Climate Change and Creation Care

PRISM on earth as it is in heaven: radical love made visible

Catastrophic climate change Is there hope for our planet?

Urban church plant(ation)s Also: • De-gendering Mother Earth • Citizens against fracking • Art treasures worth diving for • Environmental racism

SUMMER 2014

PRISMMAGAZINE.ORG

Check out our climate action prayer guide!

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PRISM Vol. 21, No. 3 Summer 2014 Editor Creative Director Copy Editor Deputy Director Publishers Operations Manager

Kristyn Komarnicki Rhian Tomassetti Leslie Hammond Sarah Withrow King Al Tizon & Paul Alexander Josh Cradic

Contributing Editors Christine Aroney-Sine

Clive Calver

Rudy Carrasco

Andy Crouch

Gloria Gaither David P. Gushee

Jan Johnson

Craig S. Keener Peter Larson

Richard Mouw

Philip Olson Jenell Williams Paris

Christine Pohl

James Skillen

James Edwards

Jim Wallis

Myron Augsburger Issac Canales M. Daniel Carroll R. J. James DeConto Perry Glanzer Ben Hartley Stanley Hauerwas Jo Kadlecek Marcie Macolino Mary Naber Earl Palmer Derek Perkins Elizabeth D. Rios Lisa Thompson Heidi Rolland Unruh Bruce Wydick

Editorial Board

“This book is a timely wake-up call for the church to actively engage in the fight against human trafficking and the release of prisoners from its darkness.”

Miriam Adeney Tony Campolo Luis Cortés Richard Foster G. Gaebelein Hull Karen Mains Vinay Samuel Tom Sine Eldin Villafane

George Barna Rodney Clapp Samuel Escobar William Frey Roberta Hestenes John Perkins Amy Sherman Vinson Synan Harold DeanTrulear

Ron Sider

Editorial Information Editor email: KKomarni@eastern.edu Unsolicited submissions will not be returned unless they include an SASE.

Annie Dieselberg, founder and CEO of NightLight Inter national

ivpress.com 800.843.9487

A Publication of Evangelicals for Social Action The Sider Center on Ministry and Public Policy EvangelicalsforSocialAction.org Palmer Theological Seminary of Eastern University

All contents © 2014 ESA/PRISM magazine.

CONTENTS SUMMER 2014

2 REFLECTIONS The Next Best Time 3 TALK BACK

12 Apocalypse Now?

We’ve crossed so many planetary boundaries that environmental catastrophe appears both guaranteed and imminent. What will it take to shake us from our stupor?

WHOLE 4 5 6 7

17 Our Most Important Response to Climate Disruption

Worship God: Get to Work; An Invitation to the Story of God Caring for Creation in Africa Weird and Wonderful; Bread New Vision; Together Green

Prayer is action: Check out our prayer guide for climate action.

20 Environmental Racism

With blatant disregard for human health, equality, and dignity, our nation locates hazardous waste sites in communities of color, where polluters enjoy virtual impunity.

PROTESTIMONY 8 Reimagining Humanity 9 Katharine Hayhoe; Power Shifting; Divest

from Fossil Fuels 10 Saying Goodbye to Christian America 11 Support the Ban on Ivory; Reports from a Life without Screens

22 Green Comes in Many Shades

COUNTERCULTURE 46 A Business with a Triple Bottom Line; Naked at Church?

48 The World’s Greenest State; Pedaling Justice

Meet three dedicated environmentalists who are passionate about diversifying the movement to save the planet.

26 No Boom without Bust

When a community in decline begins drawing financial resur gence from fracking operations, it’s hard to convince people of the costs that lie in its wake.

30 The Whole Creation Groans

Does personifying the earth as "mother" help or hinder efforts to protect the environment?

33 The Power of Pineapples

In Sierra Leone, a new crop is giving a hand-up to some of the world’s most impoverished citizens.

CONSUME

36 Deep Connections

50 TV: Years of Living Dangerously 51 The Wisdom to Survive 52 Play. Shuffle. Repeat.

53 Book Reviews

42 Anger Issues with God

55 esXaton Toward Ethical Eating 56 THE LAST WORD

Dive in to explore the haunting marine makeovers that occur when nature reclaims the human form.

God knows our feelings before we recognize them ourselves, so what have we got to lose in being honest about the grievances that sometimes accompany our journey?

44 Urban Church Plant(ation)s

When suburban churches take a colonialist mentality into the city, they do serious damage to the body of Christ.

Cover: WALL-E (directed by Andrew Stanton, 2008); PhotoFest.com.

They have made it a wasteland; it lies desolate before me.

The whole land has become a desert, and no one cares. - Jeremiah 12:11

REFLECTIONS The Next Best Time The history of our planet is one of abundance and beauty, of life and goodness. While there is also war and disease, pollution and decay, God’s dream for us is clearly the former.

The story starts (Genesis 1) with an explosion of creative energy that results in everything from comets and cumulus clouds to kingfishers and hammerhead sharks. God’s imagination is infinite, God’s joy in creating palpable. It’s all about delight, diversity, and dazzle.

The story ends (Revelation 22) with a magnificent city in which a tree with healing leaves straddles a river and bears a new crop of fruit every month. It’s all about plenty, refreshment, and life.

Everything we need has been provided— not just sustenance but also freedom, gladness, and love. Alas, we seem to prefer consumption, profit, and control—even if they come at our own and others’ expense.

When it comes to stewarding God’s gift of creation, there’s no denying that we’ve made a mess of things. In the 2008 animated film WALL-E (featured on our cover), we glimpse a near-future earth so burdened with toxins and trash that the human race has launched itself into indefinite or-

headed and a chance to ponder where we’d rather be instead.

Can we appreciate our planet and reclaim it before it’s too late?

That is one important question posed in this issue, which considers the current state of our planet from a number of angles. Some say it’s already too late to turn the ship around. Others bury their heads in the sand, even as the hourglass counts down to the final grains—they will soon enough be forced to look around and see the devastation our stubbornness and greed have wrought.

Although he walked the earth 27 centuries ago, the prophet Jeremiah would feel right at home in our world today. He spent most of his life railing against the spiritual defilement of God’s land, painting a vivid picture of the effects of sin. Giving voice to God’s disappointment and anger, he said things like: “I brought you into a plentiful land to eat its fruits and its good things.

But when you entered you defiled my land, and made my heritage an abomination” (2:7); “How long will the land lie parched and the grass in every field be withered? Because those who live in it are wicked, the animals and birds have perished” (12:4); and “It will be made a wasteland, parched and desolate before me; the whole land will be laid waste because there is no one who

God's dream for us is all about plenty, refreshment, and life. bit in outer space. Pampered into a stupor by the cultural purgatory of round-the-clock consumption (sound familiar?), humans have lost the ability to see beyond their screens. Their legs have atrophied from lack of use, as have their brains.

Back on earth, a winsome robot is programmed to compress and stack the trash left behind by the humans. When the little fellow locates a green sprout in the literal wasteland, one of the spaceships slowly begins to turn back toward Earth. Hope is seeded in the hearts of the people that perhaps life on earth is still possible.

Having squandered it before, they now understand its true value.

WALL-E is a delightful film, but it is also a powerful and poignant film, because it tells the truth about what we’re made for and what happens when we wander from the storyline of God’s dream for us. It gives us a picture of where we’re

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cares” (12:11).

When you read through this issue of PRISM, listen for Jeremiah’s voice in the tireless warnings and exhortations of our scientists and our activists and in the heart cries of the poor, those who bear the biggest brunt of environmental degradation.

But listen, too, for Jeremiah’s hope. Although consistently pessimistic about the immediate future of Judea, Jeremiah never abandoned the hope that the people would eventually embrace God’s dream for them. Most of his dire predictions concluded with the words, “Nevertheless, I will not make a full end.” Even when Jeremiah knew that he would soon be captured, he purchased a piece of land—a significant embodiment of his hope that God’s will would prevail.

As long as there are people willing to speak the truth, as long as we are willing to turn (and

turn again) our hearts to the Creator, there is hope. We may be stuck in some deep-rooted and nasty habits, but history proves that with God’s help sinful people can repent and reclaim life and divine power.

Here’s one small example of that. A year ago, convicted of my worrisome addiction to work and inability to rest, I begged my family to join me in making a concerted effort to observe a weekly Sabbath. So we have been unplugging the modem every Sunday to go internet-free. We rest, we go to a park, we play together, we eat Chinese take-out. And—as God said repeatedly upon creating the world—it is good. While initially the kids moped while I sneaked longing glances at my laptop, we now look forward to this time together. We have forged a new and better habit for ourselves.

Last week I opened my Chinese fortune cookie and found a proverb that feels especially apropos to our current environmental crisis and both the despair and the hope it inspires: “The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The next best time is now.”

We can’t undo the past, but we can start living differently—today.

Kristyn Komarnicki is taking a four-week sabbatical this summer during which she plans to seek God’s will from a variety of vantage points, from the leafy canopy of the hammock in her backyard in Philadelphia to the summit of South Sister in Central Oregon.

TALK BACK

PRISM

The Winter issue of PRISM was so amazing. It frankly still amazes me, because I am not accuson earth as it is in heaven: radical love made visible tomed to thinking of evangelicals MICHELLE ALEXANDER TAKES ON as living out so faithfully a social CASTE IN AMERICA conscience. Micah 6:8 indeed.

Interviews with PRISM deserves a wide, wide Phil Madeira, Krista Tippett, and other culture-shapers The prosperity readership. gospel's false prophets Also:

Nancy Neiman-Hoffman Gwynedd, Pa.

Fat-shaming in the church

Finding a third way in the abortion wars A "comic" approach to street harrassment Is your Jesus revolutionary enough?

WINTER 2014

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PRISMMAGAZINE.ORG

As a long time fan of Krista Tippett, I read with interest your interview with her in the Winter issue. What a wonderful conversation between two profound and passionate women! It was enlightening to hear Krista, the interviewer par excellence, in the role of respondent. You did an inspired job of drawing out her best thoughts, reminiscent of what Krista does with her own guests. “A good question is a gift,” indeed.

Rabbi Nancy Fuchs Kreimer Director, Multifaith Studies and Initiatives Reconstructionist Rabbinical College Glenside, Pa.

Miguel De La Torre Robert Kagbo

Christena Cleveland

Misty Irons

Robert White

Ben Lowe

Jo Ann Lyon

Jonathon Moo

Sarah Withrow King

Caitlin Ng

Aaron Foltz

Amy Rasmussen Buckley

Suzanne Gilmore, Vancouver, Wash.

I was in Palestine in October of last year. I thought I knew something about nonviolence, but after reading “Confronting the Oppressor with Humanity” in the Spring issue, I can see I have a lot to learn.

THIS ISSUE’S CONTRIBUTORS INCLUDE:

Thank you so much for the lovely editorial in the Winter issue. I was especially moved by the encouragement for readers to do justice in small ways—“attending that school district meeting or inviting a neighbor over for a meal or mentoring a fatherless kid or offering one of our vegetable beds to the single mom down the street…”

I found that especially encouraging as I begin the final third of my life (age 62), after 40 years of volunteering alongside my husband in a variety of social justice issues (hunger, restorative justice, foster care, the elderly). Now, with two sons married and one off to grad school and with my work hours cut, it is difficult to maintain the same level of justice activity in “big ways.” So it is nourishment to my heart to be reminded that compassion for an ill neighbor or weeping with those who mourn, etc., can be an act of justice too, no matter how small.

Often PRISM focuses on big issues and individuals doing big things for God, so it makes the magazine more relevant to those of us who live challenged by age or pain or both to read a column like that one.

Keep up your most excellent, grace-filled work.

Steven Goossen Dinuba, Calif.

@ Email the editor: kkomarni@eastern.edu f @Facebook.com/evansocaction t @Twitter.com/PRISMMagazine1 e EvangelicalsforSocialAction.org/ePistle

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WHOLE

Healing a fractured world.

Worship God: Get to Work On a multiple-choice test, which word would you choose to describe your job: purposeful, competitive, tedious, stressful? To answer accurately, most of us would look for a fifth option—all of the above. Our daily labor can feel like a thousand things in one week. Even at a dream job, moments of stress and strain are more common than we’d like to admit.

There is a reason for this. Adam and Eve’s initial sin disrupted the joyful task of labor. God had established the good work of caring for a garden for Adam and Eve’s benefit. They welcomed the labor and the purpose it brought. But when they disobeyed, the earth began to fight back. Notably, work was not the punishment for their rebellion. Instead, the ground itself became cursed, transforming their work into something difficult, laborious, and exhausting (Genesis 3:17). This dissonance echoes today in our own fragmented view of work.

So how do we redeem our relationship with labor, whether mental or physical, paid or unpaid? In his book Every Good Endeavor, Timothy Keller writes, “According to the Bible, we don’t merely need the money from work to survive; we need the work itself to survive and to live fully human lives.” We were made to work, and work was made for us, an avenue for worship through the labor of our hands. Fully human lives come not through skirting responsibility and avoiding the daily grind, but by giving our toil over to a great God. If obedience includes worship, it makes little sense to separate that from how we spend the majority of our time—at our jobs.

But what if this form of worship was not even an option? In the small East African country

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of Burundi, years of civil war splintered the country and sent families fleeing across the border to refugee camps. Economic activity became impossible and refugees were prohibited from working. Years passed. Inside the camps, people married, children were born, and lives formed. In 2004, when war and violence finally dried up, Burundians returned to their depleted land. They brought with them stories of growing up without working a day in their life. In a country where over 90 percent of the population depends on agriculture to survive, farming families returned to ravaged farms with years of idleness and feelings of uselessness aching in their bones.

But today, a biblical motivation to work is being restored in these farmers. Plant With Purpose, a nonprofit organization dedicated to alleviating poverty in rural communities, partners with former Burundian refugees. Through a “Theology of Work” curriculum developed by Plant With Purpose, farmers hear the good news that they have a purpose—to glorify God through the

Former Burundian refugees are being inspired by the curriculum to get busy, plant crops, construct churches, and start businesses. work of their hands. Former refugees are being inspired by the curriculum to get busy, plant crops, construct churches, and start businesses. Through the program, over 10,000 Burundians have already developed an integrated, biblical understanding of their call to work.

The purpose that farming families are finding in Burundi reminds us that we have a lot to learn from a biblical take on work. In The Rest of God, Mark Buchanan writes, “The opposite of a slave is not a free man. It’s a worshipper. The one who is most free is the one who turns the work of his hands into sacrament, into offering.”

Find freedom in what you were created to do by worshipping God through the work of your hands. Whether tilling the soil, sitting at a desk, or ringing people up on a register, we are made to consecrate these tasks to God. Though work is a shadow of what it was in Eden—and what it will be again in heaven—we can make strides toward turning our labor into sacrament. A starting point is to pray with David, “Establish the work of our hands for us—yes, establish the work of our hands” (Ps. 90:17). Ask for the grace to turn your work into worship, acknowledging God as Lord over our labor and lives.

To learn more and to sponsor a village in Burundi, go to PlantWithPurpose.org.

Annelise Jolley is the outreach coordinator at Plant With Purpose, where she works to cultivate community and church partnerships.

All over the United States, students are coming to Christ for the first time. InterVarsity USA, the ministry I work with, hasn’t seen this many students make a first-time decision for Jesus in our more-than-70-year history! Particularly in deeply secular places like Los Angeles and New York, where historically the good news of Jesus was resisted, InterVarsity is experiencing growth.

A significant part of this growth and student conversion has to do with the very nature of the story of God. N.T. Wright has said that the historic doctrines of the church—like atonement and resurrection—are “portable stories” that connect us to the story of God itself. The story of God as captured in the gospel is good news, a portable story that connects deeply with this emerging generation—if explained properly. It is a story that God invites us into as we choose to embrace Jesus Christ.

The story of God in Christ is, in part, a story of the courage to take on seemingly insurmountable obstacles of injustice and suffering; it is a story of a man of passion and compassion. The story of Jesus is

The resurrected Jesus has the power to save us from cutting and addiction and depression. He also has the power to save our world from hunger and ethnic cleansing and economic tyranny.

An Invitation to the Story of God a story of incarnational suffering and authenticity, of a purpose-driven mission that has in view the betterment of all peoples.

There are lots of themes that connect the story of God as told in Christ with the aspirations of this emerging generation but perhaps no greater theme than the theme of victory as seen in the resurrection of Jesus. In the past, the resurrection seemed to smack of mythology, an unbelievable supernatural element of a fantastical religion. However, in the aftermath of the collapse of Western scientific rationalism, postmoderns long for the fantastical, for wonder, and for power. One need only look at the films and literature that break the box office and download list to see that our age is characterized by mass consumption of the fantastical.

This emerging generation wants to change the world, and they want change that they can believe in.

Real power to conquer things like human trafficking, HIV/AIDS, genocide, or economic inequality has unfortunately been elusive. Economic and political strategies are failing, and the quest of our day is a quest for fantastical—but real—power.

In the story of God, we see this power displayed in the resurrection. In the past, the cross was the center of the evangelical faith, but I believe that for the young Americans who are coming to Christ today, it will be the wonder-working power of the resurrection that will center them in the story of God. The global relevance of the story of God as seen in Christ for today’s young Christian is seen in the fantastical, world-changing power of a resurrected Jesus—now

this is change we can believe in!

“Because Jesus is alive,” I said recently to a packed auditorium of students, “you can experience the power of God not only to change the world but also to change you from the inside out! You can become the good you long to see in the world by first receiving the One who was good and who was raised from the dead in victory over the darkness of your soul and the darkness of the world!”

What’s so appealing about the portable story of God as encapsulated in the doctrine of the resurrection is its dual application to personal and global transformation. The resurrected Jesus has the power to save us from cutting and pornography addiction, from alcohol and drug addiction and depression. The resurrected Jesus has the power to save us from the wrath of God and eternal separation from God. The resurrected Jesus, however, also has the power to save our world from hunger and poverty, from cycles of commoditization and exploitation, and from ethnic cleansing and economic tyranny. These are the themes of the portable story of God as told by the chapter on the resurrection. God in Christ has the power to save us not only from the hell to come but also from the hell that is now—to transform both our soul and our society.

Young Americans are drawn to the story of God as they are invited into it. The resurrected Christ, sent into the world to take upon himself the darkness of sin and death, has risen victoriously and now calls us to join him in this same incarnational, world-changing work of personal and global transformation! The mission of Jesus is not merely to be witnessed and applied to our souls in lifelong church attendance and mealtime prayers. In John 17:18, Jesus said to his Father, “As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world.” Being sent by the resurrected Jesus with the power to change the world is a compelling narrative element of the story of God and one that we invite people into as they repent of sin and confess Jesus as Lord.

The gospel message has not changed, but how we tell the story of God and what we invite this generation into have. Jesus died for sin, but now we understand that this includes not merely our privatized sins of lust and anger but also the wickedness of systemic poverty and the prostitution of child sex slaves. Jesus was raised to new life, and now we understand that this not only saves us from our own sin but also from racism and the exploitation of the world’s natural resources.

We do not have to choose; we do not have an either/or Jesus—and for this generation we must not choose. We serve a both/and Jesus, and as we invite people into the story of God through the doctrine of the resurrection, we invite them into a story of power and transformation. Yes, we invite them also into a story of suffering and death, but ultimately a story of victory.

R. York Moore is a national evangelist with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and the author of Growing Your Faith by Giving It Away: Telling the Gospel Story with Grace and Passion (2005) and Making All Things New: God’s Dream for Global Justice (2012), both from InterVarsity Press.

Caring for Creation in Africa Formed in 2005, Care of Creation has stood as an evangelical and environmental mission devoted to joining the love of God’s people and the love of God’s creation in order to create a better planet. With the belief that missions and caring for God’s creation go hand-in-hand, the organization seeks to mobilize the church to combat problems of environmental destruction with the love of God through God’s people.

Care of Creation is currently at work in Kenya, Tanzania, and their home office in Wisconsin. One campaign started by the organization is Our Father’s World, an awareness campaign that seeks to combat

environmental problems by involving the church. They bring attention both to what the Bible says about God and creation, and to the destruction currently taking place in the world.

Learn more at CareofCreation.net.

- Kimberly Zayac

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Bread:

An Exploration of Incarnation

Weird and wonderful Rachel Sanders of BuzzFeed.com recently published a piece called “31 Things to Do with Confusing CSA Vegetables.” The article shows pictures of the most prolific and odd-looking produce. There is a blurb following each and then a list of recipes, a creative springboard for those who cringe at kohlrabi and groan at garlic scapes.

“As a CSA subscriber, sooner or later you’re bound to end up with strange, inexplicable vegetables you have no idea what to do with in your share,” writes Sanders. “And you panic, and you freeze up, and they sit in your fridge, and then they rot, and you waste your money, and then everyone’s sad.”

She is so right about the panic and the paralysis! Our family had never encountered purple peppers, kohlrabi, or bok choi before this year of local eating. Not only do you get it for a week, you may get it for a month—or two. Our dinner no longer starts at the grocery store, browsing aisles. It starts on Google, with me researching what in the world this new thing is and trying to find something “like it” that will give us a clue as to how to interpret it, to know it, and to know what to do with it. Kohlrabi is related to cabbage; it looks kind of like a turnip; it is crunchy and sweet. Sunchokes are roots of sunflowers; you cook them as you would a potato, but they taste similar to artichokes. In the newness and the strangeness, we grasp for the familiar—it helps us to cope with the different and the bizarre.

