What Churches Can Do

EARTHKEEPING NEWS
A NEWSLETTER OF THE NORTH AMERICAN COALITION FOR CHRISTIANITY AND ECOLOGY

Volume Thirteen, Number Four
July/August 2004

by Rev. Jim Burklo, Sausalito Presbyterian Church, Sausalito CA; and member, Executive Council, The Center for Progressive Christianity

A high-pitched chime stopped keynote speaker Dr. Christine Smith in midsentence. Silently, she approached the altar and leaned over to snuff out one of candles. Then she returned to the podium and continued her lecture about activism for environmental protection. About every twenty minutes, another species, somewhere on the planet, becomes extinct. Every twenty minutes, the chime would ring and Christine, professor at United Theological Seminary in Minnesota, would stop again to snuff out another candle, reverencing the memory of another lost life form.

Christine's clever but profound liturgical device was but one example of the things we learned that one church can do. Others include serving and selling eco-friendly, fair-trade coffee after worship, converting a church's property into a demonstration garden of native trees, plants and grasses, tracking and responding to environmental legislative issues and international trade agreements, weaving environmental awareness into the music and visual arts in worship. These do-able actions for churches were antidotes for any despair we might have felt as we heard our speakers paint a picture of dire environmental conditions around the globe.

A group of over 160 lay and clergy people from churches around the country were gathered in St. Paul on the last weekend in June 2004 for the purpose of bringing the church back down to Earth. The event was graced with the presence of theologians who have made ecology a major focus of their work. Dr. Sallie McFague of Vancouver (Canada) School of Theology imagined the universe as God's body, a concept that brings ecological activism along as its corollary. Dr. John Cobb, emeritus professor at Claremont School of Theology, liberates theology from the bounds of religion, and claims as its field of discourse all important subjects, including the precarious state of the natural environment.

The music, the liturgy, the workshops, and the community-building at the event gave many helpful answers to the question on the minds of so many attendees: What can one church do to make a difference in preserving the planet? Creative worship strategies, eco-friendly church property management, language and imagery for preaching, ways church people can become eco-activists, and other practical ideas were shared in the workshops. (See more about the meeting at the websites of both sponsoring organizations.)