Mainline Church Activists Rally for Climate Change in Nation’s Capital

on March 25, 2009

Activists organized by the official lobby offices of the United Methodist, Episcopal, Presbyterian (U.S.A.) and United Church of Christ denominations, plus the National Council of Churches and others, rallied for their annual “Ecumenical Advocacy Days” in Washington, D.C. to push for liberal political causes March 13-16.

Fr. Sean McDonagh, a Columban Missionary Priest

Global Warming was a major theme. And the opening worship was called “Centering Meditation: Cosmic Genesis,” with worshippers urged to turn their “minds towards [the] ultimate mystery of creation. Roman Catholic Missionary Priest Sean McDonagh of the Columban Order urged focusing on “human causes of [the current] climate change,” while acknowledging, “We are well aware that there are fluctuations in climate at different times for different reasons.” The liberal priest warned: “We listen to the truth tellers in this area, who are the scientists… climate change will look make the current financial crisis look like a tea party if it continues above two degrees.”

Citing the threat of Global Warming, McDonagh insisted: “Our religion is dysfunctional if we’re not actually looking at the signs of the time and not responding out of our gospel faith.” Christianity is about “a gospel of life- not just of human life but of all creatures,” he said, because “other creatures have value in the eyes of god- not just instrumental value, but in God’s eyes God loves other creatures.” McDonagh quoted a prediction that “if we continue as we are, then one-third of the earth will be desert in 100 years.” If we are not careful, warned McDonagh, “We’re being told that we through climate change can wipe out one-third of the species of the planet… we can shut down God’s creation.”

McDonagh predicted an increase in the “frequency and severity” of extreme weather events, disastrous “melting of the glaciers in the Himalayas,” the destruction of “ocean habitats,” and “more and more diseases spreading to various parts of the planet,” citing West Nile Virus as an example. “Europe has to prepare itself for a flood of climate change migrants” because “climate change will have extraordinary impact on many of these people in terms of hunger malnutrition.”

Amid the apocalyptic warnings about Global Warming, “Advocacy Days” strove for politically correct religion, referring to God as “she” during the service’s reading of the 23rd Psalm, and during the Lord’s Prayer. The 23rd Psalm became, “The Lord is my shepherd… She restores my soul, she rights my wrongs, she leads me in the path of good things and fills my heart with song… she won’t forsake me I’m in her hand.” In the Lord’s Prayer, “Our Father” was joined with “Our Mother, who is in us here on Earth…” The confessions in the prayer became limited to tolerance of injustice rather than general sin, such as the following: “Forgive us for keeping silent in the face of injustice and for burying our dreams.”

United Church of Christ (UCC) Pastor Janet Parker, while leading worship, equated climate change’s affect on the planet to Christ’s sufferings during crucifixion. “Earth’s distress is Christ’s distress,” she bemoaned. “I would go even farther and claim that the shape of creation groaning under the ravages of climate change is cruciform.” Parker lamented that earth is a “cruciform planet wracked by human-induced wounds” and urged the church “to serve and to save the least of these [from climate change]- human and other [animal life] kind.”

During the United Methodist lunch, Virginia Bishop Charlene Kammerer described climate change as part of her Council of Bishops’ In Defense of Creation II. The first In Defense of Creation by the Council of Bishops in 1986 addressed the threat of nuclear annihilation. But according to Kammerer, “Today’s threat to creation is very different” and includes “ongoing nuclear danger and the realities of violence… degradation of the environment and issues around global climate change… [and] pandemic poverty and disease.” While the council is still securing a writer for the project, a draft should be presented to the bishops for their approval during the May Council of Bishops meeting.

Retired United Methodist Bishop Dale White spoke about his work on the first In Defense of Creation. He recalled that as a World War II draftee he was on a troop train in Tennessee when he heard a “super-bomb” was being created in the area. After a year in the service, White returned to his Iowa farm, where he heard the radio report about the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings aired. “My mother came out and said they dropped the first bomb, and God help me, I rejoiced. We all did. Our brains were warped by propaganda, war fever. You see how twisted our minds can become in a time of war. I had to live down that moment ever since.”

During the nuclear freeze campaign in the 1980’s, White traveled with anti-nuclear activist Helen Caldicott. He recalled how the Council of Bishops began work on In Defense of Creation when several bishops “thought maybe we should do something about this” upon reading in The New York Times that 100 scientists had warned of a potential “nuclear winter” and the possibility that “civilization will stop.”

Rev. John McCullough, the Executive Director of the Church World Service

After the lunch with Bishops White and Kammerer, Susie Johnson, the Executive Secretary of the United Methodist Women’s Division’s Public Policy office in Washington, DC, and Harriet Jane Olson, the Deputy General Secretary for the New York-based United Methodist Women’s Division, led a United Methodist Women’s (UMW) workshop, from which an IRD reporter was barred. Yvette Moore, a contributing editor for the Women’s Division, reported that 47 United Methodist Women were among the more than 600 attendees at the event, and participated in a pre-conference event to plan the quadrennial activities of the UMW’s “Green Team” of environmental activists.

At the final “Advocacy Days” worship service, Church World Service chief John McCullough preached about preparing for the UN’s Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen this December. He suggested that like Christ’s conversation with the woman at the well, the conference would be about “managing polarities” between mitigating climate change and encouraging economic development and prosperity in poor countries. “The choice is not between survival and development,” McCullough insisted. “It is not about just Jesus or the Samaritan woman, it’s about both!” As a people of faith, he explained, “The church points to the greatest threat our world has ever face: global warming.”

McCullough claimed a growing consensus about human-induced climate change. “Even officials in the former Bush administration… now admit” that climate change is a reality, he said. But he regretted that, “The Chinese now feel that they have a right for their economy to grow unchecked” and “spew forth carbon emissions.”

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