Tyler Sit: Fighting for a New City Using Spirituality and Environmental Justice

In November of 2017, a revolutionary church met for the first time on a quiet residential street in Minneapolis. The Bible was not the only topic of discussion, as among religious texts and teachings, attendees found a strong focus on gentrification and housing justice. Members not only congregated to worship, but to support each other in their struggle for justice that is integral to the church’s mission.

On this day, Rev. Tyler Sit preached his first sermon as the pastor and founder of the New City Church. After years of planning and community engagement, his vision of a church approaches environmental justice from a Christian lens. As someone who understands the environment, religion, and justice as inherently connected, his team hoped to create a place where people would experience the “inward transformation and reflection about the outward transformation they are seeking to enact”. New City Church, which is a United Methodist church, focuses on combating gentrification in the Powderhorn, Phillips, and Central neighborhoods of Minneapolis. Sit’s emphasis is on building community strength on a grassroots level in order to reverse gentrification trends, as well as advocate for necessary policy change on a governmental level. New City Church expands the definition of environmentalism and environmental justice to include urban areas and housing justice. In doing so, the church advocates for affordable housing as a way of engaging local communities in the environmental justice movement.

Sit’s life work is both religious and environmental. He has identified as Christian his entire life, and has been passionate about the environment since he was a child. His interest in the environment began as a kid in the Boys Scouts, where he spent extensive time outside. As a flamboyant, Chinese-American boy, he often felt ostracized by other Scouts, but found that nature taught him his place in the world. He was struck by both the strangeness and unity of ecosystems, feeling that he too fit into its remarkable abnormalities. Sit felt a strong responsibility to protect the environment because it had defended him, beginning his lifelong devotion to environmental work.

For much of his life, Sit has been motivated to do work surrounding climate change. Prior to creating the New City Church, he worked with community organizers for years. His experience in social justice, however, shed light on a severe lack of, and need for, self reflection and preservation. “Worship without justice is self serving and justice without worship is self destructive”.Again and again, he noticed an unsustainable trend in which people who were energized and eager to do justice work were overworked, burning out within a few years as they were unable to continue the work they set out to do. Sit noticed an intense need for self preservation and rejuvenation to enable people to show up most effectively to their work. As someone whose spirituality is integrally connected to his passion for environmental work, Sit saw a solution through religion. He realized the importance of merging his values to create New City Church, believing that “worship without justice is self serving and justice without worship is self destructive”.

Sit’s vision was not always one of a church combating gentrification. Raised in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, Sit entered the three neighborhoods he now works in with the idea of creating a church focused on climate change. As an outsider, Sit spent eight months communicating and building connections with residents in the Powderhorn, Phillips, and Central neighborhoods. He proposed the idea of a climate focused church, but found that while people cared about climate change, they were uninterested in becoming involved in a climate justice church when they were dealing with pressing issues of gentrification. When people are unsure of whether or not they will be able to keep their house the next month, climate change is a disconnect.

Rather than creating a climate church, Sit proposed the idea of an “Eco Church”, which he thought sounded sexy and appealing. However, community members quickly gave the feedback that it sounded expensive, “like a bougie ‘eco-toilet bowl cleaner’ that you pay more for but that cleans worse”. Sit has approached his work knowing that “if we don’t create an environmentalism that poor folks and people of color can participate in then all of us lose”, so he decided not to frame the church as an establishment focused on climate change or labeled as “eco”, because that wording felt distant to the community. After listening to community members, Sit decided on the name “New City”, which aims to embrace the idea of a ‘new city’ (an allusion to Revelation 21 in the Bible) in which people of all racial and economic backgrounds are able to live in healthy neighborhoods. Rather than focusing on broad issues and ideas that are disconnected from many people’s lives, this name emphasizes the church’s direct relationship to the people of these neighborhoods.

The New City Church arrived at gentrification because it is the issue that community members continuously came back to. The dominant story among residents was one of predominantly African American and Latino communities that, amidst the crime and violence Minneapolis experienced in the 80s and 90s, started organizing. People who did not feel comfortable letting their children walk around alone started putting in bike lanes, planting community gardens, and closing brothels. Residents were successful in shutting down one of the three factories giving children asthma, and even started the Midtown Global Market, a popular community hub. As they cleaned their neighborhood, however, housing prices began to increase, pushing out the very people who had worked tirelessly to make these communities their own. Sit continuously heard residents saying, “well I guess I’m too poor to live in a safe and green neighborhood”. He realized the need for a church that regarded gentrification both as an environmental and religious issue, expressing that “as a Christian, I categorically refuse that that’s the reality we have to live in”.

