wfn.org | [PCUSANEWS] Professor wins Restoring Creation Award

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Note #8362 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

Professor wins Restoring Creation Award
GA04068
June 30, 2004

Professor wins Restoring Creation Award

Carol Johnston honored for treasuring the world God made

by Evan Silverstein

RICHMOND, June 30 - The Rev. Carol F. Johnston, the winner of this year's
William E. Gibson Lifetime Achievement Award, said God's spirit brings
healing and new life into the world.

Presbyterians for Restoring Creation (PRC) presented the award to Johnson
Tuesday during the organization's annual General Assembly luncheon, at the
Marriott Hotel.

Johnston, a professor of theology and culture at Christian Theological
Seminary in Indianapolis, IN, was recognized for "outstanding individual
achievement" in caring for God's creation.

"What brings me to the heart of what I wanted to say here ... is the recovery
of the understanding that the Bible is consistently, consistently about the
restoration of the right relationships between God and human beings and the
rest of creation all together, holistically," Johnston said.

The Rev. Robert Stivers, who introduced Johnston, said the award also
recognizes her vital role in the cause of ecological justice over the past
two decades. "It also honors her as a writer and speaker active in the life
of the church," said Stivers, the PRC's northwest regional representative and
a university professor from Tacoma, WA.

Stivers said Johnston has made many noteworthy eco-justice-related
contributions to the PC(USA), including her service as a member of a
social-policy task force that produced Restoring Creation for Ecology and
Justice, a paper adopted by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church
(USA) in 1990.

"I want us all to start holding up signs at football games that say, 'John
3:17,' which (says) God sent His only son into the world that the world might
be saved," Johnston said. "And the Greek is 'cosmos' - that the whole cosmos
might be saved. That's what it's really all about. That's why what we're
doing, even when it seems so difficult, is so exciting and feels so great,
because it's really doing what we're called to do and what God has enlisted
us to do."

Presbyterians for Restoring Creation is a faith group created 10 years ago
that works for environmental wholeness and social justice, and serves as a
prophetic voice for substantive change in the church and in the world.

PRC also presented a Restoring Creation Award to Presbyterian-related Warren
Wilson College in Asheville, NC, for creative environmental preservation work
on its campus.

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