The Reverend Sharon Delgado is an ordained United Methodist minister, activist, and professional speaker who leads seminars and workshops, preaches, and speaks before spiritual communities and secular audiences on issues related to globalization, climate change, economic and environmental justice, and peacemaking, while pointing in the direction of hope and action. She has had many articles published on these themes and is author of Love in a Time of Climate Change: Honoring Creation, Establishing Justice and Shaking the Gates of Hell: Faith-Led Resistance to Corporate Globalization (see below). By demonstrating the link between spirituality and social action, she offers hope and inspires action toward personal and social transformation. Her goal is to motivate people to join in the struggle to create a peaceful, just, and environmentally sustainable world.
Sharon is a co-founder of Earth Justice Ministries. She lives in Nevada City, California, with her husband, poet Guarionex Delgado. She loves gardening and taking walks in the woods with him, and spends many hours playing with their grandchildren.
Sharon’s updated Second Edition of Shaking the Gates of Hell: Faith-Led Resistance to Corporate Globalization (Fortress Press) was released in January, 2020. This book makes the case that humanity faces a living hell on earth of widespread poverty, social upheaval, repression, war, human misery, and ecological collapse. Huge corporations drive economic globalization, exacerbating these global threats by triggering a “race to the bottom.” Nations lower environmental, labor, and human rights standards in order to compete in the global economy. Though there are powerful forces at work that threaten life, we need not fear. These destructive forces are not abstract and irreversible, but emerge from actual institutions that hold political, economic, and military power. We can meet these forces with courage if we are deeply grounded in our relationship with God. Together, people of faith and conscience around the world can “shake the gates of hell,” resisting the horror of a barren, violent, and poisoned future, while developing new and viable alternatives to help build a peaceful, just, and sustainable world.
Sharon’s Love in a Time of Climate Change: Honoring Creation, Establishing Justice (Fortress Press 2017) is a progressive Christian approach to climate change that respects other faiths and philosophies and takes climate science seriously. It explores the themes of love and justice in the context of climate change from the perspective of scripture, tradition, reason, and experience. Love in a Time of Climate Change has been endorsed by theologians, activists, and scientists, including 350.org founder Bill McKibben, climate scientist Michael Mann, theologian Catherine Keller, Interfaith Power and Light founder the Rev. Sally Bingham, and many others. Find out more about the book here.
Go to Sharon Delgado’s website to find out more about her presentations and writings, where you can also sign up to follow her blog, Progressive Christian Social Action.