02 28 12 Joining With Others

Last week we held another One People, One Earth public forum, but in Juneau this time. For those who don’t remember what that is about, I described our Anchorage meeting in my November blog entries, and you can see a synopsis here. I will say here that the One People, One Earth event is an interdisciplinary public panel focused on the moral urgency of dealing with the issues behind climate change and ocean acidification. It includes scientists from the University of Alaska, traditional Alaska Native elders from three tribes, and religious leaders from the Roman Catholic, Protestant, Jewish and Islamic faiths.

There were a couple of differences this time compared the OPOE forums in Fairbanks and Anchorage. One difference was that a completely separate event was held at Northern Light United Church, just for the religious leaders to speak. Participating once again were Fr. Thomas Weise (Roman Catholic), Imam Ataur Chowdhury (Muslim) and myself (Protestant). However, this time we were joined by Rabbi Dov Gartenberg (Jewish). Someone commented how unusual it is to find leaders from all three Abrahamic faiths joining together for a common cause.

Also, since we were meeting in Juneau, another evening Meet and Greet was set up to talk to legislators and their aids. The governor and his administration were also invited, but they declined our invitation.

The extra event for faith leaders, which we called The Stewards of Creation Luncheon, was interesting to me, because a separate event was not held for the “scientists” on our panel or for the “Traditional Native Elders.” People seemed to know what to expect from those two groups, but were not so sure from the faith panel. Before the event, one Anchorage reporter asked me rather bluntly why faith leaders were butting-in on this event. It took a twenty-minute conversation for her to have any grasp on why people of faith would care from a faith perspective, or how our perspective might actually help bring about any change whatsoever. In fact, she began the conversation assuming we would bring some kind of roadblock to any real change, rather than enhancing the change. I found that fascinating.

Her concern might have been hinted at by one of the members of the audience at the Stewards of Creation Luncheon. We had hardly given our opening statements, when this gentleman raised his hand and asked how the faith leaders were going to solve the problem of climate change. Of course we never claimed that we were going to be able solve this problem on our own. We chose to ignore the rather negative tone of the question and instead treat it as a question on how we could mobilize more energy and interest within our own religious constituencies. This seemed a more useful conversation—which I will come back to in a future blog entry.

Another future blog entry (tomorrow, or the next day) came from my fellow panelists. I once again spoke on why I believe treating the six days of creation as a genealogy is a valid, and important, ethical response (For a previous blog entry on this go to this site). As we were debriefing after the event, my fellow panelists urged me to do more on this. They suggested that I needed to say more about how we are the youngest members of the family of creation, with responsibilities for our elders. They told me that simply making that statement was not enough. I need to talk specifics on how our “elders” need our care. I am still mulling that one over. I will take them at their word, though, and work on this shortly.

The extra event for legislators and their aids was interesting. My take on our current government is that there is absolutely no momentum behind climate change politics. In fact, since Sarah Palin left as governor there has been a reduction in any non-oil-based energy policy. It was therefore gratifying to find that a few legislators (Legislators Scott Kawasaki and Chris Tuck, and aids from at least two other legislators) either showed up or sent their aids. I do believe there is interest in taking a realistic look at our future, if we can rally some visible support. This might have some affect on future strategies for environmentally concerned individuals and groups, including One People One Earth.

However, I do think that taking these efforts beyond a panel will, indeed, raise some difficulties for some faithful people. It is one thing to join a panel and show the world how one’s own faith tradition insists that caring for God’s creation is an essential part of human existence. It is another to begin planning ministry with others of different faiths. We do have areas of significant disagreement. Some will undoubtedly fear that joining with others of different faiths will water down our own evangelical message. There is at least an element of rational concern from those voices, which were wondering if religious people should be allowed to cloud the climate change issue. If we fall into a selfish exploitation of this united effort for partisan evangelism, we could very well taint the whole effort.

For my part, however, this is absolutely not a problem. First, I have always had friends who were not Christians and, I am sure, always will. In fact, one of the advantages of the Juneau event was that we spent more time together, in order to make room for more events and to reach out to more people. With that added time, our friendships had a chance to develop in more depth. Building friendships is always a worthwhile effort and, I believe, God will use friendships for good in ways we can never imagine.

Even more, however, is the reality that humans will always find that they have important differences. The problem of caring for our planet, however, falls under those essential tasks that require all people to join, despite their differences. If we fail in this, we fail all humanity—and all life on earth: failure will result in much more suffering and perhaps even extinction.

We simply have to work together on this one. Anyone who says otherwise neither understands the depth of the crisis we are in, nor the power of God to use relationships for good.