SOLARPUNK CHRISTIAN

an Ecumenical Order whose Rule is Gardening, Prayer, Fellowship, Sabbath and playing The Solarpunk Game.

so·lar·punk noun

A science fiction genre and cultural movement that imagines a positive, bright future where humanity uses technology to live in harmony with nature while staying rooted in community and equality.

The opposite of cyberpunk, solarpunk is an aesthetic that combines renewable energy, green cities, and community teamwork as a rebellion against pollution and unsustainable, dysfunctional systems.

F.A.Q.

Solarpunk Christian is…

  • We are ecumenical because are are intentionally inclusive of the whole Christian family. This does not mean theological sameness or the erasure of difference. We instead seek to go beyond denominational and doctrinal boundaries with the assumption that across the traditions, we are facing shared crises and shared questions about how we can faithfully following Jesus.

    Historically Christian orders have been groups of people who commit to a shared of way life marked by a rhythm daily and weekly practices that are formative over time. We are a practice-based community that exist in many places, cultures and churches while desiring mutual commitment and accountability.

  • A Rule (short for Rule of Life) is a set of shared practices that people commit to as formative. Like a trellis provides support for a growing plant, a rule provides structure for our lives so that we may “bear fruit”.

    The Rule is voluntarily, binding for the duration of one's membership and formational. Our particular Rule forms us into people and community with technical and relational capacity to follow Jesus through crises.

  • Gardening is placed first intentionally as one of our default working metaphor as it represents our embodied, grounded faith.

    We garden because humans were first placed in the Garden to be co-gardeners with God. We garden because we seek to re-connect with our Creator’s original purpose (telos) and Kingdom (re: Kindom) plans for our world. It is a way of practicing humility, patience, attention, limits, and interdependence. It reconnects people to land, seasons, and care.We garden in order to connect and live as instruments of life and solidarity with a natural world facing ecological collapse and extinction. We garden as a way to redeem and repair human destruction. Through gardening we practice humility, patience, attention, limits, and interdependence. It allows for the reconnection of people to land, seasons, and care.

    Like most monastic and spiritual communities across Christian traditions and time, we garden because we find that God is gardening us all the time and we cannot help to imitate our Creator.

    Gardening forms us into grounded caretakers who are connected to the world around us.

  • Prayer is the practice of ongoing relationship and communication with God.

    Because we are ecumenical our prayers can look like the following:

    • Contemplative prayer

    • Liturgical prayer

    • Charismatic prayer

    • Silent prayer

    • Spoken prayer

    • Prayer woven into work

    Prayer is understood as life-giving nourishment, energy-giving attention, like water flowing through a garden. We communicate and relate to God in prayer in order to align ourselves with God’s heart and will for our world and to receive support and resources in accordance to our needs. We pray because we believe that God is always near to us (Psalm 139:7) and we pray so that we are formed into into people who are known to be immerse in constant divine conversation.

    Prayer is not sharply divided from gardening or daily activity and it is forming us into people who are sensitive and subject to the final authority of God’s loving Spirit.

  • We stay in Fellowship with each other as well as our neighboring communities because our work is communal in nature.

    We cannot face the polycrisis alone. We confess our need for each other and that our best selves are drawn out and put into action when we are in flow and mix of a healthy, beloved community that is centering God.

    Participating members are expected to not abandon their existing communities, churches, or relationships but to explore new ways to lean in. We recognize that we are formed and made into Jesus' disciples over time as we work together, collaborate, share, mentor, reflect and keep each other accountable and safe.

    We choose and practice Fellowship to remember that this work is for and with others. Where gardening and prayer is cultivation and water, fellowship is the soil.

  • After creating the heavens and earth God rested. Scripture commands God’s people to rest every week, to “remember the Sabbath and keep it holy”.

    We know that just as there is day and night, just as the land and animals need rest and reset, so do we humans. By practicing a weekly rhythm of rest, trusting and depending on God’s care, we affirm that all salvation and provision ultimately depend upon God. By taking a day of rest and worship, we protect against burnout, urgency and the idolization of projects and work. We confess that have limits and weaknesses and we remember that we are not saviors.

    Furthermore in the context of climate anxiety, technological acceleration, and systemic injustice, Sabbath is a spiritual act of resistance. We struggle not against humans but against Powers and Principalities that seek to dominate us.

    Sabbath allows us to rest in God’s victorious sufficiency knowing that the healing of the world does not rest entirely on us.

