Creation Care

"It is the people who must save the environment. It is the people who must make their leaders change. So we must stand up for what we believe in.” Wangari Maathai, founder of the Greenbelt Movement, began planting trees as a response to the lack of resources and the degradation of the environment in rural Kenyan villages. She empowered women across the country to join her, despite deep political and gender repression. This is the trailer for the documentary about the life and work of Maathai, the first African woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

I’m no art critic, much less a patron of the arts, but on the principle that even a blind squirrel finds an occasional nut, I managed to stumble across Jungen’s striking work.

Every few months a new report shows that the effects of climate change are becoming increasingly irreversible. Clearly United Nations’ Secretary General Ban Ki-moon understands the gravity of the climate situation when he noted that, “we know that we are not on track, and time is not on our side.”

My colleague Shannon Jammal-Hollemans recently made a powerful statement, saying Christians tend to focus on the Fall at the Tree of the Knowledge of good and evil, rather than focusing on the Tree of Life. I believe this cuts to the core of the “burden” of injustice, shedding light on the frustrating, paradoxical occurrence of disempowered Jesus followers.

We pray; we lament; we give to relief agencies. But we also struggle to understand why this is happening and who’s to blame. And the TV news channels are quick to serve up all kinds of plausible-sounding answers.

Fear, my dear Schimmel, is our friend. Few things stop the transition of theology to praxis quite as effectively as fear. I suppose we could consider pride its cousin, for they work together wonderfully for us. 

How do you proclaim your faith, when that faith is culturally aligned with injustice?

Desmond Tutu is certainly no stranger to the pursuit of justice.

The South African Anglican Archbishop Emeritus and Nobel Laureate was in Canada in early June at the invitation of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation.

Best known for his part in the anti-apartheid struggle in his native South Africa, Tutu referred to climate change as “the moral struggle that will define this time.” "The oilsands,” he said, “are emblematic of an era of high carbon and high-risk fuels that must end if we are committed to a safer climate."

There’s a good chance that, at some point in the last few days, you’ve heard something about the Environmental Protection Agency or the Clean Power Plan.

What happens in the Plaster Creek watershed has far reaching effects.