Faith, God and Earth

By Ashleigh Livingston
As the nation celebrated its fortieth Earth Day on April 22, many Americans took time to appreciate their natural surroundings, participate in environmentally friendly activities and educate themselves about environmental issues. The day also served as a reminder of how environmental concern has grown over the past four decades and given rise to numerous organizations and government legislation. No longer is concern about issues such as pollution, habitat destruction, and global warming limited to just ecologists, animal lovers, and those “tree-hugging hippies.” These days it seems that environmentalism can be found just about everywhere, even among various religious groups.
“The environment for us is God’s creation,” says the Rev. Jim Ball, former president and CEO of the Evangelical Environmental Network, a national group that teaches that caring for the environment is an essential part of being connected with God. “The activities [members of the Evangelical Environmental Network] engage in, we call creation care.”
Ball, who is currently the senior director of the network’s climate campaign, says creation care includes efforts to protect the world’s poor from climate change, educating people on ways to reduce pollution, efforts to protect endangered species, reading the Bible and encouraging people to spend time in nature because God is revealed in nature.
Environmental activism among churches is growing, Ball says, and eventually it won’t be newsworthy.
Plattsburgh is already seeing what Ted Meskunas, Chair of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Plattsburgh’s Green Sanctuary Committee calls a, “correlation between religious health and environmental health.”
Meskunas says that the UUFP is a congregation in which every person is important and has an equal place. The fellowship is committed to spiritual growth, he says, but “we don’t discount anyone’s beliefs.”
As chair of the UUFP’s Green Sanctuary Committee, Meskunas says he is part of the fellowship’s efforts to become certified as a green sanctuary, a status that is granted to Unitarian Universalist congregations that demonstrate a commitment to being stewards of the earth. These efforts include eliminating the use of paper cups and planting trees, he says.
Environmental issues are also popular among members of Plattsburgh’s Temple Beth Israel, a reform Jewish synagogue, Rabbi Andrew Goodman says.
“This congregation in particular is a very special group because most of the people, I would say probably 90 percent of the people, aren’t from this area originally…and they’ve chosen to come up here, and often it’s because of, or at least influenced by some of the beauty outdoors,” he says. “ So the fact that we are tucked in the Adirondacks, right on Lake Champlain, it tends to be a more natural minded group…so because of that we actually do have a very open minded, earth minded, environmental minded congregation.”
Goodman says that even beyond his congregation, environmentalism is deeply rooted in Jewish tradition.
“Judaism started out as an agrarian society, so there was an acute awareness of seasons, of growing [and] of food… because without being aware of how the earth works and without taking care of it, people wouldn’t eat for a year,” he says.
As for how this tradition translates into modern Jewish life, Goodman says he is currently focused on dietary issues from both an environmental and Jewish perspective. He recently taught a course offered to members of the congregation in which he discussed organic farming, the consumption of meat from animals that have been properly treated and the importance of supporting local farmers rather than large corporations.
Still, some religious groups are hesitant to devote too much time and energy to environmental issues. For example, Doug Kashorek, Minister of the Plattsburgh Church of Christ, a Christian church with no denomination, says that although it is important, “to be good stewards of the environment that God has made,” he says, “there’s a danger in actually worshiping the created things rather than the creator.”
While Kashorek is an advocate for recycling and says that his congregation participates in activities such as high-way cleanups, he also says, “any group that would put the environment above human needs, [such as groups that may be] stopping projects from going forward because they are afraid there’s a certain spotted owl or something like that,” may be focusing too much on God’s creations, rather than on God.
Goodman says Kashorek’s fear of false worship is not as much of a concern in Judaism. In tending the Earth, being socially responsible, striving for sustainability, making sure everyone has enough food, and striving for social justice, we are connecting ourselves to God, he says.
Meskunas seems to hold a similar view. “I see God in everything,” he says. “I don’t see that you can separate pieces and parts.”