People may be wondering how it is, and maybe even WHY it is, that I keep relating things, seemingly anything, to the Climate Crisis. And to that I say, “You betcha”. The fact that we put this issue on the sidelines comparative to almost ANYTHING else is testimony to how far removed we have become as PARTICIPANTS and INTER-DEPENDENTS in creation. When churches., day after day, week after week, and month after moth, year after year, simply continue on with business as usual: reporting on the same “popular” “audience-engaging” news items and issues, the Climate Crisis continues to get short changed. Frankly, and importantly, it needs to be the OPPOSITE, so that people really start complaining that “their issues” or “the really important issues” are the ones getting “short changed” by “too much coverage” of the Climate Crisis. When we start hearing that, then we will be on the right track.
Frankly (again), the fact that there is such conspicuous SILENCE in response to all my efforts to strike up this conversation only speaks to the severity of the “Silence of the Churches on Climate” (and this includes thew vast majority of so-called “Progressive” churches and denominations as well. Until the Climate Crisis becomes AT THE VERY LEAST, a MAJOR, ONGOING, seemingly “OBSESSIVE” or “OVERPLAYED” campaign (in the minds of those critics , of course) , then we are participating in the silence , and underwriting the continuation of denial. It’s like Pat Watkins told me in my first conversation with him: “Climate needs to be much more than ‘an article here and there’ (which is an apt description of where the UMC has been on this issue for decades, especially now), but more like the major campaigns such as “Imagine No Malaria”. No one is questioning the importance of such an effort as the fight to end malaria. But we are not a people keeping score on “what percentage” of what problems and what needs are greatest. We just respond accordingly. And yet, in regards to the Climate Crisis, we do not respond ANYWHERE in the ballpark of “accordingly”.