It struck me that we do the very same thing with Scripture. Much like the strangelooking vegetables that make it to my kitchen in a box, truly bizarre-sounding texts surface in the Bible. I sometimes encounter passages that, although they have been around eons and eons, I have never seen before. Sometimes what is written is so outlandish-sounding, I freeze up and turn the page to verses that are familiar, comfortable old friends. Only if the paralysis doesn’t take hold long enough for me to turn the page or let it rot on the counter, I start trying to make sense of it by comparing it to things that are, to my mind anyway, “like it.”

I try to create a framework to understand earth-shattering snippets from Jeremiah or visions of Ezekiel. And then I try to solve it, to put it neatly into a category I already understand.

In my growing love for local food and in my journey of faith, I am learning more thoroughly (and more frequently) to sit and just admire the unknown, to marvel at the mystery.

Each weird vegetable and each off-the-wall Scripture passage reminds me that God is at work, constantly astonishing us with the new and the different. It is all part of the world that has always been (natural or biblical), and yet God confronts us with challenges and unique flavors. Some things don’t fit into a paradigm we understand, at least not at first.

It makes life richer to cook with brand new flavors and to feast on words that stretch us. Thank God for spicing it up—for the surprises and the challenges.

Kate Buckley is the Food and Faith intern with Georgia Interfaith Power and Light, a nonprofit that helps congregations think theologically about stewardship of God's earth. She just completed her MDiv at Columbia Theological Seminary and is the mother of two toddler girls.

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Years ago I lived across a creek from Aaron Jones in a small town in East Tennessee.

Our paths crossed each weekday morning at 7:15, when he and I and half a dozen others would sleepily make our way to the small, quiet sanctuary of Hopwood Christian Church for Morning Prayer. There our minds and mouths recited the words written for us in the liturgy—In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit— and we let its rhythm carry us along.

Towards the end of the liturgy, we served each other

Communion with a loaf that someone among us had baked that week. This “became a bug” in Jones, a young, earnest student who began to feel the value of knowing the hands that shaped the small, homemade loaves he ate from each morning.

When classes wrapped up that semester, Jones decided to try his hand at baking. He made his first loaves with no guidance, rolling them out on a small square of kitchen counter in the apartment he shared with three others. “That summer,” he laughs, “I was making really, really lousy bread.”

With some help from a friend and a bit more practice, Jones became the bread making force for Morning Prayer. “I couldn’t have articulated it then, but I was learning a new spiritual practice that year by baking bread and then eating that bread as more than bread in the Eucharist.”

These days Jones can articulate it quite well. And he has done just that, in a 28-page document detailing an annual workshop he leads at Anathoth Community Garden in Cedar Grove, N.C. The “Craft and Spirituality of Bread Making” curriculum includes everything from theology to bread recipes to quotes from the Desert Fathers. Every year that he leads the workshop, Jones tweaks the document a little, but the basic rhythm remains consistent: work, prayer, and the table.

I spoke recently to Jones for the first time in five years. He told me that once he started baking bread, he never stopped.

First for Morning Prayer, then for professional bakeries, and

even now for the micro-bakery, Levain, that he runs out of his home. He had also spent three years immersed in theology at Duke Divinity School, dedicating himself to the study of Scripture as a body-affirming text as opposed to a body-denying one.

“When Jesus said ‘I am the living bread.

This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world,’ he gave the meaning and importance of the body a whole new gravity,” explains Jones. “He didn’t give a law or a text. He didn’t even give a religion. He gave his body. Bread, for me, is always a call back to the body; a call not to get lost in the labyrinth of the maze of my own spiritual confusion or my own obsessive curiosity about where God is, or what he thinks about this or that thing. In the bread of Eucharist God calls

rhythms of prayer.

That evening, with counters clean and loaves cooling, the workshop participants gather for compline and Communion. They break the bread they’ve baked together, and Jones concludes with a word that resounds beyond the world of the workshop, and beyond the scope of baking: “We would be deceived if we thought that we were the ones making things. That we were the ones making bread and that’s what mattered about our pattern and our time. It’s God who has been making something of us through this pattern and this process, shaping us, making us into something that is new and wholesome for God’s world.”

me back again and again to my own body and the bodies of my neighbors—bodies that are not husks to be abandoned but are eternally in the hopes of a bodily resurrection.”

On a chilly Friday evening at Anathoth in March, Jones kicks off the annual workshop weekend. By Saturday morning, the 12 or so participants are learning to make their first loaf, and Jones is all over the room—demonstrating, correcting, encouraging. After a short break, participants roll up their sleeves to begin the second loaf of the day, only this time, Jones informs them, they’ll be shaping the dough in silence.

Eyes widen, protestations erupt. This is only the second time in their life they’ve made a loaf of bread! They don’t remember a thing he just taught them!

Jones explains that the silence creates a space “to experience the possibility that simple, methodical work can become a place for prayer.”

So they begin. Five silent minutes of kneading. Rest. Five silent minutes of kneading.

“I tell them to stop and wait. There is so much in the pattern of bread making that can be useful to us.” Ultimately, he’s educating them not just in the rhythms of bread making, but on the

Bread Making workshop at AnathothGarden.org.

Find out more about the Craft and Spirituality of

Katie Linton Pinder holds an MFA in creative writing from Lesley University. Membership coordinator at the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia by day, she moonlights as a freelance writer.

New Vision “Empowering People. Empowering Communities.” This is the simple yet effective slogan of New Vision, a renewable energy nonprofit organization. The nonprofit is a collection of everyday folks with a passionate vision for aiding others to recognize and utilize their God-given gifts to do great deeds wherever they are. They seek to do this by working both locally and globally with faith-based and community organizations to get renewable products into the hands of partners at affordable rates, also providing proper training to produce their own renewable energy systems. Examples of these renewable energy systems include solar panels for lighting and aquaponics used for renewable heating and ventilation.

While New Vision has a strong focus in Africa, the organization also maintains a presence in the United States. The “Innovation Station” in North-Central West Virginia serves as home base as well as research and training center. The Appalachian-based location uses solar energy in particular to help people to help themselves.

New Vision offers plenty of ways to get involved, including mission trips to both national and international locations, fundraising events, and organizational partnerships. Learn more at NVRE.org.

- Kimberly Zayac

Together Green A car company and a conservation organization might appear to have little in common. However, since 2008, Toyota and the National Audubon Society have partnered to form a conservation movement focused on combined goals such as leadership, community, and investments in the future. The Toyota Together Green campaign by Audubon seeks to reduce the national carbon footprint in order to preserve the earth and build a better future.

Three elements form the campaign—fellowship, in order to build leadership; innovation grants, to support conservation projects; and engagement campaigns, to instill a nationwide conservation message. The campaign offers a fellowship program

that awards grants to conservation leaders across the country; in 2013, 40 leaders each received $10,000 to support their projects.

Since its inception, Together Green has logged hundreds of thousands of volunteer hours. Volunteers work together and get their hands dirty restoring, preserving, and monitoring natural habitats. Volunteer positions are available nation-wide and can be found at TogetherGreen.org.

- Kimberly Zayac

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PROTESTIMONY

Following Jesus in the public square.

Reimagining Humanity

I learned about racism when I started seminary. For the first time in my life I was ethnically outnumbered and suddenly aware of my “white” skin, something that doesn’t happen when you grow up in Maine.

As my Euro American professor detailed his own past as a racist, explaining how the “white race” was invented in order to codify the economic oppression of African Americans, the bubble of unknowing privilege that I had been living in burst. Of course, looking back, I can see how even my discovery of racism was racialized and privileged—take, for example, the fact that I was oblivious to it for most of my life and that I chose to learn about it from another white person instead of any of the students of color around me.

While Paul Alexander was the first teacher to explain to me the existence of racism, Eleazar Fernandez was the one who explained to me its nature. in his 2004 book, Reimagining the Human: Theological Anthropology in Response to Systemic Evil, Fernandez not only tackles four of the biggest systemic evils of our age—classism, sexism, racism, and naturism—but also the ways in which those “isms” reinforce each other. I was never taught the ways that all white people benefit from racism, even if we do not personally carry out racist acts. As a member of the dominant “race,” I was always taught that racism was a matter of individual, unconnected acts by horrible, uncivilized, extreme people. But, according to Fernandez, that is a dangerous interpretation that is meant to blind us to the structural nature of racism. In his words, “simply put, prejudice plus [collective and structural] power equals racism.” African Americans or other US “minorities” cannot be racist, because only white people have the power to codify and enforce our own bigotry. Regardless of our own personal opinions, white people all benefit socially and economically from racism. (To better understand this, read Peggy McIntosh's now-classic essay, “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Backpack.”)

The contrast between the white “personal prejudice” definition of racism and the actual structural view of it struck me with particular force last summer

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during the George Zimmerman trial. From the commentary surrounding the trial itself, it is clear that those who defend George Zimmerman and those who label him as a racist are working from these two separate playbooks. For many members of the “white” community, George Zimmerman cannot be labeled a racist because he did not target Trayvon Martin on overtly racial terms. And this is the standard of racism that is enshrined in federal law. As the Justice Department decides whether or not to pursue hate crime charges, the outcome of its case will depend on the conscious motivations of the defendant.

“The government has to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the defendant acted willfully with a seriously culpable state of mind” to violate Mr. Martin’s civil rights.

The problem with this, of course, is that racism and privilege are often not conscious choices. If racism in the US involves, as Fernandez writes, “the elevation of whiteness to the status of normativity, and the relegation of other colors to deviancy,” then doesn’t that affect not just our conscious but also our subconscious? Doesn’t that affect the way that white women, put on our guard by a sexist and often violent society, view African American males like Trayvon Martin? Couldn’t it at least partially explain why George Zimmerman thought this unarmed African American teenager dangerous enough to pursue for several blocks, confront, and ultimately kill?

Not only the murder itself, but also the trial reflected the reality of structural racism. This took the form of what Eleazar Fernandez, quoting Louis Kushnik, calls “state racism”—“racially discriminatory policies and practices involving such matters as immigration, police, the criminal justice system, health, education, and housing.” While Stand Your Ground, the law used to justify Zimmerman’s actions, may not be overtly racist, the way it is interpreted and applied is. In 2010, Marissa Alexander, an African American woman from Jacksonville, Fla., attempted to use that very same law to defend herself from charges of aggravated assault after having fired shots to ward off her abusive husband. Although no one was hurt, let alone killed, her jury ruled that she could not claim self-defense under Stand Your Ground. She was sentenced to 20 years

We need to rediscover a God who is “immersed in the various colors of the universe.” in prison. The New York Times notes that her case has “emerged as Exhibit A for people who say Zimmerman’s acquittal illustrates how the US justice system places less value on the lives of black people.” This is true not just in Florida but also across the nation. According to Amnesty International, 77 percent of victims of all death row inmates executed since 1976 were white. This is startling, considering that “African Americans make up about half of all homicide victims.”

Individually, white people are fond of saying that we don’t “see” or “notice” color, but clearly, as a society, we do.

Fernandez writes that, instead of the color-blind God that white Christians advocate, we need to rediscover a God who loves diversity, who is “colorful, colorloving, and immersed in the various colors of the universe.” He quotes James Cone, who famously claims that “God is black”—in other words, that “God has accepted the black’s condition as God’s very own.” So what does that say about white Christians, comfortably secure in our privilege and “color-blindness?” How can we claim to follow God when we ignore the effects of racism?

In his book Night, Elie Wiesel recounted a story of a boy who was hung to death in Auschwitz in a slow, painful death that lasted more than half an hour.

When a man next to him cried out to know where God was, the answer that came to Wiesel was that God was present—God was “hanging here on this gallows.”

God was the little boy suffering. Over a year ago, when a teenage boy in Sanford, Fla., was shot, God was that boy, too. God was Trayvon Martin. And God is present in every single person who suffers from racism and white privilege. So for how long will we white Christians continue to search for God within the walls of our white-centered churches and continue to ignore where God is most present?

Rebecca Hall just graduated from Palmer Theological Seminary and is spending the summer working at a shelter for victims of domestic violence in Tijuana, Mex.

Katharine Hayhoe:

Ashley Rodgers, Texas Tech University

Climate-change evangelist If you haven’t heard of Katharine Hayhoe, you should. Not because Time magazine recently named her one of their 100 most influential people of 2014, or because she’s a personal friend of actor Don Cheadle, who wrote the entry about her in the magazine. You should know about her because Hayhoe is an anomaly—a committed evangelical Christian who not only believes in climate change (as opposed to roughly 56 percent of evangelicals) but also actively works to spread the word. A climatologist, Hayhoe describes herself as a “climate-change evangelist,” and her mission is simple—to convince the evangelical community that climate change is real and has some very devastating consequences.

Hayhoe is a talented and dedicated scientist who directs the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech, and she is also a lead participant in the Third US National Climate Assessment. The focus of her research is, in her own words, “what climate change means for us, right here, where we live.”

Combined with her familiarity with the evangelical community, her research has also led her to become a popularizer. She has collaborated on The Years of Living Dangerously , a documentary series on the effects of climate change (see our review on page 50), and, with her husband (an evangelical pastor), she also recently co-authored a book called A Climate for Change: Global Warming Facts for Faith-Based Decisions . As the icecaps continue to shrink, we hope her influence will continue to grow.

Power Shifting to the People Like the seas around the melting icecaps and the mercury in our thermometers, the effects of global warning are rising. 350.org is devoted to reversing this alarming trend.

The figure 350 comes from scientific studies indicating that in order to preserve the environment, the level of CO2 in the atmosphere must be lowered from its current 400 parts per million to less than 350 ppm.

The 350 movement spans the globe, using grassroots organizing to run locally driven campaigns that take collective action against those in charge of the fossil fuel industry.

Some movement goals include spreading fossil fuel divestment campaigns to campuses and communities worldwide, organizing “Power Shift” climate action trainings, and sparking well-constructed campaigns that force politicians to rise to the challenge of rescuing the environment.

A triumph for the movement came in early May as Stanford University announced its decision to divest from coal companies. Supporters can join existing local campaigns or start their own using campaign tools available at 350.org.

- Kimberly Zayac

Divest from Fossil Fuels—Together!

Is profit worth the price of a healthy environment? Questioning the ethics of utilizing fossil fuels, the international campaign Fossil Free calls for institutions and organizations serving the public to divest from using fossil fuels that are damaging to the environment. The campaign focuses on publicly traded companies that hold the majority weight of oil, coal, and gas reserves. Rather than investing in fuels that damage the environment, Fossil Free asks that organizations reinvest in morally sound environmental solutions.

Dozens of churches and universities, counties and cities, and nonprofits and foundations across the country have already stepped up to the challenge of eliminating fossil fuels from their campuses. To get involved, go to GoFossilFree.com and register with an existing petition or start one of your own.

- Kimberly Zayac

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Saying Goodbye to Christian AMerica One day in a doctoral seminar at Union Theological Seminary, my ethics mentor, Larry Rasmussen, said words I will never forget: “There are advantages and disadvantages in every power position for the church.”

The ultimate Christian social ethics issue of our time is not any particular moral issue such as abortion, war, or gay rights. We argue fiercely about these issues, sure. But the ultimate Christian social ethics issue, at least in the United States, is the decline of Christian cultural power—and its fallout in both church and culture.

This is the context within which every particular moral issue is contested.

It is not a stretch to say that most of today’s most controverted moral debates are at least as much about declining Christian cultural hegemony as they are about whatever the issue is. Whether they are discussions over Hobby Lobby having to cover contraceptives,1 or devout Christian florists having to serve gay marriages,2 or the Ten Commandments being posted in the courthouse,3 they are all proxy fights for the deeper issue—the declining cultural power of Christianity in America.

In the new USA, unlike anywhere else, the Christian faith was both legally disestablished (First Amendment: 1789) and culturally dominant. For almost 200 years it was both legally forbidden to establish Christianity as the official religion of the United States and culturally a fact that Christianity was the unofficial religion of the United States. Call it legal disestablishment + cultural hegemony. That was who we were. And of course, for most of the time this was Protestant cultural hegemony. Franklin Roosevelt is reported to have actually said (out loud), “This is a Protestant country, and the Catholics and Jews are here under sufferance.”4 There are advantages and disadvantages in every power position for the church. If back in the day you happened to be a Christian, or the locally dominant version of Christian, you

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experienced a cultural context in which your religious symbols and values dominated.

The town square said it all. With the First Baptist Church catty-corner to the courthouse, and the same people essentially running both, not to mention the schools and the Chamber of Commerce around the corner, this was a pretty cozy little world. It was culturally comfortable and happy—if you were among the majority. It was a disadvantage if you were Jewish, or Catholic, or agnostic. (Or black.)

And of course the legal disestablishment of Christianity was often fictive. The city council opened its work with prayers by the Baptist preacher, juries were instructed with Bible quotes, and politicians ran for office exuding Christian rhetoric.

And the kids were led in the Lord’s Prayer over at the elementary school. There was one more or less coherent moral world, and it was drenched in semi-official Christianity.

All of that has been changing visibly since the 1960s, and closer examination would show slippage long before that.

On the legal front, a series of cases have been decided in such a way as to tighten up adherence to the actual words of the First Amendment related to disestablishment. (Critics would say that an original “benevolent neutrality” of the state toward religion has changed in the direction of a hostility to religion, or at least hostility to Christianity.)

In any case, that once-comfortable quasi-establishment of (Protestant) Christianity is being gnawed away, one decision at a time.

On the cultural front, of course, the changes have been even more dramatic. First there was explicit rejection of some of the most visible Christian moral claims (sex belongs only in marriage, marriage is for life). More recently we have witnessed a rush to the exits vis-à-vis Christianity and church attendance itself.

Here are some staggering numbers: White Protestants and Catholics constitute 69 percent of the US population 65 or older, but only 25 percent of the population 18-29. Only 11 percent of the over 65s claim no religious affiliation, compared to 31 percent of the 18-29 year olds.5 We live in one physical territory, but in a very real sense we do not live in the same country.

Our most bitter moral fights gain much of their intensity due to these religious dynamics and the power shifts going

with them. Partly the anger is about lost power, for, as Reinhold Niebuhr and then Martin Luther King, Jr. observed, “privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily.” Christians in general, older Christians in particular, white older Christians especially, are dealing with their lost cultural hegemony, and many are not at all happy about it.

But it’s not only about power. These Christians are also grieving what they perceive to be real cultural losses, such as declining moral integrity in public life, collapsing families, and loss of any kind of cultural moral consensus.

The saddest thing about all this is the way in which real people’s suffering becomes fodder to use as proxies in culture wars battles.

Think of women facing crisis pregnancies and teenagers struggling with their sexual orientation. Can we at least agree that human beings ought to be treated as human beings and not as proxies for political fights? It seems we cannot.

In the end, if the numbers hold up, Christians will have no choice but to face the end of their cultural hegemony and the tightening up of what disestablishment is taken to mean.

Those who lead Christian communities will face the challenge of communicating the possibilities, and not just the losses, facing a now-mi-

If the numbers hold up, Christians will have no choice but to face the end of their cultural hegemony. nority church.

Perhaps we will be able to read the New Testament with fresh eyes. Without any legal or cultural power, those who wrote it followed Christ, built faithful churches, and told their neighbors about God’s love. We could do it, too.

(Editor’s note: endnotes are posted at PRISMmagazine. org/endnotes.)

David P. Gushee is the director of the Center for Theology and Public Life at Mercer University in Atlanta, Ga. This piece was originally published

by ABPnews/Herald.

Support the Ban on Ivory Poaching doesn't just threaten animals—it also puts human life in danger.

The National Geographic Society estimates that 22,000 African elephants were slaughtered in 2012 for their tusks, and final figures for 2013 are expected to come in as high or higher. In fact, the Elephant Action League (EAL) puts last year’s total at more than 30,000.

Just as shocking is the toll on human life that is tied to elephant poaching.

With black market ivory sales generating as much as $1 billion each year, it has become a major source of funds for African terrorist organizations. When the attack on Westgate Mall in Nairobi, Kenya, was carried out last year, it was at the hands of the terrorist group al Shabaab. According to EAL, up to 40 percent of al Shabaab’s activities are funded by the illegal ivory trade. Also linked to this trade are the militias associated with the Darfur genocide.

Criminal organizations involved in sex trafficking and drug trafficking are also key players in the sale of illegal ivory. In addition, rangers and local communities are often caught in the crossfire of wildlife crime.

After Asia, where illicit raw ivory now fetches nearly $700 per pound, the US has the second largest market for illegal wildlife products, which means we are funding mass violence against animals and people alike. Fortunately, the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) has proposed a strict ivory ban to help end this deadly industry for good. But the new rules need all the support they can get.

Reports from a Life without Screens Our friends at the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CommercialFreeChildhood.org) gathered stories from the 2014 Screen-Free Week in May, a week when families across the nation and around the globe forgo their screens to play in the woods, work on a sewing project, visit a farmers’ market, garden, host a family game night, bowl, pick dandelions, go bird-watching, ride bikes, read, craft, walk, swim, snuggle, hike.

Here are what two moms dis“Kids still covered during Screen-Free Week: love to make

mud pies,

An elephant is slaughtered every 15 minutes in Africa by commercial poachers.

The World Wildlife Fund has come out in support of the FWS and has initiated a global campaign (tinyurl.com/8k7f6kp) to stop wildlife crime. They are asking individuals and organizations to help them do the following to combat the current crisis: × Push governments to protect threatened animal populations by increasing law enforcement, imposing strict deterrents, reducing demand for endangered species products, and honoring international commitments made under CITES. × Speak up on behalf of those on the front lines being threatened by armed poachers so they are properly equipped, trained, and compensated. × Reduce demand for illegal wildlife parts and products by encouraging others to ask questions and get the facts before buying any wildlife or plant product Other organizations doing good work in this area include the following: ✓ Wild Aid (WildAid.org), focusing on demand reduction; ✓ Elephant Voices (ElephantVoices.org), educating people about elephants globally; ✓ Wildlife Direct (WildlifeDirect.org), working to close down the international ivory trade.

e “… I feel like I need to be inbuild, sort, volved in all [the children] do. But the solve, and truth is, they are creative, imaginative daydream. I little people, and though they do love just need to to have me play with them, they are remember to also content on their own. I don't let them.” have to feel like I need to play with them every waking hour or hand them a device to keep them occupied. Kids still love to make mud pies, build, sort, solve, and daydream. I just need to remember to let them.” e “As with any addiction, it’s the habit that’s hardest to break.

