Here we are on the threshold of Faith Climate Action Week and the 50th Anniversary of Earth Day, and the world has been turned upside down by the novel coronavirus.

Some argue that this is not the time to ask people to think about climate justice, but as a Christian, I believe that this apocalyptic (revelatory!) moment is a Kairos moment, a time for us to help people connect the dots on many levels.

First, there are clear links between the pandemic and climate crises.

• The threat of increasing, and increasingly devastating, pandemics has been predicted for years, as habitat loss and climate change bring humans into contact with wild animals driven from their homes and tropical diseases as they move north.
  
• Deaths from COVID-19 are greater in places people are regularly exposed to more air pollution. Six million people globally die from air pollution alone annually, yet that pandemic has remained almost invisible and unreported.
  
• Both crises impact the most vulnerable first and worst – racial and religious minorities, refugees, the impoverished and our other-than-human kin.
  
• Decades of attacks on scientific data have driven climate denial and created a suspicion of science that led many to deny the seriousness of the pandemic until their situations turned desperate.
• Then there’s the problematic human tendency not to understand the fact of exponential growth of both pandemic disease and climate change, and the need to act before things get bad, lest we pay the price in lives and livelihoods.

The difference between a pandemic outbreak and climate change is the speed with which they are unfolding. The climate catastrophe has already had devastating effects on vulnerable human populations and our other-than-human neighbors, but many of us who have had the benefit of various kinds of privilege have remained unscathed. The novel coronavirus has torn away the veil of privilege and given many of us a direct experience of how billions of people in the world live every day with the stresses of food, housing, health, education, and job insecurity.

These are all matters of justice and of faith. As we emerge from the pandemic, faith communities have a special responsibility to remember its lessons and to apply them to the slower, but inexorably unfolding, climate crisis.

Here’s the good news. Climate activists have been calling for years for a World War II-scale response to climate change in order to prevent catastrophe, but that response has been dismissed as impossible. Yet when faced with a pandemic, the U.S. alone came up with over two trillion dollars almost overnight. If that is possible, then it is also possible to address climate change, even to make a clean energy transition central to restructuring an economy that includes everyone without destroying God’s creation. Some version of a Green New Deal, one that includes racial, gender, economic and creation justice is possible.The #JustRecovery movement can succeed.

For a people who proclaim the Easter reality of resurrection and the profound love of God for the world, those are possibilities we need to proclaim prophetically and join the Spirit to bring to birth. The 50th Anniversary of Earth Day is a good time to begin.

FAITH CLIMATE ACTION WEEK AND EARTH DAY OPPORTUNITIES

Visit Creation Justice Ministries’ April Action Center.
Tips and tools to make a difference for God's creation this Earth Month include:
● 2020 Earth Sunday toolkit: "The Fierce Urgency of Now"
● April 2020 "Care for Creation" bulletin insert
● Link to Virtual Earth Day worship at The National Cathedral, Sunday, April 19, at 2:00pm ET
● Ecumenical Advocacy Days virtual advocacy opportunity for legislation in Congress April 27 at 1:00pm ET
● Action Alert: Support the 30x30 Resolution to Save Nature

Interfaith Power and Light’s Faith Climate Action Week 2020: “Love Made Visible”
● Get a free kit from Interfaith Power and Light that includes a ritual for planting a tree on the grounds of your congregation as part of its “For the Love of Trees” campaign, and other resources. Download it here.
● Join IPL's Love Made Visible Climate March online! Out of our love and care for our neighbors, and to stop the spread of the COVID-19 virus, IPL invites you to share your climate march sign on social media during Faith Climate Action Week April 17-26 to continue bringing awareness to the climate crisis.
● The feature film for this year’s Faith Climate Action Week – The Human Element – is being offered for free online by Earth Vision Institute during Faith Climate Action Week to all Interfaith Power & Light congregations, organizations and individuals.Sign up here to receive the link to view on April 17, good through April 26.

