The Wright Ecotheologian
Associate Professor of Religion
Former Department Chair of Religious Studies
Founding Executive Director, Collaborative for the Common Good
About Catherine
Catherine Wright (B.Sc, B.Ed, M.Div, Ph.D.) is an interdisciplinary Christian ecotheologian working at Wingate University (North Carolina) in the Religious Studies Department. As a scholar and social infrastructure strategist, she constructed a new institute on campus grounded in the principles of sustainable development called The Collaborative for the Common Good. She was chosen to be its first Executive Director on August 1, 2020 and in 2024 passed the torch to other vibrant contributors on campus to focus more on local non-profit infrastructure and writing projects.
In 2022, Dr. Wright was honored with being named one of North Carolina's top 50 women leaders and her 2022 research paper (co-authored with faculty/staff in the CCG) was named one of 28 AASHE Campus Sustainability Award finalists (Community Engagement Category).
Her scholarship focuses on the implications of cosmogenesis on contemporary understandings of human suffering and was the topic of her first text: "Creation, God, and Humanity: Engaging the Mystery of Suffering within the Sacred Cosmos" (Paulist Press, 2017). She was ecstatic when it won an Association of Catholic Publishers (ACP) Excellence in Publishing award in the category of Theology in 2018. In 2020, she followed up with a text called "Caring for Our Common Home: A Practical Guide to Laudato Si'" that explores in many different ways the real life implications of Pope Francis' "green" pastoral letter. Wright then followed this by developing "Food and Faith: Health and Happiness Around The Tables of Our Lives", a high impact, experiential learning Core Curriculum course in 2022. From both the research for this course and the wisdom gained by teaching it, Wright wrote Food and Faith: From Dirt to Dessert which was published as an interactive ebook in August 2023 by Kendall Hunt Publishing.
As a science-trained, Christian ethicist engaged in stakeholder engagement and civic dialogue, Dr. Wright engages contemporary social issues in an interdisciplinary way and constantly strives to communicate her integral approach to physical, social and spiritual healing and wholeness. Not satisfied with purely theoretical strategizing, Dr. Wright has a track record of meaningful, quantifiable change via needs assessments, program or event design and implementation, and impact assessment.
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Dr. Wright has also taught a diverse array of well received courses such as Food and Faith, Global Perspectives on Ethics, Systematic Theology, Religion and Science, Theological Responses to Our Ecological Crisis, Suffering and Joy, Christian Missions in the 21st Century, and EcoJustice -- in addition to many immersive travel based trips to Ashville (NC), Carolina Beach (NC), Jackson (MS), and Ireland. As with her texts, Dr. Wright invites students and readers to discover new ways of thinking and new behaviors with interactive and community engaged exercises aimed to change hearts and heads while hands are doing the work of community transformation. Her courses, presentations, and books give new life to the tenet: being the "hands and feet of Christ" in a beautiful and broken world.
Catherine also loves supporting Creation Care and Social Justice teams across many dioceses and denominations, as well as spending time with her family and friends in the great outdoors -- taking time to do some ‘holy noticing.’ A great joy for her is to work alongside passionate people of faith in her local community who are laboring to empower others to wholeness and happiness.
Her fur babies keep her grounded as does her gardens, her college bound kid Draven, and husband Todd.