But after the first few days, having the TV off has been far easier than we thought. The kids are calmer. Dinner is far more peaceful.

We’re outdoors more. And family time is really family time.”

But Screen-Free Week isn’t just about snubbing screens for seven days; it’s a springboard for important lifestyle changes that will improve well-being and quality of life all year round. Go to ScreenFree.org for resources and ideas to help you screenproof your home, bring back family meals, work with your school to reduce screen time, and discover non-screen activities for the whole family.

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Apocalypse Now ?

BY JONATHAN A. MOO AND ROBERT S. WHITE

IT’S THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT. - R.E.M.

N

orth Idaho is a thinly settled region of forests, lakes, and mountains narrowly separating the states of Washington and Montana in the northwestern United States. Known mostly for logging, mining, and outdoor recreation, it is a beautiful place and I (Jonathan) am grateful to live not far away in Spokane, Wash. But the wilds of North Idaho have an unfortunate reputation for attracting radical sects and fringe groups of all sorts, ranging from religious cults to militias to white supremacists. Most infamously, it was the

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site of the 1992 Ruby Ridge siege, where the combination of an apocalyptically minded family fearful of government conspiracy and heavily armed federal agents led to a shootout and several deaths. The stereotype is sufficiently strong that when I came across a New York Times Magazine article provocatively titled “The End Is Near (Yay!)” and featuring a group based in the North Idaho town of Sandpoint, I assumed that I was about to read about yet another religious cult heralding the impending end of the world.1

Sandpoint, Idaho, but also Bologna, Italy; Los Angeles, Calif.; Sao Paulo, Brazil; Houston, Tex.; Tokyo, Japan; Portland, Maine; Sydney, Australia; and Cambridge, England.2 The mix of science, economics, politics, and social analysis that grabs the attention of its followers is regularly the subject of newspaper and magazine articles and is featured in popular books and films.

But what is perhaps most worrying for those of us tempted to dismiss groups like the Transition Network is that many of today’s leading scientists share their rather bleak assessment of our civilization’s future. When no less a figure than Martin Rees (formerly president of the Royal Society, the United Kingdom’s national academy of science) suggests that there is only a 50 percent chance that civilization as we know it will make it through the present century,3 it is probably time that the rest of us sat up and took notice.

Compared to some other recent movements, the Transition Network actually adopts a relatively optimistic stance toward the future: “engaged optimism” is how its founder, Hopkins, describes it. Its followers embrace the changes that are thought necessary to “transition” from our present unsustainable way of life to a more sustainable one as they seek to mitigate the effects of climate change and to strengthen the resilience of local communities.

There are many other thinkers and scientists, however, who are much more pessimistic about the future, and their numbers are growing.

Paul Kingsnorth, leader of a UK-based group calling itself Dark Mountain, claims that there is no longer any hope that we can prevent catastrophic climate change and environmental collapse.

He urges us essentially to give up on the present and to focus on getting ready for the sort of world that might emerge after the environmental apocalypse he expects in the relatively near future. Dark Mountain garnered publicity shortly after its founding in 2009 when the Guardian newspaper published a debate between Kingsnorth and the well-known political and environmental journalist George Monbiot.4 Monbiot argued strongly against what he saw as Kingsnorth’s defeatism, observing that movements like Dark Mountain serve only to allow those who exploit the earth for their own ends to go on doing so and thus to hasten the realization of their own apocalyptic predictions (predictions that, Monbiot pointed out, would see billions of people condemned to a ruinous future). But what was most striking about the debate between Monbiot and Kingsnorth was the extent to which they basically agreed about how the future is likely to turn out. Although they call for very different responses to the threats facing life on earth—and Monbiot clings tenaciously to the hope that we might still avert catastrophe (the hope that also motivates Hopkins and his Transition Network)—even Monbiot concedes that, given the way things are going, the outlook for our future is dark and foreboding.

As it turned out, however, the group highlighted in the article is not nearly so far from the mainstream as you might expect. It does indeed anticipate the end of civilization as we know it, but it is not a narrow religious sect—or even religious at all in the traditional sense—and its beliefs about the future mirror those of many in our society. The movement of which it is a part, the Transition Network, was started by a teacher named Rob Hopkins in Cornwall, England.

It has followers in towns and cities all around the world, including places like

A PERFECT STORM, AND OTHER FORECASTS The notion that a so-called perfect storm of factors is coming together in a way that threatens the future of life on earth is no longer the unique preserve of bearded prophets, street preachers, and religious fundamentalists. John Beddington, the United Kingdom’s chief scientist, provoked debate a few years ago when he suggested that we might begin witnessing the catastrophic effects of

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just such a perfect storm as soon as 2030. The accusations of scaremongering that ensued suggest that 2030 was perhaps just a little too close for comfort even for a public that has grown used to terrifying predictions about events 50 or 100 years down the road.5 The natural history presenter David Attenborough recently admitted that, in his view, “the world is in terrible trouble… Am I optimistic about the future? No, not at all. But that’s irrelevant. It’s imperative that you do something, even if you don’t think it’s going to do any good.”6 The surest sign of the popularity of apocalyptic rhetoric about the environment, however, is that even politicians occasionally get into the act. In the run-up

The film industry unsurprisingly has taken advantage of the cinematic potential of our fears about the future. A few movies explicitly reflect contemporary concerns about the environment or climate change (The Day After Tomorrow, 2004; The Age of Stupid, 2009), whereas many more invent their own apocalyptic scenarios (Children of Men, 2006; I Am Legend, 2007; The Book of Eli, 2010; Melancholia, 2011), or leave undetermined the causes of civilization’s end (The Road, 2009, based on Cormac McCarthy’s haunting novel of the same name). A recent National Geographic reality television show, Doomsday Preppers, reveals just how serious are some people’s fears by featuring a variety of Americans preparing for disaster and the breakdown of civilization that they expect in the notso-distant future. (Their preparations generally seem to involve growing their own produce and storing food, water, and lots of guns and ammunition.)

Meanwhile, in the more rarefied realm of philosophy, the popular Slovenian philosopher and cultural critic Slavoj Zizek has written a book about our age appropriately titled Living in the End Times.8 Do all of these dire predictions, as many pundits suggest, amount to nothing more than ideological scaremongering, perhaps hyped up for political or personal ends? Or are there good reasons for thinking that we may indeed be facing a crisis unprecedented in its scale and in the severity of its effects on life on earth?

Our own assessment leads us to conclude that there is in fact plenty of cause for concern. Climate change is only the most publicized (and, admittedly, potentially the most far-reaching) threat that our planet faces in the coming decades. There is a wide range of much more obvious, interrelated, and damaging effects that an ever-growing number of people consuming more and more are having on the planet on which we all depend.

Here is one way of understanding our situation as it has been summarized recently in Nature, one of the world’s leading scientific journals:

The notion that a so-called perfect storm of factors is coming together in a way that threatens the future of life on earth is no longer the unique preserve of bearded prophets, street preachers, and religious fundamentalists.

to the Copenhagen Summit on climate change in late 2009, the UK’s then prime minister, Gordon Brown, warned of the danger of impending “climate catastrophe.”7 And of course former US Vice President Al Gore’s controversial film, An Inconvenient Truth, frightened plenty of people with its computer-generated images of rising sea levels inundating New York City (despite the fact that few scientists expect anything like that to happen for centuries), and unfortunately also further politicized what was already a deeply polarizing issue.

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[A] group of leading academics argue that humanity must stay within defined boundaries for a range of essential Earth-system processes to

avoid catastrophic environmental change. . . . They propose that for three of these—the nitrogen cycle, the rate of loss of species, and anthropogenic climate change—the maximum acceptable limit has already been transgressed. In addition, they say that humanity is fast approaching the boundaries for freshwater use, for converting forests and other natural ecosystems to cropland and urban areas, and for acidification of the oceans.

Crossing even one of these planetary boundaries would risk triggering abrupt or irreversible environmental changes that would be very damaging or even catastrophic for society.9 Consider what these scientists are claiming: Crossing even one of these socalled planetary boundaries “would risk triggering abrupt or irreversible environmental changes that would be very damaging or even catastrophic for society”—and we have already crossed three of them and are rapidly approaching three more. We must consider what many of the best biologists, earth scientists, and climatologists have to report to us as they monitor and study our incredible planet. We recognize that many of us have grown cynical and weary in the face of the deluge of apocalyptic rhetoric with which politicians, the press, and all manner of special interest groups inundate us. Nevertheless, it will not do for us simply to ignore what is going on in the world around us. Above all, Christians have a particular responsibility to seek to understand the world in which we live.

HOW TO RESPOND? If, as we ourselves have been forced to conclude, consideration of the scientific data does give cause for serious concern, that is not to say that the next step for us all is simply to jump on the bandwagon of secular environmentalists or “climate change Cassandras” (as some activists have recently been called). As Christians, our vision of the future (and hence our view of the present, too) is necessarily going to be different from those who do not share our biblical hope.

Most of us, Christian or not, have probably not entirely bought into the apocalyptic rhetoric that marks many of today’s discussions of climate change and the environment. Many of us, however, might find ourselves vaguely identifying with one or more of the categories of response below. Do you find yourself in any of these groups? æIgnorance-is-blissers: The issues concerning environmental degradation, resource depletion, biodiversity loss, and climate change are complicated and heavily disputed; many of us therefore simply cannot be bothered to try to understand them, or we find it too difficult and time consuming to assess the evidence for ourselves. The issues can also seem irrelevant to our day-to-day lives, and so—we think—they are best left to others.

of environmental challenges often stems simply from our lack of clear information or our lack of interest in spending time worrying about it. But in a few cases, as in the well-documented campaign by a handful of oil companies to discredit climate science (a campaign deliberately modeled on the tobacco industry’s attempt to discredit medical findings about the effects of tobacco use),10 denial stems from an unwillingness to contemplate changing the way we do things and a blatant desire to prevent any new information from coming to light that might get in the way of business as usual. áProblem solvers: This group represents quite a spectrum, from those who are convinced that there are quick, relatively painless technological fixes to most of the challenges that we face today, to those who think that radical economic and social restructuring is necessary if we are to prevent environmental catastrophe. Some in this group are progressive optimists who have faith in the ingenuity and potential of humankind; others might find themselves nearer despair about the future but nonetheless get on with trying to change things for the better. äDespairers: People who have despaired about the future of life on earth are often those who have spent years trying to change things but have seen little progress. Some are already suggesting that it is too late to prevent catastrophic climate change or catastrophic environmental collapse of one sort or another and that we would be better off at this point to focus our money and our efforts on adaptation. åPost-apocalypse hopers: The Dark Mountain group would fit in this category. For people in this group, collapse is inevitable, but they are intrigued by what might emerge afterward—perhaps a smaller human community living more sustainably on the earth or, in radical versions, an earth without human beings at all (the sort of future envisioned in Alan Weisman’s creative thought experiment, The World Without Us).11 There are few people who are likely to find themselves in this category at the moment, but it may grow in popularity if things in coming years do indeed begin to look as bad as some predict. There is a rather obvious parallel between this secular hope and certain popular versions of Christian hope, even if the nature of the “apocalypse” and the ensuing future age envisaged are quite different.

As you might have guessed, we do not find any of these categories adequate for capturing what a distinctively Christian response should look like—alWhether the end is not-yet-near or already here, climate change is a threat that few deny.

âSeekers: This group has a sincere interest in the issues but simply does not know what to make of all the debates over climate change and the environment. They need to be convinced that concerns about such things are well founded and based on facts before they will consider taking any action.

Many in the United States in particular are suspicious of the motivations behind the relevant scientific research, and the media has often fed such suspicions (partly because of the effective work of the next group) and left them uncertain of what to make of it all. èDeniers: It is possible to be convinced to some degree about the severity of a threat but not be prepared seriously to face the consequences or be willing to do anything about it—especially when we think it might involve some sort of personal sacrifice. Our denial of the reality or the significance

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though we do hope that a biblical perspective on the future will prompt many of us to enter into the difficult tasks taken on by those whom we have labeled “problem solvers.” But if the Christian gospel fundamentally reorients us in our relationship with God and his world, then there ought to be something fundamentally different in our approach and in our attitude toward how we engage with our fellow human beings and with the rest of creation.

LOOKING AHEAD As attested by some of the responses to environmental issues summarized above, our view of the future can and does have a profound effect on how we engage with the present.

How might Christians respond if we take seriously what the Bible has to say about the gospel and the future of life on earth? In a world increasingly tempted to despair in the face of dysfunctional politics and economic and ecological crises, we need now more than ever to be able to articulate clearly the hope we have in Christ—and to embody that hope in our lives and actions.

(Editor’s note: endnotes for this article are posted at PRISMmagazine.org/endnotes.)

Environmental Books

For Christians

Let Creation Rejoice: Biblical Hope and Ecological Crisis by Jonathan A. Moo and Robert S. White (IVP, 2014) Natural Saints: How People of Faith Are Working to Save God's Earth by Mallory McDuff (Oxford University Press, 2010) Sacred Acts: How Churches are Working to Protect Earth's Climate by Mallory McDuff (New Society Publishers, 2012) A Climate for Change: Global Warming Facts for Faith-Based Decisions by Katharine Hayhoe and Andrew Farley (FaithWords, 2009) Tending to Eden: Environmental Stewardship for God’s People by Scott Sabin (Judson Press, 2010) Green Like God: Unlocking the Divine Plan for Our Planet by Jonathan Merritt (FaithWords, 2010) Making Peace with the Land: God's Call to Reconcile with Creation by Fred Bahnson and Norman Wirzba (IVP Books, 2012) It's Easy Being Green (Revised and Expanded Edition): A Guide to Serving God and Saving the Planet by Emma Sleeth (Zondervan, 2012)

Jonathan A. Moo (Ph.D., University of Cambridge) is assistant professor of biblical studies at Whitworth University in Spokane, Wash. He holds graduate degrees in wildlife ecology (MS, Utah State University) and theology.

Robert S. White (Ph.D., University of Cambridge) is professor of geophysics in the University of Cambridge and a fellow of the Royal Society. He is a founding director of the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion, Cambridge, and is a director of the John Ray Initiative, an educational charity that works to develop and communicate a Christian understanding of the environment.

This article was adapted from their book Let Creation Rejoice: Biblical Hope and Ecological Crisis, just released from InterVarsity Press, and is reproduced here by permission of InterVarsity Press (PO Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515 IVPress.com).

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Serve God, Save the Planet: A Christian Call to Action by J. Matthew Sleeth (Zondervan, 2007)

BIBLES

The Green Bible, with inspirational essays from leaders like N. T. Wright, Barbara Brown Taylor, Brian McLaren, Matthew Sleeth, Pope John Paul II, and Wendell Berry (HarperOne, 2008) NIV God's Word for Gardeners Bible: Grow Your Faith While Growing Your Garden by Shelley Cramm (Zondervan, 2014)

for a general audience

The Global Warming Reader: A Century of Writing About Climate Change, edited by Bill McKibben (Penguin Books, 2012) Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet by Bill McKibben (St. Martin's Griffin, 2011)

Our Most Important Response to Climate Disruption

by Ben Lowe

When it comes to healing the planet, prayer is essential to activism

T

he writing is on the wall. According to a comprehensive and groundbreaking new report from the world’s foremost scientific experts, the impacts of climate disruption are expected to be “severe, pervasive, and irreversible.”1 Founded over 25 years ago, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is an unprecedented collaboration of thousands of the world’s credentialed climate scientists to assess what we know about the changing climate, its current and projected impacts, and what we can do about it. The governments of the 195 participating nations, including the United States, review all parts of the IPCC assessment reports before they are approved and released.

So the IPCC’s latest report, Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability (AR5-WGII), which breaks down diverse and farreaching climate impacts by type and region, is about as serious as it gets.

At the same time, however, it’s not really news. This report only confirms what many communities around the world are already experiencing—that the climate we have carefully built our lives around is changing and that we, along with the rest of God’s creation, are increasingly at risk.

Each of us—like each of our communities—is heavily dependent on stable surroundings in order to flourish. We’re vulnerable to changes in climatic patterns, which can have a disproportionate effect on the poor and those in less developed contexts. Impacts include higher sea levels, larger floods and storm surges, spreading diseases, melting ice and permafrost, harsher heat waves, failing crops, collapsing fisheries, acidifying oceans,

more severe droughts and water shortages, and more.

As carbon pollution continues and climate impacts worsen, trying to make a difference here can frankly be overwhelming. Rather than give into apathy or despair, however, we’re called to be people of love and hope. Our hope is in a God who deeply loves the world, is on a mission to reconcile and restore all things back to shalom, and remains determined to include us in the process. God has blessed us with the capacity, understanding, and resources—and the Holy Spirit—needed to do the right thing and be part of overcoming this growing environmental and humanitarian crisis together.

By God’s grace, there is much we can do here at every level—as individuals, churches, campuses, communities, cities, states, nations, and as an international community. We can use energy more efficiently and thoughtfully. We can stop subsidizing fossil fuels of the past and start investing more in clean energy technologies of the future. We can put a price on carbon To join the growing climate prayer movement, visit ClimatePrayerUS.org for daily updates and resources, or follow @ClimatePrayerUS on Twitter or Facebook.

For more information visit the websites of the organizations mentioned in this article: • YECAction.org • CreationCare.org • ClimatePrayerUS.org • RenewingCreation.org • CreationCareCanada.wordpress.com

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pollution to account for all the hidden costs or what economists call market externalities. We can renew our economy with fresh innovation and good jobs that sustain rather than destroy God’s creation. We can advocate for those who are most vulnerable and work together to help our communities around the world adapt to the changes we are already experiencing. All of these good things are within our reach and require only that we finally muster the moral and politiBen Lowe (in red) and other US activists cal will to change. If we do, we will help create a more just, meeting with farmers in Malawi whose crops are failing because of changing stable, and promising future for my generation and future rainfall patterns (photo by Clive Mear, ones to inherit.

Tearfund).

Such climate action is inherently about loving God, loving our neighbors (including those not yet born), and caring for creation. It’s both a matter of life and an integral part of our biblical discipleship and witness today. But out of all the steps we can and should be taking to address climate disruption, perhaps one of the most important and yet oftenoverlooked responses is prayer. vigil on campus throughout the day, and around 30 professors Everyone can pray—no special skills, money, technology, or other qualifications focused portions of their class time on discussing and praying needed. Prayer is an act of trust and hope. It centers us on God, keeps us grounded in for climate action.

God’s reality, and avails us most directly of God’s aid. As the apostle Paul taught: “Do not Additional events also took place across the country. be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, Some campuses prayed for climate action in their main chapel present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, services, others gathered around a central office or landmark will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 4:6). to pray during the day, and yet others held prayer dinners in Climate disruption is often still a polarizing issue in the evening. In all, over 20 Christian campuses, churches, and “We tend to many parts of the American church. Prayer brings us to- organizations participated in the Day of Prayer, representing focus on our gether—no matter what our understanding, perspective, or locations in California, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachupolitical leanings may be—to seek God’s wisdom, truth, and setts, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, work, which strength in order to respond more faithfully to this growing Texas, Virginia, and Washington, DC. challenge.

I was able to join a few of these events (since not all of is always Of course, it can be argued that focusing on prayer them took place on the same day), including the main prayer inadequate. can make us neglect other responses, that prayer must lead service in Grand Rapids. In every case, and regardless of the to action. On one hand, that’s fair. We are called to do much size or structure of the gathering, I found myself truly blessed When we more than just pray. On the other hand, however, prayer is to be in fellowship with others as we lifted up these issues work, we action. Author and pastor Max Lucado puts it this way: “We that weigh heavily on our hearts. I experienced the peace that tend to focus on our work, which is always inadequate. When passes understanding, which renewed and strengthened my work. But we work, we work. But when we pray, God works.”2 And if faith. And I left even more hopeful than before, reassured that when we we’re praying as Jesus taught us to, then we will also be the God who brings us together in love will see us through by compelled to act further. grace, and will give us everything we need to do God’s good pray, God Over the last couple of years, the Evangelical Environ- will here on earth as it is in heaven. works.” mental Network (EEN) has been organizing prayer break-Max Lucado fasts in cities around the country, ranging from Harrison- (Editor’s note: endnotes for this article are posted at PRISMburg, Va., to Tulsa, Okla., and from Denver, Colo., to Little magazine.org/endnotes.)

Rock, Ark. These events are usually hosted at a local church and bring together pastors and other church leaders from around the area for a morning of worship, prayer, and Ben Lowe is on staff with the Evangelical Environmental Netreflection on our biblical responsibility to care for God’s creation and the many people suf- work and serves as the national spokesperson for Young fering from pollution and other forms of environmental degradation.

Evangelicals for Climate Action. He is the author of Green This past spring, Young Evangelicals for Climate Action—a national initiative that I am Revolution and the forthcoming Doing Good Without Giving Up, part of and that is connected to EEN—organized the first Day of Prayer for Climate Action both from InterVarsity Press. on April 3, and our friends from Renewal: Students Caring for Creation and from Creation Care and Action Canada joined in as well.

