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Winter A • 2010-2011

We are stewards of God’s creation. The United Church of Christ takes that responsibility seriously by raising awareness of environmental justice.

When a natural disaster occurs, the UCC responds with help for those whose lives are impacted by drought or flood or earthquake or landslide. Most recently, the United Church of Christ has provided assistance to those affected by the oil spill in the US Gulf and to those suffering the devastating floods in Pakistan.

Those aid efforts are supported by the UCC’s One Great Hour of Sharing and through direct donations from individuals and churches designated for those purposes, including a $300,000 appeal for Pakistan relief.

But the UCC also recognizes that the world is responding to the ways that humanity has neglected our air, waters, forests, and wildlife. We are called to care for these things as well as for our brothers and sisters.

The UCC’s Environmental Justice Ministries provides information, ideas, and inspiration for individuals and churches as they consider the impact of humanity on the world.

Being thoughtful consumers and living ‘green’ benefits both people and the environment. Before it was fashionable, eco-justice simply was right. In the church, the word we use for that is righteousness. More than 100,000 organizations, many of them grass-roots efforts, are involved in doing the right thing for the environment.

The UCC’s Environmental Justice Ministries (EJM) Website (www.ucc.org/environmental-ministries) provides a portal to perspectives from pastors, scientists, and environmentalists. Practical suggestions and important theoretical discussion are both part of meeting the call for stewardship of the earth, sky, sea, and creatures.

Understanding the impact of our choices is the first step in becoming better stewards. From the EJM homepage, you can do all of the following:

Take 20 minutes and look at Annie Leonard’s, “The ◆

Story of Stuff” (www.thestoryofstuff.com).

Find out how local congregations have reduced their ◆

carbon footprint. The Hancock Church, Lexington, MA, reduced its carbon footprint by 42% and saved money! That means dollars that would have gone to fill an oil tank can fill a child’s stomach instead.

Connect with Interfaith Power and Light◆ (www.inter-faithpowerandlight.org) which provides many practical tools for things like finding out what your carbon footprint is to networking with the 10,000 congrega-tions already represented in the effort of reduce global warming.

Find worship resources and suggestions about ◆

conserving energy for your congregation.

Natural disasters will continue and the United Church of Christ, along with others, will respond. But there are also crises in the making which might be able to be avoided. They are technology-caused disasters, and they will only get significant press if they are catastrophic on a large scale, like the 1979 disaster at Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station in Pennsylvania or in 1986 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the Ukraine. The long-term costs of those disasters still are not fully known.

Hazardous materials or dangerous manufacturing processes touch lives and property, creating health, economic, and political challenges for individuals, communities, and even nations. These hazardous materials can become the source of an acute event or be released as part of a natural disaster. Raising awareness about this risk is an important concern for the UCC’s Environmental Justice Ministries.

The UCC’s EJM provides a way to raise awareness and to prepare for technology/human-caused catastrophe, also known as The Silent Disaster, through an emergency fund much like the kind you and your family may have.

More information about the Silent Disaster, the fund, and donating to it can be found at the UCC’s EJM Website: www.ucc.org/disaster/technology-disasters/.

The UCC: Eco-Justice and Stewardship of Creation

SR-00-WA-10-U-The UCC And The enviRonmenT