Earth Day, Wednesday, April 22
● Earth Day Sound the Call - An invitation from the Jewish community to interfaith partners for an online blowing of the shofar, shofar app, or other instrument on Earth Day. Find out more at https://bit.ly/2WQpN2R.
● Join the global Earth Day prayer at noon here .
● Attend the webinar for faith communities, The Earth Is the Lord’s at 1:00 with the Rev. Dr.Benjamin Chavis Jr., who coined the term “environmental racism.” The webinar will focus on the role of faith communities in resisting those powers that seek to rule and desecrate what is not theirs ucc.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_9UN745tnROynNLCuDpasbQ
● April 22-24, Earth Day Live. Young people and adults will come together for a three-day livestream event focused on climate action: Earth Day Live. With training sessions, performances, and appearances from scientists, celebrities, politicians, and youth activists, this 72-hour livestream and online mobilization will engage people across the country and around the world in collective action to protect their communities and the climate. RSVP for Earth DayLive .
● Find more digital Earth Day actions and events at https://www.earthday.org/earth-day-2020/ ,@earthdaynetwork, where every hour there will be a new way for you to demand action and drive change. Then sign up to continue taking action at EARTHRISE earthday.org/earthrise/

This blog post was submitted by Pam Harris, one of our long-standing monthly giving partners. Pam is the founder and owner of Run River Enterprises. She is a strong supporter of faith-based outdoor ministries.

Firstly, Creation Justice Ministries does its work as a common act of faith.  While for some, environmental action is primarily a practical or ethical matter, for the Creation Justice community, saving the earth is clearly an act of faith.​Being a part of work that brings together expressions of faith is especially important; we cannot remain separated in our efforts if we truly want to make a difference.

Secondly, Creation Justice Ministries understands that the work of justice is integrated. It's not a choice between saving the planet or saving people, it is one inseparable act of justice.

Finally, the resources Creation Justice Ministries produces are both practical and inspiring. They help make it more possible for me to integrate my environmental action with my daily life and faith. The materials that are developed and shared are always of the highest quality.

I support Creation Justice Ministries because they do a great job at keeping the work of creation justice before the Church and people of faith as an essential act of the faith.

The primary reason I am a monthly donor is that it enables me to give more to Creation Justice Ministries than I would be able to give all at once.  Simply put, giving monthly helps me be more generous.

I also understand how helpful it is to an organization to receive support throughout the year.  Even in modest amounts, having a steady level of gifts makes it possible for the staff to focus on the mission the Creation Justice community seeks to accomplish.
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Fifty years ago, I was in Junior High school when the very first Earth Day was observed. I was so excited to be part of that effort. I arranged to get a refrigerator box and sat with it in the parking lot behind my school to collect recyclables. No one came to put anything in my box, but it was the beginning of a commitment for me that has lasted my whole life. I am so grateful that Creation Justice Ministries is a part of that journey now, helping me to make a difference through my gifts.

In Hope,
​Pam Harris, Creation Justice Partner

This post was submitted by Susu Lassa who is an associate with one of our member communions- The Church of the Brethren Office of Peacebuilding and Policy. While much of the work Creation Justice Ministries does is based in the United States, this piece highlights how climate change affects people around the world. We all live on God's one and only Earth yet the climate crisis uniquely affects different regions.  

Nomadic herdsmen in the Sahel would head south during hot, dry season, often welcomed by farmers as their cattle fertilized the land. However, a once symbiotic relationship has turned sour, deteriorating into violent conflict that is plaguing the region. This is not an isolated case, as regions in East Africa are engulfed in violent conflict and plagued by food insecurity as well. Climate change, namely desertification, plays a significant role.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimates that approximately 80% of the farmland in the Sahel is degraded. With soaring temperatures rising 1.5 times faster than the global average, land available to farmers is shrinking, and they are reeling from food crisis. This multifaceted issue-area gains a macabre dimension as marginalized farmers and herdsmen, due to minimized livelihood options, are susceptible to recruitment as foot solders for the multiplicity of violent conflict raging in the Sahel region.

The intersection between desertification, food-insecurity, and the experience of the African woman results in horrific gender-based violence. Currently in the Sahel, 33 million women, children, and men are food insecure, while 4.7 million children under the age of 5 suffer from acute malnutrition. In such dire situations, girls in these regions, still children that fall within the aforementioned categories themselves, are forced into child marriages to help their families avoid food insecurity.