The focal point of the Day of Prayer was in Grand Rapids, Mich., where the Christian Reformed Church (CRC) hosted a climate prayer service at their denominational headquarters, which was attended by Grand Rapids Mayor George Heartwell and numerous church leaders from the CRC and beyond. Student leaders at Calvin College also hosted a prayer

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A PRAYER GUIDE FOR CLIMATE ACTION

Pray for those suffering from the impacts of climate disruption in the United States and worldwide—that God will provide and protect.

Pray for the rest of God’s creation, which is struggling to adapt quickly enough to changing climatic patterns—that God would sustain and restore.

Pray for the church in North America to respond faithfully to the challenge of climate change—that God would awaken and empower.

Pray for our political leaders in the United States to agree on responsible climate solutions—that God would convict and unite.

Climate impacts include extreme and erratic weather, acidifying oceans, rising sea levels, failing crops, water shortages, more severe wildfires, declining fisheries, and more.

Climate change has become the number-one threat to biodiversity today, as many species of animals and plants lose suitable habitats and face extinction.

There is still a lot of confusion and controversy in parts of the North American church around climate change, and we need help re-engaging this issue from a biblical perspective.

The U.S. is one of the biggest emitters of carbon pollution— impacting people around the world—and we also set a powerful moral, political, and economic example on the global stage.

These impacts hit the poor and vulnerable the hardest. They also lead to greater resource-based conflicts, political instability, and human trafficking.

Creation brings glory to God, and we are uniquely created in God’s image and given the responsibility to be good stewards of the rest of creation.

A growing number of churches, campuses, ministries, and denominations are stepping up to get involved, and we need all people to do their part, from the younger generations to the senior leaders.

We also need to invest in green jobs and new technology, adapt to climatic changes already underway, and care for those most impacted, both here and around the world.

Pray for all other key players connected to this growing problem—that God would guide and bless;

... for the fossil fuel industry to adapt and lead instead of opposing solutions, and for the environmental movement to experience God at work in creation;

... and for the scientific community to increase in understanding, for the media to communicate information with clarity, and for all of us to find our place in responding faithfully to this moral challenge.

Visit ClimatePrayerUS.org for more prayer info and resources.

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colorlines.com

Environmental Racism

by Miguel De La Torre We are called by God to be good stewards of the earth. Unfortunately, racism gets in the way. Environmental racism, defined as the link between the degradation of the environment and the racial composition of the areas where degradation takes place, is prevalent among communities of color in the US. According to a 2011 study conducted by the US Department of Health and Human Services, a correlation exists between ethnicity and the counties with the most unhealthy air quality.

According to a growing body of empirical evidence, race continues to be the most significant variable in determining the location of commercial, industrial, and military hazardous waste sites. It is the most significant predictor in forecasting where the nation’s commercial hazardous waste facilities are located.

US Census data from 2000 show that people of color represent 56 percent of the population that lives less than 1.8 miles from one of the nation’s 413 commercial waste facilities. This means that of the 9 million Americans living in neighborhoods hosting one of these commercial hazardous waste facilities, more than 5.1 million are persons of color—2.5 million Hispanics, 1.8 million African Americans, 616,000 Asians, and 62,000 Native Americans. The poorer the community, the greater the risk of environmental abuse, because the economically privileged are able to move away from such sites, a privilege not available to the poor, who are mostly people of color.

Out of the 149 metropolitan areas with hazardous waste sites, 105 are predominately comprised of people of color. African American neighborhoods are host to such facilities within 38 of the 44 states that have them; Hispanic neighborhoods host them within 35 states; and Asian neighborhoods are hosts within 27 states.

Between 1999 and 2009, the National Academy of Science produced five

environmental justice reports showing that “low-income and people-of-color communities are exposed to higher levels of pollution than the rest of the nation, and that these same populations experience certain diseases in greater number than more affluent white communities.” African American ethicist Emilie Townes has said that the effects of toxic waste on the lives of people of color who are relegated to live on ecologically hazardous lands are akin to a contemporary version of lynching an entire people.

Environmental racism is not limited to hazardous waste sites. Violators of pollution laws received less stringent punishments when violations occurred in non-white neighborhoods than when they occurred in white neighborhoods.

Fines were often 500 percent higher in white communities than in marginalized communities. When violations occurred in minority communities, the government was slower to act, taking as much as 20 percent more time, than when violations occurred in white communities. And even when a lawsuit (RISE v. Kay) was brought before the Eastern District Federal Court of Virginia about the placement of landfills in predominantly African American King and Queen counties, the US judge acknowledged the historical trend of disproportionately placing landfills in African American areas but still ruled that the case failed to prove discrimination.

Environmental racism also takes a heavy toll among children of color. According to a US Department of Health and Human Services study released in

➊ Find a community group that is working

❸ Join with neighbors to transform a vacant lot into

➋ Protest the placement of toxic facilities

➍ Attend zoning and other public meetings in

to combat environmental racism and join their effort. (And go in with a humble heart.)

in low-income and predominantly minority communities. Like, with signs and civil disobedience. Really.

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a garden or small park. Add some benches and a bird bath and watch community grow!

your community, and encourage your neighbors to do the same. Make your presence known and your voice heard.

Bodine Street Garden | bodinestreetgarden.org

4 Ways You Can Practice Environmental Justice

Because nuclear test sites, uranium mines, hazardous waste dumps, and power plants are so near Native American reservations in the western portion of the United States, residents are increasingly at risk. Further, some impoverished tribes have agreed to keep hazardous waste on their reservations, where the waste is exempt from standard regulations. A quarter of Native Americans live in poverty, and unemployment on some reservations is as high as 69 percent.

Image: PlanPHilly.com

Toxic Reservations

Working for Change in the City of Brotherly Love

by Sarah Withrow King

GreeningSanFrancisco.wikispaces.com

For more than 40 years, the Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia has worked to ensure that the most vulnerable citizens of the city have access to resources and services required for a flourishing life.

In 1979, the Law Center began its environmental program, which to date has: • cleaned up or closed dozens of polluting industrial facilities in the city, including trash incinerators and sewage-treatment plants, many placed in poor communities of color; • passed the nation’s first Community Right-to-Know Law, ensuring that polluters can’t hide from their surrounding communities; • spearheaded the adoption of the state’s automobile-emissions inspection program; and • developed partnerships with community groups to combat environmental racism.

2011, approximately 23 percent of poor children suffering from asthma were Puerto Rican, 21 percent multiracial, 16 percent African American, and 10 percent white.

The predominantly African American neighborhood of Central Harlem in New York City has the highest percentage of documented cases of asthma in the entire country.

The worst asthma triggers are found in abundance there, specifically insect (cockroach) droppings, mold, mildew, diesel exhaust, and cigarette smoke. African American children in other areas are also vulnerable to asthma, because 68 percent live within 30 miles of a coal-fired power plant.

Nationwide, African American children have a 500 percent higher death rate from asthma when compared to white children. Additionally, they have a 260 percent higher emergency rate and a 250 percent higher hospitalization rate.

How should people who love justice respond to people like Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions (RAL), who claimed during a Senate hearing on the EPA budget that air pollution victims are “unidentified and imaginary"? How can we help justice roll in the face of such blatant disregard for human health, equality, and dignity?

The Rev. Dr. Miguel De La Torre is a Cuban-born professor of Christian ethics at Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colo.

A scholar-activist, he has served as president of the Society for Christian Ethics.

In December of 2013, the Philadelphia City Council unanimously passed the Philadelphia Land Bank Bill, designed to reduce the number of vacant and neglected properties in the city and to more efficiently facilitate their sale and oversight. There are currently more than 40,000 vacant properties in the city, and 10,000 of them are owned by various public agencies. A handful of those publicly owned properties have been classified as “imminently dangerous” by the city, meaning they pose a significant threat to the safety of neighborhood residents. There are nearly a dozen vacant properties on my block in Northwest Philadelphia alone…a neighborhood that, at last census, was 77 percent African-American.

One of the goals of the Philadelphia Land Bank Bill is to make it easier to transfer ownership of vacant land and property (much of which is in low-income and predominantly minority neighborhoods) to individuals and organizations dedicated to improving their communities. Grounded in Philly and the Garden Justice Legal Initiative are both dedicated to increasing access to green spaces and local gardens for the area’s low-income residents. Healthy Foods Green Spaces is a coalition that works to support community-managed green spaces and to advocate for just food and environmental policies in urban neighborhoods.

A little south of the city, the Delco Alliance for Environmental Justice is mobilizing citizens of Chester, Pa., to resist the influx of polluting industries. Watch their compelling nine-minute video at EJNet. org/Chester. Chester has fewer than 30,000 residents, yet this tiny community is home to four toxic and hazardous waste treatment facilities, including the nation’s largest infectious medical waste treatment plant and the nation’s fourth-largest trash incinerator, plus the county’s wastewater treatment facility, a plant that also processes industrial waste from nearby industries. A 2006 report points out that Delaware County is home to 12 current, former, or proposed Superfund sites on the National Priorities List (toxic waste sites requiring urgent attention). The same report identified the county’s top 15 polluters, five of which are in Chester.

These polluting factories release tons (literally) of pounds of sulfuric acid and other damaging toxins into the air in Chester each year. Chester is 75 percent African American, and the median annual household income is $23,703.ß

Once a mainstay of the ESA staff, Sarah Withrow King just accepted her dream job from PETA, helping Christians make more compassionate choices about nonhuman animals.

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Green Comes in Many Shades

by Kristyn Komarnicki

While rarely front and center in media coverage of all things green, people of color are an essential and growing part of the environmental movement. Meet three people—a journalist, a scientist, and a leadership developer—who are leading the charge. All three are dedicated educators, passionate conservationists, and avid nature-lovers, and they want people of every color to experience both the deep joy and the great responsibility of stewarding God’s creation.

“The same God who made all of this made me, and as it is beautiful and perfect, I must be beautiful and perfect, too.”

- Audrey Peterman Audrey Peterman and her husband, Frank, are not your

typical conservationists. Almost 20 years ago, they took a road trip around the country to “discover America” and stumbled upon the National Park System. In Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, and Yosemite, what stood out to them as much as the beauty and diversity of nature was the homogeneity of their fellow park visitors, virtually all of whom were white. Since then, the Petermans have worked tirelessly to promote the parks to Americans of color and to emphasize the opportunities for enjoyment and stewardship of these special places.

The Petermans shared their story in their 2009 book, Legacy on the Land: A Black Couple Discovers Our National Inheritance and Tells Why Every American Should Care, and more recently in Audrey’s 2012 travel guide, Our True Nature: Finding a Zest for Life in the National Park System! They are among the founders of Keeping It Wild, a nonprofit whose mission is to encourage African Americans to spend more time in nature.

The Petermans’ company, Earthwise Productions, helps organizations like the Environmental Defense Fund and agencies like the National Park Service

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connect with communities of color. Audrey Peterman serves on the board of the National Parks Conservation Association and is chair of the Diversity Committee of the National Parks Promotion Council. She has won several awards for her work, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Environmental Hero Award in 2000. Learn more at LegacyontheLand.com.

What have your experiences in God’s creation meant to you?

Audrey Peterman: When I first laid eyes on Acadia National Park outside Bar Harbor, Maine, in 1995, I had a profound spiritual awakening. Driving into the park, I was mesmerized by the view of the dark green forest coming all the way down to the Atlantic, which lashed and thundered onto rocky shores. Gulls wheeled and called in a riotous cacophony as we drove up the steep, rock-faced Cadillac Mountain, climbing above the clouds, and finally emerging into a place of unearthly beauty such as I had never seen before. We were surrounded by a world so gorgeous and radiant it could hardly be believed. On one side, the sunlit ocean merged with the infinite sky. On the other side, the sun glinted on a dozen leafy offshore islands, turning the water into gold. Everywhere we looked were large swaths of blue and green.

At that moment I had the thought: “The same God who made all of this made me, and as it is beautiful and perfect, I must be beautiful and perfect, too.”

Since then I have seen myself as nothing but beautiful and perfect, and I see beauty and perfection in everything and in everyone I meet, because I know it to be an expression of God. When you have that personal experience of seeing God through his handiwork, life becomes a beautiful walk with him.

What do Christians most need to understand when it comes to care of God’s creation?

Peterman: The firmament has been here since the beginning of time. Humans are a very recent addition. Traveling through our National Parks gives me a relatively unique perspective on the long span of time and the effects that humans have on the planet. For example, in Bandelier National Monument in New Mexico, I climbed up into the caves inhabited by the descendants of Pueblo tribes that lived in the region 20,000 years ago, and I saw the minimal changes they made to the landscape. I slept 3,000 feet down in Grand Canyon National Park and met the descendants of Navajo people who’ve lived in the area more than 10,000 years, and I see how little they altered the natural world around them.

I’ve slogged through the swamp in Everglades National Park and felt acutely how it was formed from the first drops of water spilling down from Lake Okeechobee 5,000 years ago, while the Pharaohs were still building pyramids in Egypt.

But today the Bandelier area is better known as the site of Los Alamos National Laboratory, where we developed the nuclear bomb. The Colorado River that carved the magical Grand Canyon has been dammed and diverted so much that it is a specter of its former self, unable even to make it to the Gulf of California, where it historically emptied and continued to the Pacific Ocean. The Everglades system has been ditched, diked, and overdeveloped, and those of us working to help restore it are seeing only glacially slow progress.

Europeans arrived on this continent only a little over five centuries ago, and today every river and stream in America is polluted; the air is polluted, and more densely so in poorer communities; our food is chemically engineered to bring us a higher burden of fertilizer, pesticides, and toxins; and drug companies glibly offer us a steady barrage of “medications” with side effects that include death.

AUDREY PETERMAN

So I think that what Christians most need to understand is the urgency of the issue. Caring for our planetary home is not something we can do later—it’s something we must do now, or we will knowingly be contributing to our own demise. The planet will survive long after we have fouled the environment so much that it is incapable of sustaining human life as we know it today. We are the ones who will pay.

If you could change one thing about the environmental movement in this country (or globally) what would it be?

Peterman: The environmental movement in this country has been kept deliberately, artificially white. In 19 years of doing this work you wouldn’t believe how many influential, no doubt well-meaning white people have said to me, “Those people [of color] have so many survival issues—how can we get them to care?” while completely ignoring the thousands of us who are doing this work valiantly with little financial or other support from the well-funded mainstream groups or agencies. Which makes me ask often, “How did the environment get to be in the hands of environmentalists?” Because you would think anyone who aspires to “save the earth” would have a real appreciation for people and the fact that no one group can do it alone. So what I’d most like to see is for the walls to come down and for there to be true integration of the movement and a sharing of power and resources, recognizing that we’re not going to be sustainable otherwise.

Who do you most desire to reach out to in your work and why?

Peterman: I am most interested in reaching out to Americans of African, Asian, and Hispanic descent, those people who are not traditionally seen as caring about the environment. The “environmental” knowledge base in these communities is relatively low, although they are mostly the people who historically have had a close relationship with the land and with nature. The new language has effectively socialized it out of them and placed them on the sidelines.

For example, I once asked my mother-in-law, “So, what do you think about environmentalists?” At the time we were just getting started doing this work and identified ourselves as environmentalists.

“Oh, chile,” she said dismissively. “That’s just people who want to get money from the government.”

“Really? But don’t you think we have to care for nature?” we asked in consternation.

“Well, nature, that’s something else. We have to take care of nature, be-

cause we can’t breathe concrete,” she said emphatically.

But apart from people of color, I look for allies everywhere—in the supermarket, at the gas station, on the train, in the media, in conservation circles, in churches and schools, in business and civic groups. I want to be entirely indiscriminate, because this is a life-and-death issue for the entire human race.

“A sustainable gospel is one that can carry the hope of Jesus Christ to the ends of the earth, without destroying it in the process.”

- Stefan Moss Stefan Moss is the principal consultant at Solomon’s Minds, a sustainability c onsulting firm that specializes in the development of environmental education tools for businesses, schools, and faith-based organizations.

As a research scientist at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, he published a groundbreaking study on freshwater turtles in the Tennessee River, documenting the presence of persistent organic pollutants, flame retardants, and pesticides in their blood, an effort he hopes to duplicate with the endangered freshwater turtles in his native Bahamas. A man of many talents, he is also a singer-songwriter and the recipient of a Gospel Music Association Dove Award.

What do Christians most need to understand when it comes to care of God’s creation?

Stefan Moss: I think one of the common misconceptions regarding the environment is that, as Christians, we have no direct mandate to either care for or be intimately concerned about God’s creation. For some, environmental issues are a distraction and, in the context of traditional evangelical thought, a diversion from the focus of the Great Commission. However, we cannot separate our environmental impact from the advancement of the gospel, because we rely on Earth’s natural resources in the furtherance of the message. Every church that is built and every missionary trip taken has a footprint, in terms of land space, fuel usage, waste generation, and so on.

Through the years church leaders have become savvy in business and have maintained a presence in politics. They have become experts in branding,

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STEFAN MOSS marketing, and promotion. Churches have excelled in the arts with dramatic theatrical presentations and contemporary music that inspires, but when it comes to the care and protection of the environment, there is a noticeable lack of interest in many circles. What we need to understand is that a sustainable gospel is one that can carry the hope of Jesus Christ to the ends of the earth, without destroying it in the process.

Who are your most valuable allies when it comes to creation care?

Moss: Our most valuable allies in creation care are those who are engaged and informed of the relevant environmental issues that affect their communities and are seeking solutions. Often these individuals, businesses, or organizations are not aligned with our theological convictions and may not necessarily even expect that we are as interested in the issues as they are. However, even in the reality of our differences we can work together to achieve some common goals—namely, healthy communities and sustainable growth that doesn’t sacrifice the future for the present.

If you could change one thing about the environmental movement in this country (or globally) what would it be?

Moss: Diversity is a critical component of a healthy environment. In agriculture, for example, if only one crop is cultivated on a tract of land for too long, there is a risk of compromising the soil and depleting it of its nutrients. Similarly, the environmental movement in the United States has been viewed by some as lacking diversity and focusing on a certain demographic. In order to be sustainable, it must diversify so that fresh ideas and new stories can be told. As a black scientist and follower of Christ, I view the lack of diversity through both lenses.

I’ve attended many environmental conferences where I was one of only a few individuals of color in the audience.

Interestingly, many of the key environmental issues today disproportionately affect minority communities. There is room for growth in terms of environmental education and outreach. The Christian community can contribute much to the environmental conversation by promoting stewardship and a more holistic focus in its community outreach. There are many churches out there that are already doing this and engaging in activities such as planting gardens, organizing community cleanups, and much more. A balanced approach with spiritual, social, economic, and environmental underpinnings can increase our effectiveness as

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kingdom citizens in our goal of sharing the love of Christ with the world.

Who do you most desire to reach out to in your work and why?

Moss: I’m wide open in terms of outreach interests. As a professor, I am passionate about seeing my students gain an understanding of their role as agents of change in their respective career interests. I am also currently serving as resident scientist at Praise Academy, a K-12 school in Powder Springs, Ga., where, through a grant from the Environmental Education Alliance of Georgia, we have been able to develop an outdoor classroom where students can get into nature and learn more about local flora and fauna.

Recently, I began serving as Atlanta lead coordinator for Outdoor Afro, a national organization that seeks to reconnect African Americans to nature using recreational activities. My personal philosophy is that in order to create a healthy external environment, we must first begin with our own internal environment, pursuing ideas and thoughts that empower us and bring hope. When we are at peace and are able to think clearly, then we will begin making better decisions— not just individually but also collectively toward a more sustainable future.

“American society is in the middle of a paradigm shift, where racial equity and environmental protection are becoming more inextricably linked.”

- Marcelo Bonta Marcelo Bonta is the founder of the Environmental Professionals of Color and the Center for Diversity & the Environment (CDEinspires.org), where he works with leaders and environmental institutions to include diversity, equity, and inclusion in the foundation of their work. He is also an Environmental Leadership Program Senior Fellow and a TogetherGreen Conservation Fellow.

Growing up in Sacramento, Calif., with parents who were active with both the United Farm Workers and the civil rights movement, Bonta learned early to stand for justice. His mother, a Filipina immigrant, taught him to appreciate diversity and opened his eyes to the need to empower the powerless. His affin-

ity for living with wildlife and his passion for protecting nature led him to work on biodiversity conservation, land use, and policy issues early in his career, working for groups like the National Park Service, Defenders of Wildlife, and Massachusetts Audubon Society What do Christians most need to understand when it comes to care of God’s creation?

Bonta: God gifted us with his creation all around us— beautiful landscapes, air, water, land, animals, plants— and people (Genesis 1). I think it’s important for Christians to pray—to be thankful for the abundance he has provided us and to ask God what their role is in being responsible stewards of creation.

When I asked for—and opened myself to fully trusting in—God’s direction for my life, he pointed me towards starting a new organization, the Center for Diversity & the Environment, and guided me to protect his creation. I realized that we cannot as a society successfully protect nature and our environment unless we protect people as well. Hence, my definition of God’s creation includes animals, plants, habitats, and people, because we cannot separate the intersections or the reliance we have on each other. We are all linked in the web of creation, and I believe it is important for each of us to discover our niche and to utilize our God-given talents and gifts for taking care of his creation.

Who are your most valuable allies when it comes to creation care?

Bonta: People of color. With God’s grace, I started the Center for Diversity & the Environment in 2008 to be a vehicle for change. The organization serves to racially and ethnically diversify the US environmental movement by developing leaders, diversifying institutions, and building community. Mainstream environmental organizations in the US are anywhere from zero to 11 percent people of color; that’s a far cry from what is reflected in the general population, which is about 36 percent people of color and will grow to 50 percent by 2043, according to the US Census Bureau.

