Focus on the environment is now, Bishop Charleston says at convention Eucharist

By Lynette Wilson, July 15, 2009 [Episcopal News Service -- Anaheim, California ] Future generations will look back on the Episcopal Church aghast that it spent 30 years talking about human sexuality and largely ignoring the ecological disaster affecting the world, said Bishop Steven Charleston, in his July 15 sermon during a General Convention Eucharist that celebrated creation care.

"For years now the environmental movement has told us that there is a clock ticking, a clock, ticking, a great organic ecological clock that is ticking away the time of our lives to that when we no longer will be able to reverse the damage that we have done to this planet through our own greed, negligence and ignorance," said Charleston, assistant bishop of California and provost of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.

The Eucharist was paperless -- rather than printed in the worship booklet, the hymns were projected on three large screens behind the altar, in observance of the day's theme: "Ubuntu in Action: Creation Care."

Charleston continued: "Why is it that we do not hear that? Why is it that around this world of ours, though there are good men and women all seeking to help save the earth, that there is not this huge outpouring of sudden activity as the bell rings in our ears to save the earth?"

It is because, he said, "we have been distracted."

In addition to being distracted by discussions on human sexuality, the church has been worrying about its institutional survival; it's relationships in the Anglican Communion; money, budget sheets and head counts, Charleston said.

"I am here to tell you that unless we recognize that there is a higher, deeper calling that lies behind all of these needs … none of our hopes and dreams, whether they come from conservative hearts or liberal minds, will sustain the day on anything we have been discussing, for all will be for naught, all will be for naught lest we wake up and pay attention to the underwriting great issue of our day."

The Episcopal Church continues to address environmental issues, including global warming, through legislation passed at General Convention, advocacy work by the Office of Government Relations, and its commitment to the Millennium Development Goals, the seventh of which specifically underscores the issue of environmental sustainability.

There are up to 15 environment-related resolutions under consideration at the 76th General Convention that take steps to address climate change, global warming, economic and environmental justice, renewable energy, nuclear energy and weaponry, and that would establish a liturgical creation cycle during Pentecost.

General Convention also took steps to offset the carbon footprint of the convention -- being held at the Anaheim Convention Center in California -- by buying $6,524 in emissions reductions from the Greensburg Wind Farm project and the Hillcrest Family Dairy Farm Methane project.

The General Convention Office worked with NativeEnergy, a climate solutions provider and leader in the U.S. carbon market offering services that reduce carbon emissions to fight global warming.

"Based on NativeEnergy's carbon calculator tool, we will emit 259 tons of emissions (carbon dioxide equivalents) and use approximately 1,035,000 kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity while at the convention," said Michael Schut, the church's economic and environmental affairs officer, in his July 13 blog.

Scientific evidence links the build up of carbon dioxide (C02) and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere to global warming.

Charleston spent almost 20 minutes pleading with those present at the Eucharist to educate themselves about environmental issues and to do their part to reverse the damage already done to the earth.

"The day will come when the future will look back on what we have been doing here and see in our discussions -- though they appear to us in this moment, so fraught with importance -- issues as antique as the concern as to whether or not women could have the right to vote and whether we should stop the practice of child labor," said Charleston.

"And yet they will consider our folly on a planet that is but a burnt cinder, compared to the garden that has allowed us the luxury to have these self same debates. They will live in a world in which wars over water will make ours over oil pale in comparison."

But, he said, it doesn't have to be so. As the history of the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion have shown, people can live in peace even when they disagree and people are capable of living in harmony with the natural world.

"In the name of Jesus of Nazareth I call upon the presence of the Holy Spirit … the spirit of the very earth itself and ask that that spirit come into this room and touch each and every one of you who is listening to me now," Charleston concluded. "Let your mind be opened to the truth of what I have spoken here today, let your heart be set on fire … be not afraid Episcopal Church, but stand proud and tall into this great commission of God.

"This is our moment, this is our time, this is our call and under an anointing of the spirit of God we will not fail in that call, but be in the vanguard of a change that will resound around the world full of hope and grace to renew humanity itself through the hope and power of Jesus in whose name I have preached and in whose name I have prayed." 

And the crowd of hundreds took to its feet in applause.

-- Lynette Wilson is staff writer, Episcopal Life Media.

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