Take the story of Ntoya Sande, a 13-year-old Malawian girl who was forced into marriage against her will. “I was sent to be married because of a shortage of food in the house…” she said. “I tried to negotiate, to tell my parents that I wasn't ready, that I didn't want to get married, but they told me that I had to because that would mean one mouth less at the table.” Ntoya’s is just one of the hundreds of stories highlighted in a recent study by the IUCN on the effects of climate change and environmental degradation on gender based violence. Concurrently, women in coastal regions near bodies of water face the growing threat of violence as fish has become increasingly scarce. Thus, fishermen in these areas are now not only expecting money as payment for fish, they are also demanding sex. As such, women are exposed to various kinds of sexual violence in their endeavors to secure a meal on their table. These intersections of violence go to show the multifaceted experiences of women in various regions of Africa due to climate change; climate change compounds existing vulnerabilities.

Nonetheless, in a rapidly changing and increasingly violent world, women remain on the forefront of combating the brutal ramifications of climate change and desertification. Reasons include the fact that tending to the land and growing necessary crops for sustenance is a task that is often relegated to the domestic realm in which women and their experiences exist. As such, women across the continent spend a considerable amount of time and emerging using and preserving the land. This relationship between women and the land have made them an important source of knowledge with regard to environmental management for food, water, and medicine. Their valuable knowledge about environmental sustainability and survival mechanisms, especially in critical areas of desertification, make them the primary growers of food. Yet, they lack access to land, skills, financial resources.

However, these vulnerabilities, though great, pale in comparison to the resolve of proactive, innovative women like Judith Ncube. Living in one of the ecological regions in Zimbabwe at risk of land degradation due to deforestation, Judith founded the Vusanani Cooperative to empower women farmers while protecting their forests. The Cooperative, comprised of youths, widows, as well as elderly women, decided to tap into an abundant source of wealth housed in their forests: the Marula fruit. Ncube formed the Vusanani Cooperative in 2010, and through a host of training programs geared at making people realize the importance of natural resources, they have been able to meet with and mobilize women farmers in the region of southern Africa who have established thriving businesses by adding value to naturally available, non-timber forest products.

Our world and its climate is rapidly changing, and efforts to reduce poverty while encouraging sustainable use of land and water resources have benefited greatly from women’s unique capabilities and their role as growers and providers of food for their communities. Thus, it is important to uplift the role played by women like Judith in regions affected by desertification and ensure full participation of men and women at all levels to combat desertification. Judith and thousands of women like her worldwide are stepping up to the challenge, healing the land, promoting gender equality, and empowering each other. What a sight.  Happy Women’s History Month y’all.

As we near the end of Women's History Month, take sometime to learn about these four female environmental change makers! These four featured women are accompanied by many more and many to come. Who are some inspiring women who care for creation in your life?

Dear Creation Justice Ministries Community,

Jesus calls us, every second of every day, to bring about the reign of God through acts of love, charity, and justice. How do we do this in our new reality of the coronavirus pandemic? Each of us must search our hearts, our talents, and our neighborhoods to identify our calling. Presented here are some avenues that may speak to you.

Consider this a sacred time. Develop your own wisdom to cope with more quiet time or more hectic, demanding activity. Maybe your children are now at home with you as schools may be closed. Create a schedule that allots time for prayer, work and recreation. As your prayer time lengthens and you connect with the center of your being, the Holy Spirit will certainly inspire you with new thoughts and activities to bring about God's Kingdom.

An obvious one is intensifying our outreach and caring for one another. The pandemic magnifies and highlights our oneness in the Lord. Maybe you will identify neighbors who are elderly or handicapped and unable to get their basic needs met on their own. Maybe you will join with others in providing both emotional and practical support. As a country, we hopefully move from “ME FIRST” to a “WE” society.

​Another issue rising to the surface is the immense inequality in our society. We are the only western industrialized country without universal health care and paid sick leave. Eighty per cent of us have inadequate savings for retirement or financial emergencies. Forty percent of us are hourly workers without any type of employment benefits. We have superior clinical health for some but inadequate public health for most of us.

So the pandemic is multi-dimensional. We have the enormous medical challenges, emotional distress, financial turmoil and the glaring societal inequities. The main take away here is for all of us to stay tuned into these issues as the pandemic eventually subsides by making long term commitments for social justice.

How does the pandemic relate to the mission of Creation Justice Ministries and the 100,000 churches and 40 million members of those churches? We believe the learning for us is that radical massive common good changes are achievable for our earth because we are now witnessing that level of change happening in response to the pandemic. When we come together and become passionate, as our Lord modeled for us, we can change societal inequities.

So in the near term we are called to acts of charity; in the long term structural, societal changes are necessary to bring about the Kingdom of God here on earth. With the help of our Trinitarian God, we can do it!