Meanwhile, numerous polls and surveys show overwhelming support for environmental issues among people of color. For example, a poll commissioned by the Nature Conservancy in 2009 showed that voters of color are concerned about global warming, pollution, and habitat loss at up to 20 percent higher rates than whites and are more willing to pay for solutions. The poll further concluded that “communities of color in America are some of the most dedicated supporters of conservation.”

In addition, diversity and the ability to bring together and engage diverse voices, experiences, approaches, and backgrounds have shown to be a key to innovation, which is what the environmental movement badly needs. Organizations and efforts led by people of color are at the forefront of environmental innovation. They often provide multiple benefits—integrating economic development and opportunity, health benefits, equity, and/or community empowerment with environmental protection.

For example, Green for All, founded by Van Jones, has helped shift the mindset from the idea that protecting the environment eliminates jobs to protecting the environment creates jobs (and in the process can lift people out of

MARCELO BONTA

poverty). The June Key Delta Community Center in Portland, Ore., created by an African American sorority (Delta Sigma Theta) alumni chapter, is one of the first sustainably constructed “living buildings” west of the Mississippi. Groups like Verde and Sustainable South Bronx are leading the way in creating sustainable neighborhoods. Growing Power, led by Will Allen, is redefining urban agriculture and what it means to grow your own food and lead a healthy lifestyle.

If you could change one thing about the environmental movement in this country (or globally) what would it be?

Bonta: When the environmental movement intentionally and meaningfully includes voices of all, especially uplifting the voices of the oppressed, they will not only start winning again, but the sky’s the limit in what they can achieve and how success will be defined.

Who do you most desire to reach out to in your work and why?

Bonta: Environmental leaders, people of color, and environmental funders.

American society is in the middle of a paradigm shift, where racial equity and environmental protection are becoming more inextricably linked. I have observed and experienced, especially over the past five years, a desire for environmental leaders and mainstream environmental groups to be more diverse, equitable, and inclusive. I also have observed environmental innovation stemming from efforts led by people of color, and social justice and organizations of color are creating programs and strategies to effectively address climate change and environmental protection.

Lastly, environmental funders, especially foundations, have a strong role to direct policies and practices by committing significant funds to efforts and projects that will create an environmentally protected society for all. The lines are blurring more everyday, and it’s exciting to be working at the forefront of helping mold a future environmental movement truly for all.❂

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Left: DJ Robinson protests hydraulic fracturing whenever and wherever he gets the chance. Here he is with his wife, Jillian, and dog, Gnome Chompsky, at the Kensington Kinetic Sculpture Derby in Philadelphia.

No Boom without Bust Against enormous odds, an activist fights fracking in his hometown

I

by Aaron Foltz

n many ways Williamsport, Pa., (pop. 29,304) is the perfect American city. Nestled into a river valley, it’s the town where Little League was born. The local high school team is called the Millionaires, harkening back to the days when Williamsport boasted numerous wealthy elites as citizens. Mountains provide a stunning backdrop to the city’s stone buildings, and American flags fly everywhere.

Williamsport is the type of place where you get confused about what year it is, until someone in a new car talking on an iPhone pulls alongside you. It’s wonderful.

But in 2008 Williamsport was in terminal decline and had been for years.

Like countless other former boomtowns, its residents had trickled away in search of better opportunities, and the town was shrinking.

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After years of living just down the river from Williamsport, skinning his knees on its playgrounds and going to concerts at its church fellowship halls, DJ Robinson moved to Philadelphia.

In 2009, Robinson returned to visit his family for the holidays and noticed things had changed in the place he called home. People were buzzing. New faces populated his old haunts. Large trucks barreled down the main street. “When you see Halliburton trucks running through your town,” says Robinson, “you think ‘Yeah, something’s up here.’”

Talking with friends in the area, Robinson learned the new regional vocabulary: “Marcellus Shale,” “natural gas harvesting,” “hydraulic fracturing”

(aka “fracking”), and—most importantly—“jobs.” Friends unemployed for years spoke of their new jobs with pride. Family members and close friends were launching out and starting their own businesses to capitalize on the economic activity. But something was missing from the picture—a clear and credible assessment of the costs. Robinson decided he needed to know more.

“I started researching fracking during Lent in 2009,” he explains. “Spending an hour or two a day just reading articles, looking up information, just trying to see what was going on. To see what was happening. I used it as a spiritual discipline.”

What Robinson, a Bloomsburg University graduate well versed in the history of Pennsylvania, found didn’t surprise him. Pennsylvania has a long history of using natural resources to fuel economic growth. The nation’s first commercially drilled oil well called the Keystone State home. Williamsport became one of the most prosperous cities in the United States due to a timber boom in the late 19th century. Anthracite coal mined in Pennsylvania fueled foundries across the East Coast. Few states have a richer history of natural resource harvesting.

And very few other states have paid such a high price. Pennsylvania has the third highest number of Superfund sites, after New Jersey and California. Dangerous working conditions have taken their toll on many Pennsylvanians, and great expanses of northern Pennsylvania bear the scars of natural resource exploitation. Mountains stripped by clear-cut logging now stand hollow from mining. Rivers and streams that once teemed with life are now choked by poisonous runoff.

Boomtowns have collapsed into ghost towns. Centralia, 56 miles southeast of Williamsport, is a testament to the nightmare of environmental exploitation: An abandoned town smolders from a coal mine fire that started in the 1960s and is expected to seethe for hundreds of years to come.

Robinson remembered all of this as he researched hydraulic fracturing.

Beneath the positive stories of economic development and national energy independence, he discovered a ticking time bomb in articles about groundwater contamination, videos of flammable tap water, legal decisions preventing communities from banning hydraulic fracturing from the land miles beneath them, and data linking increases in seismic activity with the process. He felt overwhelmed.

The data looked catastrophic, and people’s stories—in spite of the glow of economic opportunity—were worse.

DJ’s Top 10

The 40 days of Lent came and passed, but his time in the desert motivated Things you can do to make a Robinson to begin to work difference: for justice. He protested outside large corporate meetU Educate yourself about the ings. He supported friends process. who shut down roads to ~ Educate your community. fracking wells. A large photo W Don't trust that the

of him shouting at the govgovernment is going to do ernor of Pennsylvania apanything about it. peared on the home page e Get involved. Join someone of the Philadelphia Inquirwho is doing something. er’s website. × Resist the urge to give up.

But fighting for better stewardship of God’s creOrganizations you can ation in his backyard proved partner with: to be exhausting. Relationships became frayed with ? Marcellus Shale Earth First friends who were benefitting ? Shalefield Organizing from the natural gas indusCommittee try. Standing against the ? The Shadbush Collective industry that is bankrolling ? Protecting Our Waters the presents under the tree ? Food and Water Watch tends to make the Christmas holidays an awkward affair.

His frequent reminders to loved ones living downstream from massive fracking operations to get their water tested irritated some folks, who stopped returning his calls.

Support from faith communities waxes and wanes. While Robinson initially had an easy time organizing friends at his church and getting individuals to show up at big protests in Philadelphia, protests fizzled after Marcellus Shale Coalition meetings concluded, and congregational participation began to fade. The same was true of many churches working for justice against hydraulic fracturing. Faith communities in the areas affected the most were not eager to take on the natural gas industry either. Many explicitly supported the development of hydraulic fracturing operations in their regions, which strikes Robinson as odd.

“In the same churches where you’ll have a lot of gas workers going, you’ll have people working to get clean water for people in places like Africa. People have gone and done service projects in areas without clean water, and they come home and say things like, ‘Oh my gosh, their water is dirty!’ You could go and talk to people in Susquehanna County and find out that it’s right here, too. It’s nuts.”

The natural gas industry appears to be winning on the political front as well. In February, Governor Corbett signed an executive order overturning a moratorium on fracking in state forests and parks. Now companies with gas wells adjacent to public lands are able to leech the chemicals right from under public land, disturbing shale and leaving dangerous fluids in the ground behind. Nearly all of the gubernatorial candidates for Pennsylvania support hydraulic fracturing in some form. It’s unlikely that substantial measures to roll back the expansion of hydraulic fracturing operations would be put into place, even if a Democratic governor were elected in Pennsylvania.

There are still many loopholes and exemptions for the natural gas industry at the federal level, endangering communities around the country. It is not likely that governmental support of hydraulic fracturing will end soon. Politicians sid-

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Small farms dot the landscape around the town of Dryden, N.Y.

ing with the natural gas industry preach about the alleged energy security that comes from natural gas harvesting. In Washington’s current climate, it is more realistic to platform on the expansion of domestic energy harvesting rather than the curbing of energy consumption. These are hard political realities that Christian environmental stewards face. It is hard for Robinson and his Christian friends who yearn to protect God’s creation to see hope in the fight.

Robinson says he’s learned to “never give up hope” in spite of overwhelming odds. Countless stories throughout the Bible tell of good things happening in impossible circumstances.

Though the odds seem insurmountable, Robinson says that plenty still fight to end fracking because “we shouldn’t want to see people, animals, and the environment devastated because of unsustainable lifestyle choices.”

In view of the cycles of boom and bust that pock Pennsylvania’s history, it is hard to envision an end to the exploitation of natural resources and to environmental degradation.

Individuals who live in the communities most affected by irresponsible natural resource harvesting end up paying the price long after the money is taken out from under them.

But praying and reading the Scriptures has lead Robinson to believe that a new future is possible, if Christians are willing to fight for it.

A recent grad, Aaron Foltz was a Sider Scholar at Palmer Theological Seminary. He lives with his wife in Philadelphia, Pa.

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DAVID VS. GOLIATH The fracking industry has been widely deregulated at the federal level—with exemptions from key provisions of the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the Emergency Planning, and Community Right to Know Act, among others. And too often, state regulation of the practice is lax, with state regulators unable or unwilling to crack down.

As fracking and drilling edges closer and closer to the places where people live, work, and play, communities in the frontlines of the fracking rush have been forced to defend themselves from oil and gas industry abuse.

In communities across the country, people are standing up to this powerful industry, passing bans and limits on fracking and defending their right to do so in court. And when the oil and gas industry tries to bully communities into backing down, communities are fighting back—and winning.

Earthjustice, a public interest law organization, has been tracking these fights and, in some cases, joining the court fight.

Here’s a quick look at some of the good news that’s out there in the fight against fracking.

New York In 2011, the town board of Dryden voted to clarify that oil and gas development—including fracking—would not be permitted within town borders under the town’s zoning ordinance.

The town was one of the first communities in New York State to do so. Six weeks later, Dryden was sued by a billionaire-owned oil and gas company. With the help of Earthjustice, the town has won two rounds in court, and its ban remains in effect.

In recent years, more than 170 communities in New York State have joined Dryden in passing bans or moratoriums on fracking (watch Dryden: The Small Town that Changed the Fracking Game, a beautiful 11-minute video at Earthjustice.org/fracking).

Pennsylvania When Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett—the recipient of nearly $1 million in campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry—signed a pro-fracking, anti-community law known as Act 13 in 2012, communities fought back.

A group of seven municipalities sued to overturn a portion of the law that sought to strip communities of their right to use local zoning laws to limit oil and gas development and associated industry infrastructure. In a landmark 2013 court victory, Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court sided with the municipalities, handing the oil and gas industry a big defeat.

Ohio The City of Munroe Falls has a longstanding law on the books outlawing oil and gas drilling in certain sections of the city. When an oil and gas company ignored the city’s law and began operations in a residential neighborhood, the city sued to uphold its law, winning in

the lower court, but losing the subsequent appeal. Both sides are awaiting a final decision by the state Supreme Court.

Colorado In July 2012, Longmont City Council passed a set of regulations governing fracking within city limits. And in November 2012, voters approved an all-out ban of the practice. The Colorado Oil and Gas Association is suing to overturn both efforts.

Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper, who drank a glass of fracking fluid with a group of oil and gas industry executives and described it as “ritual like,” is joining the industry lawsuit. Undeterred by powerful forces aligned against them, voters in four more Colorado communities—Lafayette, Broomfield, Boulder, and Fort Collins—placed local measures to ban fracking on the ballot in the November 2013 election. Community members were outspent by 40 to 1. In spite of this, all four ballot measures passed.

California In 2013, California Governor Jerry Brown signed a controversial bill allowing fracking to proceed in the state without an environmental review. Concerned communities in the state have started to take matters into their own hands.

In February 2014, the City of Los Angeles unanimously voted to approve a moratorium on fracking and other unconventional oil extraction techniques, becoming the largest city in the country to pass such a measure.

Carson and Santa Cruz Counties have approved moratoriums on fracking as well. Similar actions by additional communities are expected, because California law allows municipalities to adopt oil and gas industry regulations as well as to prohibit the industry through zoning.

Texas In oil-and-gas-friendly Texas, communities are growing weary of the industry’s creeping presence into residential areas. In December 2013, the City of Dallas approved a strict zoning ordinance that prohibits wells less than 1,500 feet from homes, in what amounted to a de-facto fracking ban in the city.

An effort to ban the practice is underway in the City of Denton, home to 120,000 residents and 270 gas wells.

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31

The Whole Creation Groans Does gendering the earth help or hurt the environment?

by Sarah Withrow King

I

n October 2012, Bolivian President Evo Morales signed what has come to be known as the “Mother Earth Law,” which mandates that public and private entities in Bolivia shift how they conceive of and cooperate to use the earth’s resources. The law addresses an array of human interaction with creation and outlines a legal framework with a holistic view of the physical, emotional, and spiritual well being of created beings as its foundation. The new law was received with mixed reviews both within and beyond Bolivia.

But action to alleviate the climate crisis in Bolivia is imperative. Bolivia is responsible for less than 0.1 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions, but the nation bears the full impact of climate change, including water shortages, plagues of biblical proportions, forest fires, crop failures, and wild weather changes. In 2007 flooding reached a 25-year high at a cost of $400 million, displacing 340,000 people and killing at least 40. Even so, Bolivia is still entrenched in the growth-as-success model of development, which perpetuates and lends credibility to climate-damaging initiatives and industries, such as mining.1

human and nonhuman creation. It is impossible not to read the law and imagine that this is what God meant by “dominion,” rather the abusive interpretation we have created.

But will it do any good?

Earth as mother?

When I was growing up, the concept of earth as “mother” seemed hippie and pagan. But it’s an image found in the Hebrew and Apocryphal scriptures.3 God forms the first creature out of soil (Genesis 2:7) just as God forms the psalmist in the mother’s womb (Psalm 139:15). Images of the earth as generative are replete in the book of Isaiah: Jesus’ lineage is rooted in shoots and branches (Isaiah 11:1), and on the day God wipes away tears from every face, “the earth will give birth to those long dead” (Isaiah 26:19).

Prior to the scientific revolution, the concept of earth as mother was central to European thought. Earth was feminized both as a provider and nurturer, but the “other side” of nature was also feminized—the wild, unpredictable,

Bolivia's "Mother Earth Law" is an attempt to reverse the centuries-long objectification of the earth.

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devastating side that brought storms and chaos. During the scientific and industrial revolutions, the western world began to move towards dominating and subduing this unpredictable planet and a new ethic of mastery over the elements ruled.4 The result has been centuries of anthropocentric thought, word, and deed. [White, male] human flourishing is pursued at all costs, with every “other” being un-personified and commodified. And since [white, male] humans are the only living beings made in the image of God (also white, male), we have lost sight of the simple fact that “the earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it.”

Some eco-feminist scholars argue that portraying the earth as mother historically served a protective function that limited the extent of human devastation, since “…one does not readily slay a mother, dig into her entrails for gold

Walk Softly on the Earth by Caitlin Ng

Morales and his government hold these present-day economic realities in tension with the traditional indigenous respect for life, or vivir bien (living well).

And while most environmental protection laws simply stem the tide of destruction through regulation, Morales’ Mother Earth Law aims to subvert the green economy by placing power in the hands of local communities and reforming organizations, identifying natural resources not as “commodities, but as sacred gifts of Mother Earth,”2 outlining specific steps requisite to striking a balance between the needs of human inhabitants and the limits of earth’s ability to provide resources, and compelling the state to develop, implement, and monitor systems to ensure the responsible use of resources. It is a wildly idealistic piece of legislation that outlines a utopian vision for a symbiotic relationship between

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or mutilate her body, although commercial mining would soon require that.”5 This is a naïve and narrow view of mothers’ bodies. One only needs to think of “comfort women” maintained for the Japanese, “joy divisions” for the Nazis, and rape as a way of life for Sudanese and other war refugees to realize that mothers’ bodies, particularly if they are poor or nonwhite, are neither venerated nor protected.

Gender devaluation and “Mother Earth” According to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, in 2012 women working full-time jobs in the United States earned slightly less than 81 percent of men’s salaries.6 Though a marked improvement from the 58 cents women made to every dollar made by a man in 1966,7 it will still take decades to achieve full pay equality at the current rate. This gender gap in wages is attributed to a few phenomena, including the concept of gender devaluation.

Gender devaluation is manifested as: (1) not paying women as much as men for doing the same work; (2) perceiving different levels of prestige in the same position when it is held by a woman versus a man; and (3) not seeing value in work that has been feminized, such as reproductive labor, child-raising, and elder/child/nursing care. The three are also interrelated. Women earn less than men not only because of pay differences in the same job but also because women disproportionately work at jobs that are less valued.8 Gendered

this planet, we will view it in a less exploitative light.

A better way Humans can see God through the created world (Romans 1:18-20). And the whole creation is groaning, waiting to be set free from bondage (Romans 8:2122). I wonder if creation is groaning because we humans are so dense. We keep trying to bind God and creation in gendered ways that are sometimes well-meaning but ultimately unhelpful. Creation can be groaning in pain because of human sin and exploitation, but creation might also be doing a bit of a facepalm, asking, “When are these people going to get it?”

Revelation 21 and 22 tell us that God’s “kin_dom”16 is community without pain, violence, killing, or sin. That place is not “up there” in a magical sky world of fluffy clouds and harps. The New Jerusalem will come from God and be “among mortals.” A river will flow through the city, living water, nourishing all life, a gift from the body of God to our bodies and the body of Christ. “The vision of the new Jerusalem depicts an earth in which God, human communities, and nature are reunited. No longer are these dimensions of life split against each other and separated…God is freely accessible to all, and all of the earth is holy.”17 This vision parallels the vivir bien: “harmonious encounter between all beings, components, and resources of Mother Earth. It means living in complementarity, in harmony and balance with Mother Earth and societies, equity and

Does it not stand to reason that a heavy reliance on imagery of the earth as mother, as a woman, will encourage its human occupants to devalue the planet in the same way that we see women’s labor devalued in the workplace? Perhaps if we de-gender this planet, we will view it in a less exploitative light. assumptions about work are deeply embedded in organizational structures9 and transferred from generation to generation through both familial and social channels.10 This phenomenon is not limited to the United States. A survey of nine nations found that in all nine, women were substantially overrepresented in clerical and low-prestige jobs and substantially underrepresented in jobs perceived as medium or high prestige.11 In other words, the contributions of women to a productive, industrialized society have been significantly and systematically undervalued, underappreciated, and under-rewarded. Women are paid less, respected less, and expected to do jobs that men do not want to do. Women who have children, who carry the mantel of “mother,” pay an extra cost.12 And we have not even addressed workplace sexual harassment and assault, rape, sex trafficking, and the myriad other ways that women’s bodies are devalued and devastated by men.

The Mother Earth Law, informed by and infused with indigenous knowledge, is one attempt to reverse the centuries-long objectification of the earth.

It reverently defines “Mother Earth” in terms reminiscent of a pre-industrialized age, an “undivided community of all living systems and living beings, interrelated, interdependent, and complementary, sharing a common destiny.”13 It is a lovely thought, but is it going to achieve its goals? Does it not stand to reason that a heavy reliance on imagery of the earth as mother, as a woman, will encourage its human occupants to devalue the planet in the same way that we see women’s labor devalued in the workplace?14 Sociologists have found that “in the absence of occupational segregation, at least some of the basis for genderbased devaluation would be substantially eroded.”15 Perhaps if we de-gender

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solidarity and removing inequalities and the mechanisms of domination. Living well is among us, living well with our surroundings and living well himself.”18 The vivir bien should be a familiar concept to Christians, because Jesus is the vivir bien. Jesus embodies vivir bien as the bastard child of an unwed, backwoods mother. Jesus embodies vivir bien at the well with a Samaritan woman.

Jesus embodies vivir bien at the table with tax collectors and prostitutes. Jesus embodies vivir bien in the desert with the devil. Jesus embodies vivir bien at the pool of Bethsaida and in the house of Simon the leper. Jesus embodies vivir bien in the garden with a traitor, cowardly disciples, and Roman soldiers. Jesus embodies vivir bien on a cross next to thieves. Jesus is the living well. Through Jesus, all things are reconciled to each other and to God. Through Jesus, all things are made new. Through Jesus, who embodied God’s creative, life-giving love, God’s creation will be made whole again.

So what should Jesus followers do? Although the gendered language in the Mother Earth Law may do more harm than good, Christians should support the law and other efforts like it to reframe the human relationship with the rest of God’s embodied creation in a symbiotic and cooperative light. Let the cleansing waters of Jesus flow through us, and let streams of mercy connect us to an ocean of love for the Creator and creation.

(Editor’s note: endnotes for this article are posted at PRISMmagazine.org/endnotes.)

Sarah Withrow King doesn’t like to be put into boxes, but given her love of wheatgrass, Oregon, justice, and church community she may qualify as a hippie vegan Jesus feminist. She blogs at SarahWithrowKing.com.

