ECCG Network Deep Dives are opportunities for all interested to gather, learn, and connect around issues of Creation Care across multiple disciplines. Gatherings will take place most months on the second Thursday evening. You can find the registration link for each gathering by clicking the image or the link below it. To view previous recordings, visit our Deep Dive Archive page.
July 2026 – Eco – Regions and Why They Matter with the Rt. Rev’d Cathleen Bascom, of the Presiding Bishop’s Office
What are Eco-Regions?
Eco-Regions are partnerships of dioceses and community partners based on shared ecosystems, watersheds, or environmental concerns. These partnerships aim to foster community and cultivate a collaborative environment where people, projects, and properties are shared, and nature-based climate solutions that address local and regional needs are implemented. Through these Eco-Regions, we aspire to equip and empower individuals, parishes, dioceses, and regions to transform our use of our land and waterways, and invite us to consider how to grow, distribute, and consume food in a fashion that glorifies God.
Guest Mentor: Bishop Cathleen Bascom
Bishop Cathleen Bascom, Episcopal Eco-Region Network Consultant
In her role as a Consultant to the Presiding Bishop and his Mission-Creation Care staff,
Cathleen has helped to shape twelve emerging Eco-Region Networks across the
Episcopal Church. These Networks link people of faith involved in nature preservation
and restoration and regenerative agriculture and just food systems toward carbon-
neutrality and climate mitigation.
Cathleen served as Bishop Diocesan of the Diocese of Kansas from 2019 to 2026
In 2020, Cathleen published an ecological theological novel Of Green Stuff Woven and is
currently working on a sequel with the working title Bishop of Bluestem.
She served for six years on TEC Interim bodies dedicated to Creation Care and ending
environmental racism.
She served as Co-chair of the Legislative Committee on Environmental Stewardship and
Creation Care for the 2024 General Convention, overseeing Resolution B002 that
formally brought Eco-Region Networks into existence. In the Diocese of Kansas, she worked with leaders to establish the Bethany House and Garden at the Diocesan Center in Topeka. This innovative ministry serves the local community, providing green space in one of the state’s most impoverished neighborhoods and access to healthy food and education in grasslands restoration and sustainable
gardening practices.
Creation Care has long been a central focus of Cathleen’s ministry. She sponsored
creation scholars at Kansas State University; oversaw the installation of a downtown
Prairie green space as a cathedral dean in Des Moines, Iowa, and has helped local parishes
plant postage stamp prairies and organize around environmental concerns across Iowa
and Kansas. Cathleen was ordained a priest in 1990 and has served urban, suburban, small-town, and
academic communities between the Great Lakes and the Rockies.
Cathleen’s academic background includes B.A.(English Honors) University of Kansas;
M.A. (English Literature) Exeter University (U.K.); M.Div. Seabury-Western; D.Min.
(Homiletics) Iliff School of Theology and M.F.A. (Creative Writing and the
Environment) Iowa State University.
Cathleen is married to author and professor Tim Bascom, and they have two grown sons
Conrad and Luke.
To view previous recordings, visit our Deep Dive Archive page.