A Layman Needs Your Help

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

Volume Fourteen, Number Three
May / June 2005

How's it going out there in reader land? Are you all trying to start Earthkeeping Circles in your local churches? Any successes? Yes? No? Well, here's my story to date. An Earthkeeping Circle, for those of you who don't know, is NACCE's model for monthly gatherings of church folks to celebrate Creation and our role in it. To find out more about Earthkeeping Circles, start here.

I'm a member of a progressive Methodist church. I mean really progressive. Ever since the church returned from near death in the early 70's, my congregation has been on the right side of all of the progressive causes. We supported the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, supported a woman's right to choose, and gay and lesbian rights. We opposed the wars in Iraq. We've sent delegates to every rally of any consequence, marched in innumerable parades, been involved in innumerable of protests. We helped found a non-profit housing group that created close to 1,000 units of housing and a credit union with $2 million in assets.

Yet every time I get up to announce my interest in forming an EKC, I have to follow someone talking about how our church just defrocked a minister because of her sexual orientation and about how we have to all go to Annual Conference to protest this injustice. Or some other example of human oppression or inequality.

By the time I get up to talk about how polar bears may well be extinct by the time my children's children have children, I just feel like a fool. No one seems to notice. After all, there are no polar bears in our congregation, or arctic foxes either for that matter, or monarch butterflies, or even Atlantic salmon.

So that's my dilemma. How do I get caring humans in a thoughtful congregation to care about other species? We can all relate to the suffering of humans of every ethnicity and class; they are not that far removed from ourselves. But how many of us have intimate relationships with bears, foxes, butterflies or salmon?

Over the next few months, I intend to continue the effort to start an Earthkeeping Circle in my church. In the meanwhile, I'd appreciate any ideas you might have about how to go about it. Or stories of similar struggles in your religious community. I can be reached by e-mail at gn.todd@verizon.net or by regular mail at 866 Park Place, Brooklyn, NY 11216.