THE POWER OF PINEAPPLES

Boosting jobs and health in Sierra Leone

by Robert Kagbo

I

n the African coastal nation of Sierra Leone, memories of a brutal 11-year civil war still linger as the country continues to work to rebuild its infrastructure, its people, and their livelihoods. Though more than 10 years have passed since the war’s end, the devastating effects are still tangible, most notably in the country’s extreme levels of poverty, food scarcity, and stagnant economic growth.

Having grown up in a poor family in rural Sierra Leone, I know all too well the many struggles that my people have had to endure. From malnutrition and HIV/AIDS to illiteracy and lack of clean water sources, it’s no sur-

Cultivating cash

Once pineapples are harvested, World Hope International organizes centrally located pick-up points, where farmers are paid for their produce. The high market demand combined with low supply means farming cooperatives see substantial gross revenue generated from the pineapples—up to $52,000 per harvest.

prise that Sierra Leone currently ranks 177 out of 187 countries worldwide on the Human Development Index, a measure of life expectancy, literacy, education, standard of living, and quality of life.

Despite the grim story this ranking tells, there is hope for my country— hope found in Sierra Leone’s largest industry—agriculture. By leveraging the land’s rich, fertile soil and natural resources, Sierra Leone can create a more robust and stable economy. At World Hope International (WHI), the USbased Christian relief and development organization where I am the director of agriculture, we have launched an innovative new agriculture program involving pineapples that is designed to grow Sierra Leone’s agricultural export base and provide smallholder farmers with jobs and year-round income.

Why is this so important? Employing nearly 75 percent of working Sierra Leoneans and making up close to 50 percent of the country’s GDP, agriculture plays a crucial role in Sierra Leone’s economy. Yet the majority of Sierra Leone’s poor live in rural areas—where agriculture and smallholder farming are the primary sources of livelihood. The plight of these farmers worsens during Sierra Leone’s “hungry months”—the four-month season between harvests when farming families often eat only one meal per day.

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A hand-up, not a hand-out

Because of pineapples’ year-round harvest and high market prices, large-scale pineapple farming is attractive to nearly all Sierra Leonean farmers. The poorest farming families, however, lack the capital to invest in the resources required for planting. WHI bridges this gap between opportunity and capacity by providing the initial hand-up necessary to get farmers started, covering the cost of all training, agricultural inputs, irrigation, and machinery.

Over the course of multiple successful harvest seasons, farmers will gain the means to invest back into the project. Just as they were provided with an initial hand-up, farmers’ reinvested resources help provide future farming cooperatives with the handup they need to begin planting. WHI requires the reinvestment in order to create a sustainable cycle of farmers supporting other farmers.

With their high market value and ability to be harvested yearround, pineapples will play a key role in combatting and ultimately eliminating the hungry season. Overall, the program aims to introduce to smallholder farmers the concept of cultivating pineapples to be commercially exported (a first for Sierra Leone!)—creating an estimated 2,500 long-term and sustainable agricultural jobs, as well as year-round incomes for farmers.

Through the “Planting Pineapples, Harvesting Hope” program, farmers have been working for many months now, preparing the land and readying all the supplies, and the first planting took place at the end of May. The project is launching with 10 co-ops and will scale up an additional 10 every harvest season. Eventually, WHI will work with 160 villages to enhance local pineapple farming by training and educating farmers to grow pineapples on a massive scale—in large farming plots or in their own villages—and improve their local institutional capacities to a level that will earn them steady income and jobs. Moreover, farmers will have access to a direct buyer and guaranteed market for their fruit. Africa Felix Juice (AFJ), the first manufacturer to export significant value-added goods from Sierra Leone since the end of the country’s civil war, will purchase pineapples grown by these smallholder farmers and produce juice concentrate to be sold all over the world. The result is a win-win for all.

The best thing about the pineapple program is the span of its influence. Families, villages, and future generations will reap the benefits of pineapples through more stable communities and a stronger economy. As Sierra Leoneans look to restore our country from its broken past, pineapples offer hope for a fruitful future.

(WHI’s pineapples project is made possible by GIZ, CordAid, and many other caring donors to World Hope International.)

Learn more and watch a short video about WHI’s pineapple work in Sierra Leone at WorldHope.org/pineapples.

Dr. Robert Kagbo is the director of agriculture at World Hope International. A native Sierra Leonean with a PhD in agronomy and soil science, he has extensive experience in agriculture in West Africa.

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Empowering Women in Agriculture to Help Eradicate Hunger

by Jo Anne Lyon

The United Nations named 2014 the “International Year of Family Farming”1 in an effort to highlight the potential that farming families have to eradicate hunger, preserve natural resources, and promote sustainable development.

In addition, the Obama administration has been pushing to end hunger and malnutrition in Africa through initiatives that leverage private investments in agriculture such as Feed the Future,2 the US Government's global hunger and food security initiative that focuses on small farms and women, and the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition,3 an international effort to en-

Photos courtesy of interMotion Media

courage private investment in agriculture and nutrition programs.

With 842 million hungry people in the world, 98 percent of whom come from developing countries,4 we must leave no stone unturned when it comes to finding a solution to ending world hunger. And as it turns out, one important solution lies in the hands of women.

There’s no denying that women are very powerful individuals. In the United States alone, women’s participation in the labor force accounted for almost 58 percent of workers 16 years of age and older5 in 2012, and today women are leading such major entities as Yahoo!, IBM, and PepsiCo. Furthermore, women have traditionally been the key decision-makers in the home when it comes to food, family, health, and shelter.

So how exactly can women fight world hunger? The World Food Programme reports6 that if women farmers had the same access to resources as men, the number of hungry in the world

The World Food Programme reports that if women farmers had the same access to resources as men, the number of hungry in the world could be reduced by up to 150 million.

Empowering women in agriculture now is vital to improving the livelihood of future generations.

could be reduced by up to 150 million. Empowering women in agriculture now is vital to improving the livelihood of future generations.

Sierra Leone bears the third highest maternal mortality rate in the world—one in every eight Sierra Leonean women risks dying during pregnancy or childbirth.7 Yet it is women in rural areas who are taking matters into their own hands, changing these numbers, and actively providing for themselves and their families’ health needs. One way they’re doing this is through World Hope International’s pineapple program. Women in Sierra Leone recognize that growing a year-round crop provides year-round income, which in turn means year-round spending money for food, health, and education.

Essential to this program is that women farmers are given equal access to all tools, trainings, and agricultural outputs, ensuring they are equally as able as the men in their communities to earn income from the sale of pineapples. As women are more likely than men to use their resources to improve the well-being of their family and community,8 the money women farmers earn from the pineapples is consistently invested into nutrition, education, healthcare, and savings. As a result, WHI’s farmer associations, 68 percent of whom are women, reap year-round food and job security from the program.

What we learn from Sierra Leone is that simple steps like providing women in agriculture with equal access to resources and opportunities go a long way towards increasing food security and reducing poverty.

Let’s celebrate the “International Year of Family Farming” by tapping into the power of women to help fight world hunger!

(Editor’s note: endnotes for this article are posted at PRISMmagazine.org/endnotes.)

The founder of World Hope International, Jo Anne Lyon is the first woman to be elected General Superintendent for the Wesleyan Church USA.

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Deep Con When an artist sinks his treasure The gifts that artist Jason deCaires Taylor brings to the world are as unique and varied as his stunning sculptures.

Among them is his demonstration that we can enter even fragile environments without leaving destruction in our wake. We can relish and gain from our interactions with nature and offer something in return.

In this century, when our carbon footprint is increas-

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ingly poisonous to the planet, the idea that the human portion of God’s creation can be life-giving is a welcome and much-needed message.

Taylor articulates this by introducing the spectacular diversity of humanity—in the form of life-sized casts of real individuals from around the world—to shallow seas where they become neighbors to algae, sponges, coral, sea urchins, turtles, and fish. Over time, the human forms—made from a mix of marine-grade cement, sand, and micro-

nnections in shallow seas, beauty emerges silica, reinforced with fiberglass rebar—slowly evolve from concrete into living artificial reefs.

While making playful but poignant commentary on what humanity misses out on when we fail to protect biodiversity, many of Taylor’s sculptures simultaneously incorporate habitat spaces designed to attract and nurture various forms of marine life. And by attracting human visitors, they give the world’s over-fished and over-touristed natural reefs a chance

to repair and regenerate.

These photographs of Taylor’s work say far more than words can.

Go to UnderwaterSculpture.com to learn about snorkeling and diving opportunities at the sculpture sites in Mexico and the West Indies, where the diversity of God’s creation both above and below sea level come into gorgeous, mysterious harmony.

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This page, top: Bankers, Cancun/Isla Mujeres, Mex. Bottom: Live model and a look at how the sea acts upon the sculptures over time. This piece is part of The Silent Evolution in Cancun.

Opposite page: more figures from The Silent Evolution.

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Inheritance, Punta Nizuc, Mex. (top left); the artist in his studio in the Canary Islands (bottom left); Inertia, Punta Nizuc (top right); Man on Fire, Cancun (center bottom); The Gardener, Punta Nizuc (bottom right).

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Anger Issues with God

BY MISTY IRONS

Fist-shaking as an act of faith A few years ago I cleared a hurdle in my spiritual life when I finally acknowledged that I have anger issues with God. My anger does not center on any dramatic event such as the loss of a job or a loved one. I have simply had lots of disappointments in my life: times when I felt I deserved better, times when things didn’t turn out the way I wanted, times when I found myself isolated at exactly the moment I needed support. On the outside my life doesn’t appear to be anything to complain about, but on the inside I’m prone to go through seasons of unhappiness, seasons when I feel angry with God. As an elder’s wife and leader of a women’s Bible study at our church, I have tried to talk more openly about this with other Christians, and it’s interesting to see how people react when I bring it up. Usually there is immediate discomfort and a knee-jerk denial. “Oh no, I’m not angry with God. Sure, I feel hurt sometimes. Sometimes I have questions about why God’s doing this or that in my life.

But anger? Not me.”

I’m not talking about a feeling that is easy to identify or that hovers on the surface. This is something that we push deep down and usually aren’t even conscious of. When we’re feeling fine, we tell ourselves we don’t harbor any negative feelings toward God. But I’ve noticed for myself that as soon as God takes something away from me that I really value, the anger surfaces almost immediately. Why is that? Where does it come from? It’s as if it is lurking just beneath the superficial spiritual covering, and I don’t even know it is there until the right situation chases it out.

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I can think of a couple of reasons to explain why we may have trouble acknowledging our anger issues with God. The first is that it is rarely if ever expressed in liturgical language. I’ve never heard a sermon that directly addressed anger at God. At most a prayer of complaint might be read from the Psalms, but there is never an expression of anger. Maybe it’s not appropriate to express that emotion during, say, a worship service, but if anger is never acknowledged among Christians at all, then it makes it hard to recognize that sometimes your heart does go there. Perhaps that’s why most people I’ve talked to balk at the idea.

The second reason is that many people deem it theologically incorrect, even blasphemous. When I worshiped at my church last Sunday, we rejoiced together over the truth that God is good and right, full of mercy and compassion, his loving kindness better than life. And that’s all true, of course. If any of those things don’t seem true, the misunderstanding must be on our side. That’s why feeling anger at God is a scary emotion. It’s something you would experience only if you felt that God has wronged you, which theologically flies in the face of all those cherished truths about his love and goodness. It’s like crossing a line. So you do your best to suppress, deny, or forget about it.

But there was once a righteous man named Job who suffered terribly, and when he was brought to his knees he poured out not only his complaint against God but also his anger.

For he crushes me with a tempest, and multiplies my wounds without cause; he will not let me get my breath, but fills me with bitterness. If it is a contest of strength, he is the strong one! If it is a matter of justice, who can summon him?

–Job 9:17-19 Does it seem good to you to oppress, to despise the work of your hands and favor the schemes of the wicked? Do you have eyes of flesh? Do you see as humans see?

–Job 10:3-4 We know the Scriptures teach us objective truths about who God is and how we ought to respond to him. But these passages in Job are recording another type of scriptural truth: the subjective truth of how the human heart experiences suffering. Because when you’re confused and hurting, sometimes God can feel oppressive. God is holy, powerful, and in control. You are sinful, weak, and helpless.

How can you raise a protest against him? How can you demand the answers from him that you crave?

Like Job, you see yourself as bullied and cornered and wronged by God, which makes you angry, which also makes you scared, because you wonder if you are teetering on the brink of sinful rebellion. And yet surely the Bible records these complaints of Job for this very reason: to assure us that other saints have gone before us expressing these same, seemingly forbidden emotions. Job, one of the most righteous men spoken of in Scripture, traveled those dark paths before us. In the end, his faith not only survived but was even strengthened and blessed.

Now what?

Let’s say you acknowledge you have anger issues with God. Now what? When it comes to human relationships, the biblical instruction is to confront a brother or sister to resolve your anger. “Do not let the sun go down on your anger,” Paul says in Ephesians 4:26. This is because unresolved anger is a barrier that needs to be dealt with in order to be at peace with another human being.

You try to do something similar with God, but since you don’t know how to resolve such hugely complex heart issues with him, you don’t want to express them. How often do you express feelings of anger to any authority figure in your life? To your father? To your boss? If you’re like me, you don’t want to risk the blowback. If there are consequences to being honest with powerful authority figures, how much more with the Almighty?

But relating to God is different from relating to human beings. It took me a while to realize this, because hiding my negative emotions from people is a deeply instinctive reaction for me. But God is different, because whatever negative feelings you have toward him, God already knows how you feel. God also knew what set of circumstances would make you angry before they happened, and he may have even shielded you from something worse happening. In other words, God is so far ahead of the game that nothing you are feeling is a surprise to him.

So God already knows the ins and outs of your heart, and at some level you’ve known this to be true all along. The real challenge may be that you’re the one who can’t face your own anger. The distance you feel between yourself and God may be something of an illusion; the real distance is between yourself and your own heart. You have to find your way to the truth of your own feelings, confront them at the core, and then bring them before God. You need to tell him what he already knows, for your own benefit more than for his.

When your heart is hurting, you may not feel ready to peer inside and deal

with all that is there. It is a journey, and journeys take time. But it may help to realize that unlike with human beings, you don’t need to have all your feelings resolved with God in order to have a relationship with him. With human beings you have one emotional channel of connection with them, and if that one channel is blocked up with negative feelings, the whole relationship is blocked. That’s why the passage in Ephesians 4:26 tells us not to let the sun go down on our anger when that anger is directed toward other people.

But God is a complex being capable of maintaining a complex relationship with you. God knows the end from the beginning and had all your days recorded in the book of life before you were even born, so God can handle the changing tides of your human emotions on a daily basis. You can have unresolved anger and still pray to him. You can know that God’s everlasting arms are still beneath you even if you’re confused about your feelings toward God. God isn’t confused about how he feels about you. Your anger does not block him because all his channels of connection with you have been cleansed in the blood of Christ.

Angry saints When you are ready to express your anger to God, quite often it begins with the word “why.” The saints of old asked why. They did not shy away from confronting God with their hurts and disillusionment.

Why is light given to one in misery, and life to the bitter in soul?

—Job (Job 3:20) O Lord, why have you mistreated this people? Why did you ever send me?

—Moses (Exod. 5:22) Why, O Lord, do you stand far off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?

—David (Psalm 10:1) There is relief in bringing your honest feelings before God. In many ways it is an act of faith. You are setting aside any pretense of piety and being truthful. You are asking God to build a relationship with you that is authentic and personal.

Abraham, Job, Moses, and David all spoke to God with emotional honesty, and all of them are commended in Scripture for walking closely with him. Abraham was “a friend of God” (James 2:23). Job was “blameless and upright” (Job 1:1; 2:3).

David was “a man after God’s own heart” (Acts 13:22). And God spoke to Moses “face to face, just as a man speaks to his friend” (Exod. 33:11).

Whenever a spiritual crisis pushes me to the point where I am angry with God, I tend to feel a sense of doom, as if I’ve come to the end of my rope and now there’s no hope for me. The reality is that such moments have always been a turning point, like clearing a hurdle that was blocking me from moving ahead.

I’d been afraid of my feelings and afraid that God would reject me because of them, but once I confront and deal with those fears I suddenly discern a flicker of hope. Maybe because I’ve stopped deciding ahead of time what God is and isn’t willing to do for me or what behavior he is and isn’t willing to tolerate in me.

It’s not that the problems or angry emotions evaporate overnight. Rather, I gain confidence that I can walk with God through whatever mess I’m in and discover the emotional freedom of being with a friend who knows me better than I know myself.

Misty Irons is a Bible study teacher, part-time editorial assistant, and homeschooler who blogs at MoreMusingsOn.blogspot.com. She lives in Northridge, Calif., with her husband and three children.

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We're here to take back the city!

Urban Church Plant(ation)s

by Christena Cleveland “If you are preparing to do [urban ministry] and you’ve never had a non-white mentor, you are not an [urban minister], you are a colonialist.”

– adapted from Soong-chan Rah1 Last week I had the honor of meeting with a group of urban pastors who have devoted their lives to serving Buffalo, N.Y. Discussing the challenges they encountered while doing urban ministry in a predominantly non-white, socioeconomically oppressed2 city, the black, Hispanic, and Asian pastors with whom I met raised a familiar issue, one that I’ve heard and witnessed all over the country.

Buffalo, like many other urban centers, has faced a shrinking population and declining business interest for decades.3 But things rapidly changed in December 2013, when NY Governor Andrew Cuomo announced the Buffalo Bil-

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lion Investment Development Plan4 in which he pledged to invest $1 billion in Buffalo, with the goal of transforming the beleaguered city into a hightech center. Not surprisingly, suburban folks who long ago abandoned the city are suddenly eager to return and participate in (cash in on?) the urban renaissance.

This is how capitalism works in the US empire.

The church as empire The urban pastors reported that, in the wake of Governor Cuomo’s announcement, many predominantly white, wealthy suburban churches in the area have expressed renewed interest in Buffalo’s urban center. But rather than connecting with the urban pastors who have been doing ministry among the oppressed in Buffalo for years, rather than looking for ways to support the indigenous leaders who are already in place, they have simply begun making plans to expand their suburban ministry empires into the urban center. In other words, they’re venturing out into the world of urban church planting.

One older African American pastor said he’s heard chilling reports of meetings in which representatives from many of the suburban churches have gathered around a map of the city and marked each church’s “territory,” as if Buffalo was theirs to divvy up. The indigenous leaders were not invited to these meetings, nor have they been contacted by these churches. It’s as if they, their churches, and their expertise don’t exist. The suburban churches are

simply marching in.

This is happening all over the US. In Seattle, Minneapolis, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, Boston, Charlotte, and many other cities, I’ve seen predominantly white, wealthy suburban churches take an imperialistic glance at the urban center, decide that they are called to “take back the city,” and then proceed with all of the honor and finesse of a military invasion.

Urban church plantations I recently conversed with an urban Latina pastor about this issue. While talking about the ways that non-indigenous urban church planting negatively affects a community, she unconsciously misspoke, referring to “urban church planting” initiatives run by predominantly white suburban churches as “urban church plantations.” She kept right on talking, seemingly unaware of her Freudian slip.

“They come in like Wal-mart—with all their fancy buildings and fancy programs. And one by one, the members of my church come to me and say, ‘We love you, pastor, but they have a great kids’ program, so we’re going to start attending that church.’"

- an African American urban pastor

But she’s right. So much of the urban church planting I’ve seen simply replicates and extends the power inequities between whites and people of color that were cemented years ago on plantations.

Like the suburban pastors in Buffalo, many urban church planters charge into cities with blatant disregard for the great ministry work that is already being done by under-resourced pastors and churches, blind to both their own privilege and their cultural incompetency and accompanied by the arrogant empire-based idea that more money means more effective ministry.

When I asked the white pastor of a large suburban multi-campus church to halt his plan to build an urban campus so that he could reflect on whether he has earned the right to do ministry among the oppressed, he responded by saying, “Obviously, the pastors [of color] that are already in the community aren’t more qualified to minister in that neighborhood than I am. If they were, they’d have made a bigger impact by now. They’ve had their chance. Now it’s mine.”

Money ≠ effective ministry But the question is: Can a church run by privileged people who have little to no firsthand knowledge of systemic oppression effectively minister to oppressed folks?

Probably not.

A few years ago, a large, multi-campus, predominantly white church on the West Coast decided to expand their ministry into a low-income, predominantly black neighborhood. On the first Sunday of the new urban campus, the white male pastor, who had zero urban ministry experience, brashly declared to the mostly black audience, “This ain’t your grandmomma’s church.” Little did he know that grandmomma’s church has been and will continue to be the cornerstone of the community. If it weren’t for grandmomma’s church this community would have completely fallen apart in the face of ongoing racism and societal oppression.5 In one moment, he dishonored the image of God in black people. (As James Cone says, “Blackness is the image of God in black people.” If you disrespect grandmomma and her church, you’re disrespecting blackness. Period.)

And in that same moment, he also demonstrated an astounding level of cultural and historical ineptitude. Not surprisingly, when the neighboring black pastors heard what the white pastor said, they were deeply offended.

Privilege and church planting I’m amazed at how quickly majority-culture pastors with no urban ministry experience acquire a passion for urban ministry and then automatically assume that they are qualified for the job. Last fall, I attended an urban and multicultural church planting conference that gathered national church planting leaders from over 30 denominations. As I looked out over the room, I couldn’t help but notice that the group was about 95 percent white (and 99 percent male!).

When I asked the group how they figured that a group of white men could possibly be equipped to lead urban church planting movements among nonwhite and other oppressed folks, the room got really quiet. No one had a good

answer. Indeed, it seemed they had never reflected on this question before.

Privilege says: I’m called and equipped to minister to all people (but minorities are only called and equipped to minister to people who are just like them). Privilege says: The largest ministry with the most resources is the most effective ministry.

