Soil & Sacrament: Fred Bahnson at TEDxManhattan 2013

From monks raising oyster mushrooms in South Carolina to Pentecostal coffee roasters in Washington to young Jewish farmers in Connecticut, Fred Bahnson tells the stories of a vibrant and hopeful new American spirituality taking root across the land, and how these faith communities are pointing the way to becoming more truly alive. Fred Bahnson is a writer, educator, and permaculture gardener. He is the author of Soil & Sacrament: Four Seasons Among the Keepers of the Earth (Simon & Schuster, 2013) and co-author of Making Peace with the Land (InterVarsity Press, 2012). Fred holds a masters in theological studies and in 2005 co-founded Anathoth Community Garden, a church-supported agriculture ministry in the Piedmont region of North Carolina. His essays have appeared in Christian Science Monitor, Orion, The Sun, Christian Century, and the anthologies Best American Spiritual Writing 2007 (Houghton Mifflin), Wendell Berry and Religion (Univ. Press of Kentucky) and State of the World 2011—Innovations that Nourish the Planet (Norton). His writing has received a number of awards, including an Award of Excellence from the Associated Church Press, a William Raney scholarship in nonfiction at Bread Loaf, a Kellogg Food & Community fellowship at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, and a 2012 North Carolina Artist fellowship in creative nonfiction from the North Carolina Arts Council. Fred lives with his wife and three sons on a hillside in Transylvania County, where they are growing a ½ acre edible forest garden with terraced vegetable beds. In 2012 Fred joined Wake Forest University School of Divinity as director of the new Food, Faith, & Religious Leadership Initiative, whose vision is to equip religious leaders with the skills necessary to create "more redemptive food systems, where God's shalom becomes visible for a hungry world." In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations)