wfn.org | CORRECTED REPORT Environmental Justice Ministries Meeting

[Carol Fouke <carolf@ncccusa.org>]

National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.
Contact: NCC News, 212-870-2227 (Info/Photos/Local Contacts)
NCC5/24/01 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Note: Please Substitute This Version for Yesterday's Transmission

ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE MINISTRIES CONCLUDE MAY 20-23 MEETING

	May 24, 2001, WASHINGTON, D.C. - A May 20-23 environmental justice
ministries conference here left no doubt about it: Protection of the
environment is a religious issue.  And the more than 350 religious
environmental ministry leaders from 40 states who participated in the
conference left no doubt about how deeply they care about the issue.

	In plenaries, workshops and worship, they immersed themselves in the
theology undergirding environmental ministries, the facts and figures on
significant environmental justice issues and the "how tos" of starting and
growing environmental ministries in congregations and judicatories.

	The environmental justice ministries conference, long in the planning, took
place coincidentally just after the Bush Administration released its energy
policy.  Mid-conference, participants descended on the U.S. Capitol for an
interfaith "Let There Be Light" rally where they critiqued the Bush
Administration's energy plan and formed a "human bar graph" to illustrate
the United States' disproportionate contribution of greenhouse gas emissions
to the environment and thus to global warming.

They fanned out across Capitol Hill to share their concerns with 200
senators and representatives, presenting each with an energy-efficient
compact fluorescent bulb.  Then, at conference's end, they prepared to
"return home to organize around a very different vision for our energy
future in the pulpits and pews of the American heartland," according to Rev.
Richard Killmer, Director of Environmental Justice for the National Council
of Churches, New York, whose Eco-Justice Working Group and 23 participating
denominations sponsored the conference.

As the conference opened, the Rev. Dr. Wesley Granberg-Michaelson, General
Secretary of the Reformed Church in America, New York, offered one of two
"theological anchor" plenary presentations.

"I hear that about 200 environmental groups have joined together in
opposition to the President's proposals.  What is the church's role?  To
simply join that lobbying chorus as group 201?  Or is there something
unique, and true, we bring to this debate, precisely because we are
churches?," he asked, then proceeded to discuss four scriptural foundations
for care for the environment.

The first, he said, is God's covenant with the earth and all living things.
"Creation is chosen by God before God chooses and calls a people," he said.
Second, the idea of"'nature' as a separate object to be used, exploited and
subdued - which is the hallmark of the industrial age - results from the
break in relationship between God, humanity and the creation."

Christ came to redeem, hold together and reconcile all things, to restore a
creation "groaning, looking toward its redemption," Granberg-Michaelson
said, concluding that "creation becomes a gift of grace, a gift to be
offered back to God for the sake of the life of the world."

Most who attended the May 20-23 conference are environmental justice
ministry leaders in NCC-member Protestant and Orthodox communions
(denominations).  Participants included leaders in the Interfaith Climate
Change Campaign, which now reaches into 18 states.  These campaigns include
Protestant, Roman Catholic, Orthodox and Evangelical Christians, Jews and
people of other faiths.

The campaign is designed to help people of faith see global warming as a
religious issue and to encourage individuals, congregations and governments
to do something about it.  The National Council of Churches' Eco-Justice
Working Group is partnering with the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish
Life in this strategy that was kicked off in August 1998.

Under the theme "On Earth As It Is in Heaven: Witnessing to the Healing of
God's creation," speaker after speaker at the May 20-23 conference
emphasized the importance of the religious community in protecting God's
creation and the many ways that concern for the earth and its inhabitants is
rooted in religious faith.

Dr. Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz, Professor of Christian Ethics and Theology at 
Drew University in Madison, N.J., in the second "theological anchor" 
plenary presentation, urged adherents of different approaches to protection 
of the environment to recognize all that they have in common and to allow 
their emotions, intellect and actions lead them step by step.

"Emotions are a doorway into thinking," she said.  "We are faced with the 
task of changing patterns of thinking.  We need a radically different 
understanding of being in the world.  Otherwise the same assumptions about 
it being there for us to use, without limits, will keep coming back in."

"Sometimes we want everything predetermined before we start doing," she 
continued.  "Let's take action, and as we do, we'll get to know.  Keep 
doing what you are doing and understand what you are doing has to influence 
your thinking."

Drawing on the biblical injunction to "love your neighbor as yourself," Dr. 
Isasi-Diaz called her listeners to a "non-selfish self-interest" that wants 
for others what we would want for ourselves.

"We can only know a little piece of reality based on our own experience of 
the world," she said.  The corrective to that, and the best we can do, is 
to choose to look at the world from the perspective of those affected the 
most by a problem or situation - global warming, for example - nature, the 
oppressed, the poor.

Finally, she urged her audience to strive toward an identity as "justice 
people."  Justice "is not something we do, it is something we are," she 
said.  "The only way justice will be a religious virtue is if we think of 
being justice people.  Only by being justice people can justice hold us 
responsible for what we do and who we are."

"Action on behalf of justice has to include the understanding that we are 
one," she said.  "It's not that we 'relate to nature.'  We are in nature 
and nature in us."

"Climate change - in the opinion of many - hurts efforts to protect God's
creation," said Killmer.  "And we know that in order to protect creation, we
've got to conserve.  We can't continue to live a lifestyle that is going to
harm creation and harm future generations."

Senator Joe Lieberman (D-Connecticut) contributed a word of theology.
Speaking at the "Let There Be Light" rally, he reminded his listeners that
"God put Adam and Eve in the Garden to work it and to guard it - not just to
work it.  And that speaks to the heart of environmental protection that we
have an obligation to protect God's creations and to guard them.

"We're here for a short period of time on earth, blessed that we are to be
here for that period of time, and we always have to remember the words of
the Psalm, 'The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof.'"

Sen. Susan M. Collins (R-Maine), in her rally statement, commented, "I
believe we can create an energy policy that will create sufficient energy
for us and our children while upholding our duty to provide stewardship of
the Earth."

Arguing that "our best strategy for dealing with our energy crisis,
particularly in the short term, is to increase conservation," she said.  For
example, "if every American were to replace just four 100-watt incandescent
light bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs, we'd eliminate the need to build
30 new power plants."

She urged everyone, whatever their religion, to "participate in this
debate."  Collins especially commended the Maine Council of Churches'
Spirituality and Earth Stewardship Program, the Maine Interfaith Climate
Coalition and Maine Interfaith Power and Light, "a committed group of
citizens that have joined together to purchase electric power that has the
least possible adverse effect on our planet."

At the conference, United Methodist layman, author and activist Bill
McKibben termed the threat caused by climate change "the moral crisis of our
time."  Religious groups must take up the issue of energy consumption, he
said, because they are the only influence positing a meaning of life other
than accumulation of goods and the only large institution that remains
potentially subversive to the belief in consumption as the ultimate goal.

National Council of Churches General Secretary, Dr. Bob Edgar, a United
Methodist, preaching at the conference's closing worship, agreed, saying,
"As a foundation for public policy, conservation should be a centerpiece not
an afterthought, a solemn vow not a concession.  God is calling us to be
stewards of this fragile planet."

McKibben, in his address to the conference, urged conference participants to
get more people involved in working against ever-increasing energy use and
global warming.  "Churches need to get beyond talking and start doing," he
said.

Then he spoke straight to households, suggesting that the sports utility
vehicle (or SUV) is a symbol for what's wrong.  "It's a very real part of
the problem," he said, explaining that if one family replaces a car like a
Taurus or Escort with an SUV, the difference in gas consumption in just one
year is the equivalent of leaving their refrigerator door ajar for six
years.

Raising the fuel efficiency that SUVs get by just three miles per gallon would save more
petroleum than the largest estimates of how much oil is under the Arctic
Wildlife Refuge, he added.

Industrialized countries must take the lead in reducing greenhouse gas
emissions and cutting energy production and consumption, said another
presenter, Ram Y. Uppulari of the environmental advocacy group Environmental
Defense.  "We've contributed the most to this problem, and we're in the best
position to do something about it," he said.

At the same time, Uppulari said, a comprehensive strategy must encourage
every individual and every country to help prevent global climate change
according to their own individual or national circumstances, he said.

Uppulari linked the environmental justice efforts to faith groups' historic
commitment to alleviate poverty.  "Poverty is the root cause of a lot of
stresses on the environment, such as deforestation," he said.  "We must help
developing countries in poverty alleviation.  They can't focus on
controlling pollution from their industries when there are much more
pressing human issues on a day-to-day basis."

To anyone skeptical about the conclusiveness of research linking human
activities to global warming, Uppulari proposes approaching this issue in
the same way as Blaise Pascal approached the question of whether God exists.

Pascal wrote, "Let us weigh the gain and the loss, in wagering that God is.
Consider these alternatives: if you win, you win all; if you lose, you lose
nothing."  Similarly, "the stakes are so high and the costs potentially so
immense" if we guess wrong and do nothing about climate change," Uppulari
suggested.

The conference featured workshops on topics including "Eco-Justice in the
Bible," "Children's Environmental Health," "Living Our Lives as if Creation
Mattered," "People of Faith Confront Environmental Racism," "Creation and
Worship," "Congregations and Energy Use" and "An Orthodox Perspective on
Creation."

-end-