A Pastor's Farm: From Health to Climate Activism

Rev. Richard Joyner didn't always see himself as a farmer. Growing up in rural North Carolina, he watched his father, a talented sharecropper, get cheated by landowners. This left a bad taste. After joining the army and becoming a chaplain, Joyner took over a small church in Conetoe, a town with no grocery store and a high poverty rate. Seeing his congregants suffer from preventable diseases due to lack of access to fresh food, he started a community garden. At first, his idea was met with skepticism, especially from those with painful memories of working the land.

But Joyner won them over. The garden grew, producing 1, 500 boxes of vegetables a week. People's health improved. Then came the floods. Hurricanes devastated their fields. Joyner, once reluctant to farm, now finds himself an unlikely face of climate activism. He's teaching his community that extreme weather isn't an "act of God, " but a consequence of human behavior. Now, he's learning new farming techniques to adapt to a changing climate. Joyner's journey shows that sometimes, the most powerful places of worship aren't buildings, but the earth we walk on.

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