  • There are two parts to this final rule:

    Playing or play comprises the first half in that we believe that a life lived with God is marked by joy. Following Jesus may not be easy and we may not always be happy, but it should be enjoyable and perhaps even fun. When we look at Jesus moving in the Holy Spirit we see a man who delights in the innocence of children, inspires wonder and frequently uses stories, humor and irony. Our play reflects our well-placed hope in God’s inexhaustible imagination. In our “play” we seek to encourage that same trust, expansiveness, lightness, insight and creativity that comes with following the Holy Spirit.

    Second part is the game itself: THE SOLARPUNK GAME is a creative eco-justice questing campaign. The game is the organizing means and focal point for Solarpunk Christian community’s existence. The premise of the game is that humanity finds itself faces a precarious planet-wide threat called The Polycrisis, a cosmic monster boss, which must be faced and navigated, indefinitely. Playing participants are invited take on real-world “quests” and Questline Campaigns that respond to said escalating ecological, social, and technological crises while also integrating the Rule into their lives and collaborative developing and expanding THE SOLARPUNK GAME with its own community of players.

    Click here to learn more about THE SOLARPUNK GAME.

The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch.

During this time some prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch. One of them, named Agabus, stood up and through the Spirit predicted that a severe famine would spread over the entire Roman world. (This happened during the reign of Claudius.) The disciples, as each one was able, decided to provide help for the brothers and sisters living in Judea.

This they did, sending their gift to the elders by Barnabas and Saul.
-Acts 11:25-29, NIV

“Reimagining our Christian connections and identities is a theological act. It’s ‘a Christian act’ of imagining. And if, as I believe, Christian life is indeed a way forward for the world, then it must reemerge as a compelling new invitation to life together.” -Willie James Jennings

“There is a power in the earth, and it is a greening power.” -Hildegard de Bingen

“The task of prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish, and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us.” -Walter Brueggeman

“Start by doing what is necessary, then what is possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible.” -St. Francis

“I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station, through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in.” -George Washington Carver

“Reimagining our Christian connections and identities is a theological act. It’s ‘a Christian act’ of imagining. And if, as I believe, Christian life is indeed a way forward for the world, then it must reemerge as a compelling new invitation to life together.” -Willie James Jennings “There is a power in the earth, and it is a greening power.” -Hildegard de Bingen “The task of prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish, and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us.” -Walter Brueggeman “Start by doing what is necessary, then what is possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible.” -St. Francis “I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station, through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in.” -George Washington Carver

Our Rule of Life

Gardening

We garden because humans were first placed in the Garden to be co-gardeners with God. We garden in order to connect and live as instruments of life and solidarity with a natural world facing ecological collapse and extinction. We garden as a way to redeem and repair human destruction. Gardening forms us into grounded caretakers who are connected to the world around us.

Prayer

We communicate and relate to God in prayer in order to align ourselves with God’s heart and will for our world and to receive support and resources in accordance to our needs. We pray because we believe that God is always near to us (Psalm 139:7) and we pray so that we are formed into into people who are known to be immerse in constant divine conversation.

We “play” because we have a well-placed hope in God’s creative Spirit and inexhaustible imagination. We are marked by joy in our engagement and outlook on life, the future and towards our fellow players journeying with us on our quests.

The game is the organizing means and focal point for Solarpunk Christian community’s existence. The premise of the game is that humanity finds itself faces a precarious planet-wide threat called The Polycrisis, a cosmic monster boss, which must be faced and navigated, indefinitely. Playing participants are invited take on real-world “quests” and “Questline Campaigns” that respond to said escalating ecological, social, and technological crises while also integrating the Rule into their lives and collaboratively developing and expanding THE SOLARPUNK GAME with its own community of players.

Fellowship

We are in fellowship with each other as well as with our neighboring communities because our work is communal in nature. We cannot face the polycrisis alone. We confess our need for each other and that our best selves are drawn out and put into action when we are in flow and mix of a healthy, beloved community that is centering God.

Sabbath

We practice a weekly rhythm of rest so to embody our trust and dependence on God’s care. We observe Sabbath so to affirm that all salvation and provision ultimately depend upon God. By taking a day of rest and worship, we protect against burnout, urgency and the idolization of projects and work. We confess that have limits and weaknesses and while remembering that we are not saviors; it is God who saves and even God took a day to rest.