In God's Love, Peace and Grace,

The Creation Justice Ministries Team

P.S. In this crisis, now more than ever, we exist to serve you. Please do not hesitate to contact us with your needs and suggestions.

1. Care for your garden and house plants
This is a great way to spend time outdoors digging in the dirt or caring for a little bit of creation right in your own house.

2. Play with a dog or cat 
If you have a dog or cat, it is safe and encouraged to spend time with them. According to the CDC, there is no reason to think dogs and cats could be a source of the coronavirus. However, if you start to have symptoms, be careful about the potential for your pet to carry the virus from you to other members of your household.

3. Go to the park
Go to your local park to enjoy flora and fauna near you. Be mindful not to expose park staff, though. Check out www.findyourpark.com

4. Go swimming, kayaking, or paddle boarding
If you have a natural body of water near you that is safe for swimming, taking a dip is a great way to get some exercise and enjoy the gift of water. In open water, swim with a buddy or a spotter, but make sure you and your buddy maintain the social distancing standard of at least six feet apart.

According to the CDC, you can also swim in a swimming pool or hot tub maintained with chlorine or bromine, as long as you would not have a close physical encounter with others or potentially leave traces of the virus on surfaces around the pool which others could pick up. Because it is harder to control your physical encounter with others at a public pool or hot tub, this is not recommended. 

You could also hit the water in a single person paddle board or kayak. As mentioned earlier, it is always important to go into the water with a friend, but during this time of social distancing please make sure that you and your buddy are six feet apart.

5. Go stargazing
Gaze at the night sky. Consider augmented stargazing with apps that show you what you’re looking at.

6. Identify plants
Walk around the neighborhood and try to identify the plants in gardens and along your path. The free app Leafsnap can help: www.leafsnap.com

7. Take a walk, jog, run, or hike
Walking, jogging, running, and hiking are wonderful exercise options that also will get you a breath of fresh air.
 
8. Do some bird watching
Watch birds either out of your window, from a park bench, or on a walk. See how many you can identify. If you have a bird feeder, make sure to fill it up to see who comes for a snack. Check out the free Audubon Bird Guide app www.audubon.org/app

9. Climb a tree
This is an adventurous way to experience creation.

10. Make art using materials found in nature
Go to your yard, park, or sidewalk and pick up leaves, sticks, flowers, and anything else from nature that can be used to make art. Get creative!

11. Ride a bike
Bike rides are a good way to get fresh air and exercise.

12. Have a picnic
Eat one of your meals outdoors to the front steps, a porch, backyard, balcony, or park. 

13. Read a nature book
Dust off a book about caring for God’s creation or look at beautiful pictures of the natural world in a magazine.
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14. Pray in Nature 
Find resources to connect with God in creation at the Center for Spirituality in Nature at    https://www.centerforspiritualityinnature.org

​Trinity UMC in Southport, NC is the first church awarded with the “Ocean Friendly Establishments” award in Pender, New Hanover and Brunswick Counties, North Carolina. The Creation Care Ministry Team of Trinity took on the goal of educating the congregation of Trinity UMC and the communities of Southport, St. James, Boiling Spring Lakes and Leland, NC to a greater understanding of the waste we are putting in the Atlantic Ocean that is at our front door. The project initially started in the kitchen area, led by Dr. Rebecca Felton, who undertook the task of guiding us through the process of removing plastic and Stryofoam from the church’s kitchen. We then extended it to the entire building with recycling bins throughout, ways tomake classrooms plastic free, etc. The children and youth participated in “The Crayon Project”.  We created a document for those outside of our church that use it for meeting space to coordinate with us on this endeavor as well. We have been educating our congregation through our Facebook page, meetings, classes, speakers and articles which have helped people change their habits and make them more aware of caring for God’s creation.  We studied the book, “Climate Justice” and met with Rev. Pat Watkins to be certified in the NC Conference with the “Green Church Initiative”. We recently held an Earth Keepers training for the NC Conference and 34 new Earth Keepers were commissioned. The “Ocean Friendly Establishments” is a local chapter, part of the “International Plastic Ocean Project.” The local chapter started with educating restaurants to, “Skip the Straw” and have since added ways for restaurants to lower their carbon footprint. The local chapter decided to open this opportunity of being awarded to other establishments that were also working on reducing the waste to the ocean. After discussion of the criteria, our Creation Care Ministry Team made the decision to apply for this recognition. We were awarded the highest level of a 5-star award. 

