EARTHKEEPING NEWS A NEWSLETTER OF THE NORTH AMERICAN COALITION FOR CHRISTIANITY AND ECOLOGY Volume Seven, Number Four May/June 1998 NACCE'S VISION FOR THE FUTURE By Rev. Finley Schaef NACCE emerged in a conference held in North Webster, Indiana in 1987, the first major organizing effort to challenge the North American Christian church to care for Earth in a more systematic and compassionate manner. NACCE is the grand-daddy of the ecumenical Christian ecological movement, and I am humbled to be the next president, after Maria Jaoudi, Eleanor Rae, James Berry and Elizabeth Dyson. I have just retired from the pastoral ministry after 40 years as a Methodist minister for Christ in New York City, where the air smells like carbon monoxide, the harbor is loaded with silt, the zoo has wonderful rides, the loveliest nature walk is in Greenwood cemetery, and the common sparrow is the only bird you talk to. I loved it, and I miss it. Now I live upstate near Woodstock in the Catskill mountains. The city's real estate agents, florists, and noisy high school kids have been replaced by endlessly flowing streams, tall trees that sway grandly in the wind, and the silent animals (we think opossum and, rarely, a bear) that creep around our house at night. I love it here too, and I have discovered that "call of the wild" is more than a book I read in high school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. To define NACCE's vision of the future, I return to some comments made at the founding conference. First, Fr. Thomas Berry, when saying that "we envisage a new role for Christianity that will require a great deal of creativity," summoned us to create nothing less than a new world, beginning with a new theology, going on to a new church, and concluding with a new human relationship with the earth community. Second, I wholeheartedly endorse Dr. Eleanor Rae's contention that we must increasingly image the Holy Spirit as the feminine in the Divine. That should lead us to more earth-centered spirituality as well as better decision-making about the natural world. And third, economist Wes Jackson called for "a wide, broad, deep, and compassionate discussion." This task, we hope, will be accomplished through a new vehicle that we are exploring at this very moment: the Eco-Church, about which we will later talk in more detail. Let us join hands as we love life and reverence nature. Rev. Finley Schaef lives at 87 Stoll Rd, Saugerties NY 12477; 914/ 246-0181. Home     Table of Contents