This privileged perspective on urban church planting undermines the unity of the body of Christ. If each part of the body has a unique perspective, gift, and role to play, then we need to recognize that we’re not equipped to do every type of ministry and humbly collaborate with the parts that are better equipped. For far too long, suburban pastors have ignored the perspectives and gifts of urban pastors.

Many of the urban pastors I know are experts at ministering to the people in their neighborhoods. But they serve low-income populations and are desperately under-resourced. Just because they don’t have a huge church or haven’t single-handedly transformed a broken neighborhood doesn’t mean they’re not effectively ministering within their limited means. If suburban pastors truly understood this truth, they would be running to sit at the feet of these amazing male and female urban ministers.

And they would do everything they could to support the great work of these urban ministers.

When the church looks like the family of God If we truly saw ourselves as an interdependent body with a shared Head, resources, blood, and life, then suburban churches that want to love on a city wouldn’t do it by expanding their empires across city lines. They would do it by truly sharing their resources, blood, and life in service to the Head.

Why build a new church building in the city when you can build one for an urban church—in desperate need of a new building—that is already there doing great work?

Why hire a new pastor to work at your new urban church plant when you can give an urban church the resources to make their long-suffering, bivocational pastor full-time?

Why fund a new urban service project when you can fund the urban service projects that people of color have been running tirelessly and effectively on a shoestring budget for years?

The empire says: Our church needs to be present in every community, our church has the answers, and our church’s resources are our resources alone. But if we follow this path, power dynamics remain unchanged and urban church plantations ensue.

The better, more honoring path requires equity—which is costly. Just ask the rich, young ruler. Jesus asked him to reject his empire approach to life, stop being so possessive about his possessions, and join the interdependent family of God. The rich young ruler wasn’t able to do it. It was too costly, and he was too invested in building his own empire.

Suburban churches, Jesus is talking to you. What are you gonna do?

(Editor’s note: endnotes for this article are posted at PRISMmagazine.org/ endnotes.)

Christena Cleveland (ChristenaCleveland.com) is a social psychologist teaching at St. Catherine University in St. Paul, Minn., an award-winning researcher, a consultant for pastors and organizational leaders on multicultural issues, and the author of Disunity in Christ: Uncovering the Hidden Forces that Keep Us Apart (InterVarsity Press, 2013).

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COUNTERCULTURE

Swimming upstream.

area farmers. Their buildings use green landscaping and solar panels, and Sineath’s employees have access to healthcare.

The company is a B Corp, certified by the nonprofit B Lab to meet rigorous standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency. For Sineath, these efforts have become intrinsically linked with his faith.

“A lot of people ask us what our epiphany was, or what changed, and I can try to track it back different ways. But as we started looking at being an environmentally responsible business, social justice wasn’t front and center. It was ‘Let’s look at our energy use,’ and those types of things.

We started recycling, but then we thought, ‘Wait a minute, it’s the buildings our business is in. We built them based on cheap fossil fuels, and we need to rethink that.’ It was much later that we looked at the actual product we produce. We just hadn’t really thought about looking at our very product through a green lens.”

When the link between environmental stewardship and social justice became evident, the rest of the pieces fell into place for him. “For example, human trafficking happens more often in areas with scarce resources, drought, and no clean water. That’s caused by us, because we want cold houses in the summer and warm houses in the winter, and we want to drive wherever we go. We’ve really got to rethink these things that we think are God’s blessings that are in fact not blessing a lot of people.”

Equipped with new knowledge and personal experience, Sineath began to speak to local church groups about the need for environmental stewardship.

“All these things were going on at my business, I was starting to incorporate it into my faith, so I started talking to groups. They wanted to hear about it. I was trying to take what I saw as environmental issues and put them into a package that was easier to understand,” he explains.

After leading an extensive creation care series at his home church, Front Street United Methodist, Sineath is now leading a study about Sabbath-keeping.

“Sabbath is front and center in this creation care concept of letting your land rest, your animals rest, and your workers rest. This is a wonderful

Tom Sineath (with business partner Eric Henry, on left) posing with their rooftop solar array

A Business with a Triple Bottom Line Inside Tom Sineath’s wallet is a green piece of paper the size of a dollar bill. Printed on it are the words “Every dollar I spend is a statement about the kind of world I want and the quality of life I value.” It’s an idea Sineath takes very seriously, in both his business and his personal life.

Sineath founded his T-shirt printing company, TS Designs, in 1977, and business was good. The Burlington, N.C., operation grew to accommodate large contracts with major brands, shipping all over the United States. But after more than a decade of printing T-shirts the conventional way, things began to change at TS Designs. Sineath, a former Boy Scout who enjoyed the challenge of no-impact camping, helped initiate small changes in the business, such as recycling and the use of fair-trade coffee, which led to much bigger changes. The business adopted an environmentally friendly printing system and began to look into the use of sustainable fibers.

Around this time, the passing of the North American Free Trade Agreement contributed to many of TS Designs’ customers leaving the country to do business overseas. In the face of upheaval, Sineath and business partner Eric Henry decided to throw all their weight behind their new “triple bottom line” approach.

“Every business knows what the bottom line is—that’s whether you’re making money or not,” says Sineath. “Some people believe the only reason a business should ever exist is to create wealth.

We think a better model would be a triple bottom line: We want to build a company by simultaneously looking after people, planet, and profit.”

These days, TS Designs uses cotton that is either organic or local, and they work closely with

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starting point that we as Christians have to offer the world. A lot of people have solar panels—we have the Sabbath.”

Sineath aims high but is honest about the struggle. “We are trying to run a profitable business that looks at social justice. We want to be good corporate citizens, but the reality is we fall short. My faith walk and my environmental walk are similar, because I keep trying, but I’m falling short.

It’s part of a process.”

Jessica Wheeler writes and works for Blessed Earth, a creation care nonprofit. In her spare time she enjoys trying all the local restaurants in Lexington, Ky.

Naked at Church?

Can people get naked at your church? Can they bare everything and still be accepted without hesitation?

Fear not—I’m not suggesting we should make room for streakers at church. I’m talking about emotional nakedness. Each person has a basic need to be emotionally naked with others.

Emotional nakedness exists in relationships when we can be completely vulnerable with another person but still feel completely safe. These relationships give us a place to lower our defenses and the opportunity to receive and offer encouragement and guidance.

Without these kinds of relationships, people suffer. We feel lonely, ashamed, and afraid to share our fears and struggles. This isolation puts us at a higher risk for medical problems, depression, substance abuse, self-destructive behavior, and suicide. It also puts us at a higher risk for stumbling in our Christian walk—or, worse, forsaking it altogether—because God designed us for life together. God designed us with a need for emotional nakedness.

Unfortunately, most churches don’t effectively cultivate such a culture. Consider the average evangelical church. It is likely to have many small groups, but most of those groups are marriage-centric: groups that teach spouses how to grow close to each other and be better husbands and wives. Even groups for teenagers teach the

In Unfailing Hands by Denise Ivey Telep

teens about dating, sexuality, and how to become a good future spouse. Most singles’ groups would be more properly renamed “find-a-spouse” groups.

All these groups are good things, but they are not enough. When emotional nakedness is discussed, it is always in the context of a spousal relationship. But what about people who don’t have a spouse with whom they can be emotionally naked? What about the widows

away from the church altogether? If the church teaches that gay Christians must remain single and celibate, then it must also work to meet their need for emotional nakedness.

So how do we cultivate such a culture? First, we must be intentional about cultivating authentic vulnerability. Emotional

The church needs to model the kind of safety that Jesus created for the vulnerable. and widowers? What about people with emotionally unavailable spouses? What about those who remain single, whether by choice or by circumstance? How will the church help these people satisfy their need for emotional nakedness?

Ignoring the need for intimacy is destructive, both to individuals and to the church. Consider celibate gay Christians. Many churches teach that the Bible requires gay Christians to remain celibate but then fail to provide any method for these Christians to develop relationships where they can be emotionally naked.

Why are these churches then surprised that some gay Christians reject the church’s teaching as unlivable and then either change their beliefs on sexuality or walk

nakedness won’t develop on its own—we have to create spaces in which people can feel safe and then teach people how to be vulnerable. We need to teach Christians how to grow close and trust each other.

Creating a culture where people can be emotionally naked requires a few or more mature Christians who will advocate for and model vulnerability. By being vulnerable, champions of emotional nakedness don’t just pronounce that the church is a safe place—they demonstrate what it looks like both to risk vulnerability themselves and to embrace it in others. For this to truly

work, however, the main champion must be the senior pastor. For a truly safe environment, nakedness must be championed from the highest levels clearly and regularly so that every member of the church knows that anything less than the kind of safety Jesus created for the vulnerable is simply unacceptable. Jesus is the one who “will not break a bruised reed, or snuff out a smoldering wick.” Jesus is the one who came “not to judge the world but to save it.” The leader of the church must champion this until it becomes the culture.

Finally, we need to be consistently vocal and visible. A culture where people can be emotionally naked isn’t helpful if no one knows about it.

By being consistently vocal and visible about how we want to encourage people and make it safe for them to be emotionally naked, we will encourage people to do exactly that. Consistency is important—people do not easily set aside their fear to bare themselves in their relationships. If we give up quickly, they never will.

I have experienced first-hand both the despair of living without emotional nakedness and the joy of being in a church where people can be emotionally naked. For years, I lived in fear of what people would think if they learned my most closely guarded secret—that I am gay. However, I was blessed to have a church family that is loving and safe, so that when I chose to reveal my sexual orientation, I was welcomed with loving and encouraging arms.

My study of the Bible has led me to the conclusion that God prohibits same-sex sexual activity, so I am planning on remaining celibate. But I can’t do that on my own. My church is committed to helping me live well, and they support my calling to help others who are single (for whatever reason) to find love, community, and support in the body of Christ.

That is what the church should be—a place where people can have their burdens lifted and experience the love of Christ. By making our churches places where people can be emotionally naked, we help the church fulfill that mission.

An IT administrator by profession, Derek Kaser is a volunteer technical director and sound engineer at Life Church in Greensburg, Pa. He blogs at TriedwithFire.com and has recently launched a small group at his church called “Solo Life,” which seeks to provide support for long-term singles.

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The World’s Greenest State In recent decades, the papacy has introduced some progressive changes to traditional Catholic theology, particularly in the area of environmentalism. Many scholars believe this shift was stirred by a need for the Vatican to be more relevant in today’s world, but the Vatican frames it instead as a return to essential Catholic doctrine.

Whatever the cause, the church’s focus on the environment began in 1971 with the publication of a document called Justice in the World, issued by the Synod of Bishops, which linked justice (the preferential option for the poor) to ecology (the preferential option for the earth). These changes did not take root until Pope John Paul II came into power, but they continued to gain momentum during the papal reign of Benedict XVI. Pope Francis is expected to deepen this environmental focus.

In a 1979 encyclical, John Paul II discussed the threats of pollution on the natural environment; in 1987, he discussed the limits of available resources in today’s society. His message for the 1990 World Day of Peace concluded with a call for a drastic reduction in lifestyle-induced environmental impact. But his most intriguing observation came in his 1991 encyclical, where he made a stark distinction (albeit against the typical view of social science) between human ecology and natural ecology.

Pope Benedict XVI would continue to develop John Paul II’s distinction. In 2009 he urged Catholics to treat the environment with respect, acknowledging it as a gift from God to humanity. He eventually put his writing into action when, in one of his boldest accomplishments, he approved the installation of 2,700 solar panels atop the Vatican’s Paul VI

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hall. These panels generate enough energy to supply the heating, cooling, and lighting for that particular building. With this one project the Vatican became the greenest state in the world in terms of energy power production per capita (200 watts), surpassing Germany (80 watts). Pope Benedict XVI went on to purchase carbon credits, making the Vatican fully carbon-neutral and creating the first partially electric popemobile. These efforts earned him the moniker “the green Pope.”

In choosing to name himself after Francis of Assisi, a saint known for his unwavering love for the poor and creation, Pope Francis has raised the hopes of all who care for the environment.

In the homily delivered at his installation Mass, Pope Francis reminded Catholics of the need to live in solidarity with the poor, emphasizing that it is they who are most affected by environmental issues.

Although it is too early to tell exactly how Pope Francis will engage with environmental issues, he has told the media that he is working on an encyclical draft that will cover the issue extensively. Let us pray that the newest pope will bring even greater environmental unity and concern to Catholic theology and praxis.

- Landon Eckhardt

Pedaling Justice Miles covered: 1,700 and as many more to go.

Weeks of riding: four, with four remaining.

Cyclists: 15.

Flat tires: 25 and counting.

Broken bones: two.

One month after leaving Seattle, Wash., for Rockaway Beach, N.Y., the group is a little less shiny, significantly more sun-bronzed, and a lot stronger (and wearier) than they were at the outset. Are they having fun yet?

The objective is neither fun nor even fitness (although they’re getting plenty of both), but rather humanitarian fundraising. The 12 team members and three leaders are riding to help support a community center in Thailand that provides education for children and a refugee care point on the border of Burma and Thailand that provides food, shelter, and other basic needs. Both are projects of Venture Expeditions, a nonprofit that seeks to link people’s desires to help the world with their sense of adventure.

This expedition, which left Seattle in June and is due to arrive in New York City in August, is just one of many charitable adventures that take place each year. In addition to the eight-week cross-country trip, there are 10-day cycling trips, hiking treks, and running trips.

The expeditions involve no small sacrifice for their members. For this particular cross-country venture, members had to raise $5,500 each—$1,000 is donated off the top to the sponsored projects, and the balance is used for food, equipment, and other trip expenses. Since meals are routinely provided by overnight hosts, there is often leftover food money, which also goes to the projects.

Like other teams that go out from Venture Expeditions, this one is struggling not only through the physical challenge involved but also through the emotional adjustment of spending every waking moment as part of a team. Several people in the group have mentioned the lack of alone time as the most difficult aspect of the trip. When asked how they do

it, they refer to a team motto: “Be like spandex.” In other words—be flexible.

Many of the riders were looking for a cross-country ride regardless, and when they found an organization that met that need but also served a greater purpose they jumped at the chance. In total the team will raise approximately $20,000 to be given directly to the nonprofits in Thailand.

The thrills of the trip go past just the physical excitement (including some negative excitement like injuries and flat tires) and include the joy of raising money for a cause and the joy of new friendships. Because Venture Expedition is a faith-based initiative, the team stays with churches and faith communities throughout the journey.

“Experiencing community with different churches has been amazing,” says Lauren Anderson, one of the team leaders and an intern with Venture.

“I have really seen the unity of the church. Across all denominations and regardless of whether they are urban, rural, or suburban churches, we have received generosity and compassion at every turn.”

When the team stays at a local church, they also attend worship at that church. The team educates the congregation about the people and causes that they are riding for. Anderson shared with one congregation that compassion means to co-suffer with people. She told them that a lot of the trip is about being uncomfortable, like riding for 113 miles one day and getting up to ride another 109 the next. She told them that the trip is about sacrificing one's own comforts and desires in order to give people in other parts of the world an education and protect them from being trafficked.

People on the team come from all different walks of life, and several have even given up their jobs to take part. Team members experience the expedition in different ways. Some have focused on justice to fuel the passion. Others focus on creat-

ing relationship with the people they meet.

Others have joined up to get out of their comfort zones. After working hard for several years to plant a church, Alex from Texas realized he was getting very comfortable. “How can we trust God if we have nothing to trust him with?” he wondered. He realized he needed to do something that he couldn’t do without God. Being uncomfortable pushes you to places you never thought you could go, he realized, but the suffering of others keeps the physical pain and frustration of the expedition in perspective. Sore muscles and an occasional flat tire don’t compare to not being able to feed your children.

Brittany from Arizona had been a missionary for four years in Turkey, but she had never really pushed herself physically as far as she could. She heard about Venture Expeditions from Donald Miller’s book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years and signed up for the cross-country cycling trip. It was a great disappointment to her when she experienced nerve damage in her hand and had to leave the team in Minneapolis, but she plans to join up with them for the last long day in New Jersey.

At the halfway point, the team is starting to think about the end of the trip, seeing their families again, and doing something besides riding a bicycle for seven hours a day. But as they keep on pushing their bodies to the limit, they think about the money and the awareness they are raising with every mile they pedal.

(Editor’s note: The trips mentioned in this article took place in 2013, but similar trips take place every year.

Learn more at VentureExpeditions.org.)

Howard Pinder works as a chaplain at Einstein Hospital in Philadelphia. He loves riding his bike through the city.

w w w.e a r t h j u st i c e .o rg

CONSUME

It’s not all bad out there.

TV: Years of Living Dangerously Showtime Executive producers: James Cameron, Jerry Weintraub, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, et al. reviewed by Rusty Pritchard

Years of Living Dangerously tells us up front that it’s big. How big? It’s “the biggest story of our time,” according to the television series’ website. I’m inclined to believe them, though I’m primed to be sympathetic. My acceptance of the climate science consensus took about 15 years to develop, and the Showtime series is only nine episodes. I wonder whether it will have the popular effect the producers are hoping for or if it will merely deepen the convictions of the already-converted. Mostly, however, I wonder if the filmmakers will be able to handle the epic and spiritual nature of the story they are trying to tell. From the first episode, it looks as if they are willing to try.

I screened Episode 1 of Years of Living Dangerously with students at Houghton College in upstate New York. We watched it in an intentional community house on the college campus, and most of those present were students concerned with social justice, not environmentalism. That was perfect, I thought, since each of the three stories in Episode 1 are about people—as opposed to polar bears or the loss of coral reefs (although those stories have social dimensions as well).

In one story, “Pray for Rain,” actor Don Cheadle explores the plight of a young Texas woman who lost her job when a prolonged drought caused the local meatpacking plant to close. She’s part of a lively Christian fellowship unafraid to pray for rain (even in front of video cameras). She believes that the drought must be God’s will and has never entertained the thought that it might be caused or made worse by climate change. By the end of the episode she meets evangelical Christian and climate scientist (and Time-magazine-declared influential American) Katharine Hayhoe (see page 9), who is convinced that

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our carbon dioxide pollution has very likely contributed to the drought and that there are good theological reasons to believe this.

Interwoven with that story is “The Last Stand,” in which Harrison Ford explores the destruction of rainforests for oil palm production. The loss of forests is significant for biodiversity, but the burning of biomass is the tip of the iceberg when talking about carbon emissions from deforestation—the real story is in the soil. The dispossession of native peoples is the nasty underbelly of a land-use conversion that adds to climate change and wrecks the rain forest.

Finally, the cameras accompany New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman to the Middle East, where he uncovers the possible role played by drought

What narrative can Christians provide for the perverse climate system in which our loving provision for our own children causes anonymous, significant impacts on other children? and crop failure in the bloody uprising in Syria. We see that there are multiple reasons for the conflict, but the viewer is left with the impression that climate change added plenty of tinder for any political spark to ignite.

My fellow viewers seemed like the type to watch a lot of documentaries.

I confessed that if I were channel surfing I would have opted for Phineas and Ferb reruns over a gloomy one-hour climate-impacts show, but they were more curious than I. We shared some discomfort. Video is an incredibly manipulative medium, as you give over control of time and storyline to a director and editor who can give you their best cuts. One student was very uncomfortable with the implication that climate change caused the Syrian conflict, although I thought the directors were pretty subtle in describing the possible connection. Most conflicts are merely exacerbated by climate changes, which is why the Penta-

gon considers them a “threat multiplier.” The Don Cheadle, Katharine Hayhoe and Andrew Farley filmmakers admitted the complexity but then made the climate-conflict connection repeatedly and without reference to any alternate hypothesis.

The western Texas story also caused some pushback among the students, but at least this was reflected in the story on the screen. People actively resisted framing their drama in climatic terms, but their stories were merely juxtaposed with the narrative provided by Hayhoe. She is obviously meant to be (and in fact is) a disarming, even determination and a plucky spirit they are able to rebuild charming, expert who dismantles the “natural and renew what was lost, or about the injustices of forest cycles” hypothesis and the theological objecconversions, or about the horrors of war and the wrongs tions to blaming climate change on humans. of political enemies. Those stories are more personal, The other stories would have been more more social, and more spiritual. The climate debate seems credible if they also had highlighted alternate to be about abstract science, big governments, faceless hypotheses and allowed an expert to sort corporations, and bureaucratic global agreements. through them systematically.

Somehow the local stories need to be woven into a global Not explored is why people are so narrative that feels more cosmic and heroic. Christians eager to frame their drought story in spiritual already know that story. terms—humans in the hands of an all-powerIn reality, we do see the work of an enemy in the ful God whose nature reflects divine will and not stories told in the Showtime series. We see, if we look with our mismanagement. It is not just a question of spiritual eyes, that sin now taints every aspect of creation, science—or of the rhetorical strategy of laying like tares among the wheat. An enemy has done this. It is the severity, if not the existence, of all natural depressing to see. It would be nice to live in the best posdisasters at the feet of climate change. Those sible world, but we don’t. Every aspect of sorting out the issues of fingerprinting can be sorted out damage will cause some additional damage. We do have eventually, and, frustratingly, they revolve the promise that God the judge will come and at the time around probabilities and not certainties. of harvest will put the field aright. But in the meantime can The real question to be resolved by we try to stop sowing more tares? these stories is one of meaning-making in the The producers are right. This likely is the biggest face of adversity. Humans find their identities story of our time in its scale and in the scope of possible shaped as community members resisting human suffering. What narrative can Christians provide natural disasters and coming together for for the change we are wreaking on creation? For the persolace and solidarity. Searching for what God verse climate system in which our loving provision for our is trying to tell us seems to be fundamental to own children causes anonymous, significant impacts on the human experience. Why are we suffering? other children? For the fact that every action to combat Is it somehow disturbing and demeaning to the change seems to bring its own costs? What theology discover that our struggles come at the hands can we marshal to help us understand our position in this of fellow humans who bear us no ill will, that narrative, to interpret the data shared in this television our problems are entirely incidental to the series? How does the biggest story of our time fit into the attempts by fellow citizens to provide for their greatest story ever told? families and to be productive? Would we rather That’s a question that won’t be answered by suffer at the hands of an enemy—or fall into watching the Showtime series. But it’s one we do well to the hands of an angry God—than be mere ask ourselves, because climate change is a story we’ll be unwitting collateral damage in the innocent telling for more than a century to come. endeavors of others? Does it make us too passive, too vulnerable, unable to be the A natural resource economist, Rusty masters of our destinies?

