EARTHKEEPING
NEWS
A NEWSLETTER
OF THE NORTH AMERICAN COALITION FOR CHRISTIANITY AND ECOLOGY
Volume Fourteen, Number Four
July / August 2005
Mass. Churches Launch Eco-Justice Initiatives
The Massachusetts Council of Churches (MCC), representing seventeen member denominations from a wide variety of Christian traditions (AME, AME Zion, ABC, Disciples, Armenian Church, Episcopal, Evangelical Covenant, ELCA, Greek Orthodox, PCUSA, Friends, Salvation Army, Swedenborgian , UU, UCC, and UMC) has launched an exciting initiative which brings together concerns for health, racial justice, and respect for the earth.
The Strategy and Action Commission of the MCC — its education and public policy arm — polled the member denominations to ask what they were doing for public policy and advocacy ministries, and learned that the three major emphases were health, antiracism, and environmental efforts. The Strategy and Action Commission then initiated in March 2005 a three-year mandate from the MCC Board to work with the member denominations — in partnership with the Alliance for a Healthy Tomorrow, a coalition of community, public health, environmental, labor, and religious groups — to promote public policies in our state that strengthen health care and lessen the health-related impacts of environmental degradation, especially as racism is a factor.
A related project of the MCC, in collaboration with the Episcopal Divinity School (Cambridge, Mass.) and the Alliance for a Healthy Tomorrow, is to train and place Environmental Justice Fellows from the Episcopal Divinity School in congregations based in communities of color to work on raising awareness of the relationships between a healthy earth and healthy human communities.
This effort, according to Laura Everett, MCC Program Associate and Ecumenical Intern, "makes connections between the Council's concern to counter racism; foster affordable, accessible, quality health care; promote stewardship of the environment; and support advocacy training."
Anyone desiring more information on this initiative is welcome to e-mail Laura Everett at Laura@masscouncilofchurches.org.
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