarah Renee Werner helps reconnect Christians who love the Creator with his glorious creation. We don't need more wonders in the world--just a greater sense of wonderment!"
--MATTHEW SLEETH, MD, executive director of Blessed Earth and author of Reforesting Faith and 24/6
"'Christianity in its biblical roots is grounded in the earth, ' argues Sarah Renee Werner in this refreshing and readable introduction to Christian creation care/earth spirituality/ecotheology. Churches must recover an interrelationship with a living biosphere, healing our de-formation by the objectification, dualism, and placelessness of settler colonialism by returning to the animist cosmology, poetic imagination, and incarnational geocentricism that are--surprise!--intrinsic to our scriptural narratives. She commends spiritual practices of reembodiment throughout to deepen personal and political wholeness and hope. An ideal book group resource!"
--CHED MYERS, coauthor of Healing Haunted Histories: A Settler Discipleship of Decolonization
"Sarah Renee Werner has written a book that reaches us right where we live. Teaching us to live differently is our only path to healing. I highly recommend you make reading Rooted Faith a priority, and soon."--RANDY WOODLEY, author of Becoming Rooted: One Hundred Days of Reconnecting with Sacred Earth
"Sarah Renee Werner's Rooted Faith is a call for Christians to embrace the reality that Jesus and the tradition that was formed from his radical life and message is fully rooted in a sentient, alive world of interconnected beings. Learning how to be the heart of Christ in a climate-changing world is precisely where the church is needed today and in the challenging days to come. I'm grateful for this book. Selah and amen."
--VICTORIA LOORZ, author, wild church pastor, and founder of the Center for Wild Spirituality
"This book is a winsome, accessible meditation on creation as the environmental crisis looms over us. It lives at the intersection of gospel faith, Indigenous religion, and the earthly reality of belonging to and with and for the earth. The concrete focus on lived reality is evident as we learn that the 'dove' at the baptism of Jesus was a 'Palestinian pigeon, ' and as we practice 'earthing'--that is, walking in bare feet to let our bodies feel the life-giving surges of the earth. A bonus of the book is an introduction to a wide literature on the subject, which is new to me. This is a fine, generative, suggestive read that remains focused on the reality of our earthly placement."
--WALTER BRUEGGEMANN, William Marcellus McPheeters Professor Emeritus of Old Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary
"Winsome and wise, Rooted Faith provides a friendly entry point for Christians seeking to understand better and go deeper into Christian faithfulness at a time of planetary crisis. Sarah Renee Werner's emphasis on simple practices will be especially appealing for those who are ready to begin, but don't know how. For such readers, Werner offers a gracious invitation: it's okay--begin here."
--DEBRA RIENSTRA, author of Refugia Faith: Seeking Hidden Shelters, Ordinary Wonders, and the Healing of the Earth