Pritchard is the CEO of Flourish Trying to press the real life experience (FlourishOnline.org), a ministry that of local people into a scientific narrative equips Christians to engage the world of about climate change misses the story people environmental science and action. really want to tell, about how with grit and

The Wisdom to Survive: Climate Change, Capitalism & Community

by Old Dog Documentaries The Wisdom to Survive features thought leaders and activists in the realms of science, economics, and spirituality discussing how we can take action in the face of greed-driven climate disruption. Here are a few excerpts: “We are creatures here just like all the others.

We didn’t create them, and we have no right to destroy them. We’re losing species today at a thousand times the rate that species normally go extinct. We’re killing off the rest of the creation.”

- Gus Speth Co-founder, Natural Resources Defense Council “Climate change … is a crime against humanity.”

- Amy Seidl Lecturer, Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources at University of Vermont “It’s unfair that people in the Global South have to make all these adaptations when the root problem is in the north.”

- Herschelle Milford Managing director, The Surplus People Project (South Africa)

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_ Play. Shuffle. Repeat.

What are the songs we just can’t get enough of these days? We asked the staff and scholar interns at ESA, What inspires you? What centers you, buoys you, keeps you going?

Here are the songs we turn to. There’s something here for every taste and mood.

“Keep Breathing,” Ingrid Michaelson It’s my go-to song when I need to re-center and gain perspective.

“Dance in the Graveyards,” Delta Rae It's a great celebration of life!

“Calling All Friends,” The Low Stars We’re not meant to live alone. We need community, and this is a lovely little anthem to that.

“Oceans,” Hillsong United It moves my soul!

“Needle & Thread,” Sleeping at Last This is one of my all-time favorite inspirational songs because of the lines “We are made of love, / and all the beauty stemming from it. / We are made of love, / and every fracture caused by the lack of it.”

- Rhian Tomassetti, creative director

- Jen Carpenter, Sider scholar

- Sarah Withrow King, deputy director

“When I Leave The Room,” Natalie Grant This song puts the poignant, painful, and precious cycle of our intimate relationships—both with others and with Christ—in perspective. Having buried three parents in the past five years and launched two of my three sons into adulthood, I am aware of all the journeys I am honored to accompany, all the sacred transitions I am privy to and part of. You might want some tissues at hand when you listen to this one.

“Set a Fire” by Jesus Culture This song speaks of the need for the Holy Spirit to set a fire in our lives. It really encourages me and allows for a reawakening of God in my life. It is a song that leads me into the presence of God.

“Give God the Blues,” performed by Shawn Mullins Contrary to a surface interpretation of the lyrics, this is not an interfaith, pluralist song, but a deceptively great song about God’s love for all. It’s fun, too!

- Landon Eckhardt, Sider scholar

“God Knows Why,” performed by Nneka and Black Thought This song inspires a sense of hope amid despair over life’s travails. Lesser gods seem to rule over us, making life hard, but “I answer to a higher God.” This affirmation, accompanied by the fused beats of rock, reggae, and hip-hop, makes me want to keep trying.

- Josh Cradic, operations manager

- Kristyn Komarnicki, PRISM editor “Boldly I Approach (The Art of Celebration),” Rend Collective I’ve had this song on repeat recently because of the way the instrumentals build to such a brilliant climax, because there’s great passion in the vocals, and because it’s a super fun song to sing along to. This song always leaves me with a spiritual release, reassured about the grace of God and energized by worship as well.

- Josh Carson, Sider scholar

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“Classical Easter Celebration,” a playlist from Songza As I’ve finished up the semester, this rich music has been both peaceful and energizing and kept me focused as I typed out those last few papers.

Given its Easter theme, much of the music sounds triumphant, and we all need some music that reminds us of times when light and life win.

- Nicole Morgan, Sider scholar “Esta Soledad,” Carla Morrison The song is about someone who feels anxious and alone but still keeps moving forward, fighting for what she loves. It’s not inspirational in the sense of being upbeat, but whenever I’m feeling blue, this is the song I play.

- Rebecca Hall, Sider scholar

“Even the Winter,” Audrey Assad This song is all about how the seeds we sow in love break through even after the harsh winter.

Depression isn’t gonna get me down—Jesus’ love pulls me out of the cold ground.

- Al Tizon, co-president of ESA "My Soul Has Been Anchored in the Lord," Douglas Miller I recently rediscovered this song, and it reminded me of my grandparents (recently deceased) and the wonderment of union with a great big God as a little child.

- Jerome Stafford, Sider scholar

My Promised Land

by Ari Shavit Spiegel & Grau

Reviewed by David P. Gushee This sprawling, ambitious, lyrical book is so important, so informative, and so illuminating that it makes me regret ever having said or written anything about Israel before having read it. No one, especially no North American Christian, should say another word about the now 66-year-old modern state of Israel without first reading this book by Ari Shavit, one of Israel’s leading writers and public intellectuals.

My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel, as its title suggests, is a highly personal book. It finds ways to tell the story of Israel through Shavit’s own story, beginning with the arrival in 1897 from England to Jaffa of his greatgrandfather Herbert Bentwich, one of modern Zionism’s first explorers. It is a travelogue, taking the author and the reader across the length and breadth of modern Israel. It is a collection of mini-essays, some of them drawn or adapted from the author’s own prior work. It drops in on some of the most important dates in modern Israel’s history, though not always the ones the reader might expect.

It is a bracingly honest book, filled with love, admiration, heartbreak—and fear.

“Existential fear” is where the book begins and where it ends.

Shavit tells much of his story against the backdrop of the European Jewish story. Here was a people, 9 million strong, scattered across Europe as a minority among sometimes indifferent, mainly hostile, and occasionally murderous “Christian” neighbors. Zionism began in the late 19th century as a rescue-nationalist movement for the Jews of Europe. Theodor Herzl was among the first to sense

What Shavit describes as a once humane, pragmatic, socialist Zionism begins to face competition from a much more militant Zionism. Once reports begin to come in from Europe of Nazi mass murders of Jews, it becomes tragically obvious to many Jews that the Zionist project had started too late—and that this land would become the final fortress responsible for Jewish survival. “Masada 1942,” perhaps my favorite chapter, tells the story of how the old mountain fortress in which the last Jewish families perished by their own hands during the Roman War of 66-73 became resacralized as a symbol of Jewish resistance, to the death, against contemporary enemies. It was 1942—the year 2.7 million Jews were being murdered in Europe.

“Lydda 1948” unflinchingly recounts the most controversial story of all in Israel: how during Israel’s successful War of Independence, Israeli forces destroyed numerous Arab villages—and villagers. Shavit zeroes in on the village of Lydda, describes the bloody battles there, and movingly depicts the forced march out of Lydda of the surviving Arab population. Lydda, he says— speaking not just of Lydda but also of numerous similar villages—is Zionism’s “black box.” The real issue—and he says this repeatedly throughout the rest of the book—is what happened in 1948, not what happened in 1967 after the SixDay War and in 1973 and the settlements built thereafter. “Either reject Zionism because of Lydda, or accept Zionism along with Lydda,” he writes. In other words, Israel came to birth as a nation in part through the destruction of an existing Arab population, community, culture. Modern Israel is, quite literally, built on the barely acknowledged remains of a prior civilization. And the survivors and descendants and friends of that civilization have not forgotten it. They cannot forget it. They will never forget it. Some of them, as Shavit describes in a chilling chapter, are part of that 20 percent of the population of Israel commonly called Israeli Arabs.

Post-war, baby Israel was a traumatized people in denial, says Shavit. The government rapidly assimilated the survivors who came from Europe, but there

No American Christian should say another word about the state of Israel without first reading this book. in his bones that there was no safe future for Jews in Europe. He was the first to propose a mass emigration back to Eretz Israel in order to found a modern Jewish state. Shavit’s great-grandfather Bentwich was among the first to make the journey.

In his early chapters, Shavit tells of the gradual settlement of Palestine by mainly European Jews, some pulled by the Zionist vision and others pushed out of Europe during spikes of persecution and pogrom. Gradually they bought land, built their kibbutzim, and planted their orange groves; gradually they found a place among the local Arab inhabitants already in the land. Early Zionism came in many flavors—at times socialist, utopian, and tolerant, at other times more nationalist and state-oriented. One thing early Zionism was not was religious. Shavit describes these early settlers, many of them survivors of eastern European pogroms, as orphans, and their orphanhood as metaphysical as well as familial.

The God worshipped in the eastern European shtetls was left behind, along with the powerless weakness of these communities in Christian Europe. This was an orphan people, alone in the universe and in a hard land, building a new nation with their bare hands.

In 1936, the growing and increasingly prosperous Jewish population of British Mandatory Palestine faced its first major set of attacks from local Arabs.

These attacks on civilians, against the backdrop of the darkening scene in 1930s Europe, predictably but tragically evoked a hardening on the Jewish side and the first statements of an “us or them” vision for who would control Palestine.

were not nearly as many as originally anticipated. The “housing estates” were filled with grieving survivors and orphans who developed a particular psychological pattern based on denial of the Holocaust and denial of the Naqba, what 1949 meant from the Palestinian Arab point of view. His description of what might be described as an Israeli temperament surely must have been controversial in Israel: To function, they flatten themselves. They turn into people of action whose personalities are rigid and deformed, whose souls are shallow. They lose the riches of Jewish culture as they are shaped by a new synthetic culture that lacks tradition and nuance and irony. They create a loud, externalized way of life that is eager to display a forced gaiety. They have lost the place they came from without knowing where they are heading.

It is this people who then faced another existential assault when attacked by the surrounding nations in 1967 and 1973, and this people who, when victorious, then faced what became the insurmountable temptation to hold onto the lands occupied after 1967. Post-1973 Israel, says Shavit, became a complex combination of proud and fearful. And this Israel’s government proved too weak to resist both a stealthy and open campaign to defy the campaign to build illegal settlements on land essential for the building of a Palestinian state. Shavit, again chillingly, describes the birth of a new militant settler Zionism, much of it religiously

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motivated, that surged into power after 1973 and led the way in settling what we now call the West Bank. This new force in modern Israel has played a huge role in distorting its politics and behavior since the 1970s, and Shavit, though trying to understand it, treats it with disdain. This is Israeli religio-imperial fundamentalism.

That some evangelical and fundamentalist Christians would find this an appealing concoction to support and fund is beyond horrible.

Shavit was an active participant in the Israeli left and Peace Now during the heady days that culminated in the 1993 Oslo Accords between Israel and Yasser Arafat’s PLO. But—and here Shavit’s tone begins to shift in a surprising way—Shavit is convinced that Israel’s need for a peace deal outran the reality of the Palestinian mentality, not to mention the worldview of Israel’s Arab and Muslim neighbors. Essentially, Shavit concludes, Israel’s situation is genuinely tragic, not amenable to any kind of moral resolution. That’s because the problem is 1948, not 1967. Israel could remove every settlement and agree to a peace deal, but that would not resolve the wound of 1948. It would not change the fact that it is surrounded by hostile neighbors who have never really come to terms with its existence. And at least one of those neighbors is about to go nuclear—Iran.

Shavit ends the book on the Tel Aviv seashore with his lovely family. He celebrates the triumph of what Israel has accomplished over these decades and the vital society that it has created. But he fears, desperately, that Israel’s weak government, profound internal divisions, unhappy Palestinian neighbors, dangerous regional enemies—whether one or all of these—will one day destroy what has been built over the last century. Surveying Tel Gezer and other archaeological mounds in Israel, Shavit reminds the reader that the region is layered by destroyed prior civilizations. What is to guarantee that post-1948 Israel will not one day be just another artifact of history? Not the absent God, not sweet reason, not international law. Thus: existential fear.

North American Christians cannot guarantee that Shavit’s worries will not come to fruition. All we can do is press Israel and the Palestinians to do what they in various ways and at various times have said they will do: agree to live in peace and security with one another through a peace settlement negotiated and recognized internationally. Shavit doesn’t now seem to think this is possible. But there is no alternative. May we do our part to create a just peace in what many of us still think of as “the Holy Land.”

David P. Gushee is professor of Christian ethics and director of the Center for Theology and Public Life at Mercer University in Atlanta, Ga.

The Cross and Gendercide

by Elizabeth Gerhardt InterVarsity Press

Reviewed by Amy Rasmussen Buckley In The Cross and Gendercide: A Theological Response to Global Violence Against Women and Girls, Dr. Elizabeth Gerhardt asserts that this female-directed violence is the central issue of the 21st century. Millions of families and communities are impacted by domestic violence in the home, gender-selective abortions, sex trafficking, rape as a weapon of war, female genital mutilation, exploitation of women and girls in sweatshops, and other horrific crimes.

Gerhardt explains that this complex human rights issue exacerbates other global social concerns such as poverty, the international AIDS crisis, and the proliferation of orphaned children in underdeveloped countries. While most nations

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have laws against such violence, political, social, and religious institutions and systems often permit it to continue unchecked. In light of recent findings of the World Health Organization—that one in three women worldwide is a victim of violence, resulting in a global health epidemic—The Cross and Gendercide warrants the attention of the global church.

The author’s background in counseling, theology, social justice, and global studies provides a unique perspective for addressing violence. Her study offers a historical and sociological overview of the issues, including systemic causes of violence, patriarchy, domination, and objectification of women and girls. Moving beyond evangelical books that address education, counseling, and self-help, Gerhardt proposes a distinctly theological response, defining human rights violations as sin. Gendercide is a confessional issue requiring broader and deeper solutions by the whole church.

Gerhardt revisits Martin Luther’s theology of the cross and Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s 20th-century interpretation of it within the context of Nazi racism and church identity. She offers a radical and nuanced interpretation of Luther's theology, emphasizing the encounter of the living Christ through identification with and relationship to poor and oppressed neighbors far and wide. Leaning on Bonhoeffer’s descriptions of the roles of the church, Gerhard calls for both proclamation of the gospel (kerygma) and service to neighbor (diakonia). We must not only proclaim Christ; we must incarnate his presence to others while challenging the institutionalized subjugation of women and racial and economic injustice.

Confession, conversion, and resistance are pivotal to prophetic response.

It is necessary for Christians to confess that silence is a form of collusion with evil.

Feeling sympathetic and collecting an annual offering or hosting special activities to help alleviate the suffering is important. However, compartmentalized reactions that center on individual giving do not go far enough. Gerhard urges the whole church to become better educated regarding the extent of gendercide, to use theological and legal human rights language to define it, and subsequently to engage in resistance to the cultural, political, and religious systems that continue to support this violence.

In closing, Gerhardt offers theological reflection aimed at creative activism.

She emphasizes the importance of Christian hope, community and global connectedness, prophetic speaking on behalf of the voiceless, and survivor aid/interventions. Overall, Gerhard provides a cohesive church response to the problem of gendercide. The Cross and Gendercide educates church leaders, scholars, and laypersons about global violence against females, the subsequent complexity of the problem, and the need for theologically based responses rooted in Christ’s redeeming work on the cross.

Amy Rasmussen Buckley is a freelance writer, speaker, and activist. She is a contributor to Strengthening Families and Ending Abuse: Churches and Their Leaders Look to the Future (Wipf and Stock, 2013) and oversees the “Stop the Silence Initiative,” which addresses domestic violence, as an editor at SheLovesMagazine. com.

Factory Cows/Farm Cows by Mike Freiheit (MikeFreiheit.com)

Toward Ethical Eating “Are you vegetarian for health reasons or ethical reasons?”

Unfortunately, this question is often posed after someone has invited me over for dinner and has grilled up a sirloin steak just for me, because I failed to tell them that I don’t eat meat anymore. (Sorry, friends! You know who you are). I’m getting better, though. Just the other day, my sister invited the family over after church for a barbeque. When I reminded her that I don’t do meat, she considerately bought a package of tofurkey sausage. I’m so special and such a pain of a dinner guest these days.

A little social awkwardness is worth it, however, because my answer to the question is the latter: I am a vegetarian for ethical reasons.

But I’m no St. Francis of Assisi (the patron saint of the environment and animal welfare), because, for one thing, I don’t believe that eating meat per se is wrong. Furthermore, I’m pescetarian, which means I eat seafood. For purists, that’s just a subcategory of carnivore.

So if I don’t think that eating meat is bad, and I in fact eat “meat from the sea,” in what way is my annoying new diet ethically based?

The decision to go meatless was and is entirely based on the horrible truth of factory farming. An intensive approach to massproduce meat, milk, and eggs at the lowest cost, factory farming is hell on earth for cows, pigs, chickens, and other animals. There are probably factory farms that have better records than others regarding animal care; but as a whole, this kind of farming, which has all but replaced family farming, has had disastrous consequences for animals.

Space won’t allow me to paint the picture, and that has already been done convincingly by others, even within the pages of PRISM. So as to why I've removed meat from my diet, I resonate with the simple response offered by the musician Moby, who states, “I love animals, and I don’t want to be a part of anything that… contributes to their suffering.”

It would be a gross understatement to say that factory-farmed animals suffer; the treatment they endure is both savage and severe. In order to massproduce meat, milk, and eggs for an increasingly demanding public, factory-farmed animals are subject to excruciating procedures including branding, clipping, de-teething, and castration (all without benefit of anesthesia, of course). They are also subjected to overbreeding, unnatural diets and medicine, and deprivation of sunlight. And all of this is before they’re mass slaughtered by less-than-precise methods.

What really gives me nightmares, however, is how many of these animals are confined to spaces just slightly bigger than themselves for most, if not all, of their lives. For example, breeding pigs, by far the most intelligent of farm animals, are placed in gestation crates, a space so small that they cannot even turn around, for the duration of their pregnancy (four months). After they give birth to piglets, they are transferred to farrowing crates, which are no bigger than the gestation crates, until the piglets are weaned—at which time they are impregnated again and placed back into gestation crates. This process continues until they go to the slaughterhouse. Many develop diseases from having to sleep in their own feces and sores from lying down all day. Not surprisingly, many also display symptoms of madness. They endure this suffering so we can

esXaton eat bacon for breakfast and pork chops for dinner.

And what about calves prepared for veal? Not only are they placed in extremely small crates, their heads are often tethered by a short chain, essentially immobilizing them except to move toward their food bowl located in front of them. They are in this tortured state for several months before being slaughtered. This, so we can enjoy tender beef called veal. The truth is, factoryfarmed animals never get to live before they’re killed.

I don’t want any part of that! It is an affront to my sense of human decency, and it violates my understanding of the compassion and justice of God. It is animal cruelty, not eating meat, that is evil. Although a strong biblical case for vegetarianism can be made, I don't believe the Bible ultimate prohibits eating meat. For example, Peter’s vision in Acts 10 had Jesus saying, “kill and eat” from a spread of animals that Jewish law forbade (v. 13). Of course, read in the context of the passage, Jesus simply used “unclean animals” as an object lesson to convey to Peter the great truth of Gentile inclusion in the plan of God. But eating meat was certainly not frowned upon here. And did not Jesus’ miraculous feeding of the 5,000 begin with five loaves and two fish? Evidently,

The City Line Church team in front of the rescue home in Bangalore

Jesus felt fine about serving fish and bread to the hungry masses.

So in essence, if animals get a chance to live before we “kill and eat” them, I don’t have an ethical problem with it. Hunting and fishing for food are different from factory farming.

I’ve only just begun to align my eating with my ethics. But it is a beginning.

For two years running now, my pescetarian diet has been but a part of the journey toward living according to God’s shalom, which includes just relationships with creation and its creatures. I’m not all the way there yet, but the trajectory feels very right.

Al Tizon is Ronald J. Sider Associate Professor of Holistic Ministry and co-president of Evangelicals for Social Action.

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Lean on Me (2012), College of St Benedict & St John University, Collegeville, Minn. (photo by Thomas O’Laughlin)

Dr. Seuss would feel right at home in these inviting structures, made entirely from saplings by environmental sculptor Patrick Dougherty.

See more at Stickwork.net.

Childhood Dreams (2007), Desert Botanic Gardens, Phoenix, Ariz. (photo by Adam Rodriguez)

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We're calling it God's timing.

We think it's particularly cool that this issue of PRISM— which is all about being better stewards of God's creation—is the one in which we announce that PRISM will soon be transitioning to an exclusively online presence.

Many of us will miss holding PRISM in our hands, we know.

But have no fear—we are committed to bringing Jesus followers the same insightful, challenging content that you've come to expect from PRISM, but we want to do it in the most sustainable and responsible way we can.

So our last print issue will be Fall 2014, out on October 1.

After that time, all our great content will be available exclusively online, for free, at the newly revamped EvangelicalsforSocialAction.org.

(Have you checked the new site out yet? It's pretty great, and it's now easier than ever to interact with the ideas that our writers, artists, and editors work so hard to put together for you.)

The winds of change are blowing, and that can be a little uncomfortable, but we're so often astounded at the surprising gifts those changes can bring. So come along with us as we venture into this new leg of the journey.

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