Phoenix – March 10, 2020 – In response to her recent co-sponsorship of Senate Bill 3422, legislation that would provide permanent, dedicated funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund, the Arizona Faith Network and Creation Justice Ministries released a letter to Senator Martha McSally. Signed by more than 30 Arizona religious leaders, the letter not only expresses gratitude for Senator McSally’s step to protect public lands; it urges her to take become a vocal champion for a properly resourced Land and Water Conservation Fund.

The letter highlights religious leaders’ reasons for valuing public lands as “places of sabbath,” and spaces where “veterans can experience a homecoming… of solace and healing.” The letter expresses the religious leaders’ desire “to support your efforts to use your leadership role in the US Senate to champion the freedom, beauty, and bounty of God’s creation through good stewardship of our public lands.”

Arizona Faith Network Executive Director Rev. Katie Sexton said of the letter, “As Arizona faith leaders, we see Senator McSally’s genuine connection with our public lands in action. Whether she’s out on our Arizona hiking trails with her dog Boomer, or showing her support of the Land and Water Conservation Fund in the Senate, we want her to know how vital her voice is.”  

Creation Justice Ministries Executive Director Shantha Ready Alonso said of the letter, “When I observe who in Congress is championing public lands, I see a great opportunity for moral leadership out of Senator McSally’s office. Arizona has some of the most treasured public lands in our country. Senator McSally is well-positioned to be a respected consensus-builder in Congress who can advance the cause of conserving God’s creation for generations to come.”

In Sisters of the Yam:  Black Women and Self-Recovery, bell hooks wrote, “Collective black self-recovery takes place when we begin to renew our relationship to the earth, when we remember the way of or ancestors….Living in modern society, without a sense of history, it has been easy for folks to forget that black people were first and foremost a people of the land, farmers.”  Persons, who are still farming in various states across the United States, are carrying on the fight for economic and civil rights for land-based African American people.  This fight began during days of slavery. In 1920, African Americans owned nearly 15 million acres of farmland. Due to racism, violence, and massive migration from the rural South to the North have caused a steady decline in the number of Black farmers. Institutional racism in agricultural policies of the USDA has played a major role in the decline of Black farmers.  By 2007, African American farmers numbered about one in seventy, together owning only 4.2 million acres. One of the most impressive contemporary examples of an organization, that grew out of the civil rights movement, that helped organize and support Black and small farmers in rural communities, is the Federation of Southern Cooperatives. The federation formed in 1967 and today have more than 100 coops in its membership across the South in sixteen states. Other organizations like the National Black Farmers Association, the Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Association, the Land Loss Prevention Project, along with the Federation of Southern Cooperatives have been challenging racism in agricultural policy through legal action.

There is on the horizon, a fast-growing movement of African Americans reclaiming their connection to their urban land and their food.  This is being done as part of food justice and food sovereignty movements. People’s Grocery and Mo’ Better Food in Oakland, Growing Power, Rooted in Community, Detroit Black Community Food Security Network, and many others are organizing with farmers and connecting African American growers and consumers. The work of these groups includes youth programs and urban gardening in areas where access to healthy, affordable food is limited, which is the case in many low-income and people of color communities. More importantly, these groups, particularly the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network, are working for communities of color to have democratic control over their own food systems. Raising awareness, relative to the ways that African American communities and communities of color have been sidelined with the food movement itself, is one of these many organizations’ major roles.

It is critical that various groups involved, that are enabling communities of color gain democratic control over their food systems, continue to educate and organize, nation-wide, on structural racism as it impacts health, farming, food and land.  These organizations have shown that they are determined and committed to breaking and knocking down barriers to food production and food access. There is a need to have persons and organizations join the world-wide movement for food sovereignty in their own communities. This will afford citizen control over food and agriculture to exist globally.  Achieving racial justice in the food systems is not the sole burden of African Americans but a people’s clarion call all over the earth! Raising awareness of systemic disparities and working together to end them is a God’s responsibility of humankind’s survival.

Dr. Betty Whitted Holley is the Director for the Master of Divinity Degree Program and Associate Professor of Environmental Ethics & African American Religious Studies at Payne Theological Seminary. She also serves on the board of Creation Justice Ministries.