Gentrification is an issue plaguing cities across the country, and in recent years has begun to strike Minneapolis. Generally, gentrification occurs when rent prices increase as more affluent, often white people move into lower income neighborhoods, where residents tend to be people of color. As a result, original residents are pushed out of their home communities. New City Church works towards a city where underrepresented people are able to stay in their clean and safe neighborhoods, avoiding fear of displacement.Although there has been some debate about how severe gentrification actually is in the Twin Cities, a recent study conducted by the University of Minnesota (UMN) that interviewed 58 Twin Cities residents found that two thirds of participants fear “physical displacement”. The Center for Urban and Regional Affairs, another department at the UMN, reports that home values, median household incomes, and percentage of residents with college degrees are spiking in the Phillips and Central neighborhoods, places in which New City Church works. As neighborhoods with large communities of color and low income residents, a lack of affordable housing provokes fear and a sense of instability in these areas. As gentrification becomes increasingly threatening to long-term Minneapolis community residents, New City Church works towards a city where underrepresented people are able to stay in their clean and safe neighborhoods, avoiding fear of displacement.

Gentrification is an issue of both housing and environmental justice. The people who are removed from their communities are the same people who bear the brunt of environmental hazards. Not only are factories and toxic sites disproportionately built in low income neighborhoods and communities of color, but these disadvantaged people are forced out of healthy neighborhoods. When the very people who clean up their neighborhoods to improve health and foster community are unable to stay, cities essentially label these communities as unworthy and expendable for the sake of wealthier residents. Gentrification exacerbates environmental justice issues, as it pushes out lower income people who live in safe places, forcing people to move to neighborhoods that are more affordable, and often less healthy.

Including gentrification in the definition of environmental justice expands the definition of environment, and brings people who have been historically left out of environmental movements into the discussion. New City Church includes urban neighborhoods into the definition of environment, making housing an environmental justice issue. Sit realized that by working with communities to address the direct injustices threatening their livelihoods, he could make impactful change that is part of larger environmental issues. He explains, for instance, that New City Church still focuses on climate change, but does so by “transforming one neighborhood at a time” as it is “the most immediate, visible, tangible thing we can do”. While there are numerous organizations in Minneapolis that focus on affordable housing, few approach it as an environmental justice issue. However, in targeting gentrification and affordable housing as environmental justice, New City Church works to ensure that people have rights to live in environmentally safe places.

New City Church aims to hold the Minneapolis government accountable for its urban planning and treatment of residents, and advocates for policies that ensure housing security for low income communities and people of color. With the new Minneapolis mayor and city council, New City Church recently announced that they will be signing on to the “Homes for All” Initiative, in which numerous affordable housing groups in Minneapolis are banding together to ask for significant government money to invest in affordable housing. Sit himself is part of the “Green Zone Task Force”, that works to incentivize green development in disadvantaged communities without sparking displacement. As the minister of New City Church, Sit brings personal stories and experiences from members of his church into city planning spaces to represent people who are uncomfortable sharing themselves. The church also has a designated minister of public witness, whose job is to track affordable housing news and developments in Minneapolis, so that members can meaningfully step into policy and advocacy work.

To bring this work to a human level, New City Church builds community connections through urban agriculture. One of their established methods of combating gentrification on a grassroots level is through a permaculture program where neighbors grow self sustaining, edible plant gardens for each other. This project aims to relieve families of some of their grocery costs in hopes that an edible garden might allow residents to save money, helping them stay in the neighborhood. Creating relationships between community members through gardening humanizes issues of affordable housing, and helps residents combat gentrification. Sit explains that gentrification research has shown that when communities have these soft connections, they are better able to combat displacement, as they can make collective decisions.

To offer opportunities for inner reflection, grounding, and connection, New City Church invites community members to join “life together” groups. These meetings consist of six to eight people, which are intentionally diverse, and provide a space for people to share their life stories. Rather than focusing on policy, these groups intend to build relationships across difference and create a community of spiritual wholeness. Sit emphasizes the importance of these groups in grounding and holding people accountable to their values, so that they can “find a deep sense of inner resilience” to continue doing justice work.

While churches that emphasize environmental justice and action are not uncommon, New City Church is groundbreaking in its focus on gentrification as an environmental issue. Sit encourages people to focus on the positive changes they do want to see in their communities, rather than solely rejecting injustices. New City Church combats inequity through embracing and working towards a vision of a just city, believing in hope. As Sit shifted his dream of a church from one focused on climate change to one centered around gentrification, he embraced people’s lived experiences, creating a church that meets community needs and includes underrepresented people in vital conversations. Movements are built when people are energized about and connected to the change they want to see. New City Church finds power in connecting large issues of climate change and environmental justice to real lives, proving that environmentalism can both be rejuvenating and intersectional. This young, small church is changing lives and proving the unstoppable resilience of historically underrepresented Minneapolis communities.