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Rev. Sally Bingham with Obi
Bruce Nolan, a reporter for the Times-Picayune in New Orleans,
offers a preview of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew’s symposium at various locales on the Mississippi River next month. For the article, Nolan interviews Rev. Canon Sally Bingham of the Episcopal Church. She is also president of
The Regeneration Project and the Interfaith Power and Light campaign. Nolan said that Rev. Bingham was helping with the planning for the symposium.
Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders often see environmental concern as a duty to honor God by protecting his creation, Bingham said. Buddhists have described it as a duty to maintain balance in the universe, she said.
“Religious leaders are used to saying our responsibility is saving souls. But many have come to realize that if we don’t protect our air, water and resources, there won’t be any souls to save.”
Bingham said Bartholomew “is one of the first leaders of a huge denomination to make this connection.”
Rev. Bingham serves as the Environmental Minister at Grace Episcopal Cathedral and chairs the Commission on the Environment for the Diocese of California where she was installed as Canon for Environmental Ministry. In a recent commentary, “The Resources from Heaven,” she wrote:
… I would describe those fossil fuels such as oil and coal as the fuels from hell—from the dark places of the earth. Besides providing those sources of energy, God provided energy from heaven—wind and sun. We have overused the resources from hell and we have barely explored the ones from heaven, which are clean, renewable and infinite.
[ … ]
I hope that Jesus, Ghandi and other heroic prophets with visions for a peaceful future will make space in heaven for Rep. Henry Waxman, a man who laid the foundation for a new world economy with his bill supporting a cap-and-trade market-based mechanism to reduce the world’s greenhouse gases. I say “the world” because without the U.S. making a strong commitment to reduce its own emissions, other countries such as China and India will not make the effort either. All eyes are on the U.S. right now. Instead of looking at the past to dictate the future, we need to be more visionary ourselves and create a new future that provides security and health and peace for all of God’s creation.
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The Greek Orthodox Archdiocese released the schedule for Ecumenical Patriarch Batholomew’s visit to the United States in October. Separately, a detailed agenda for his upcoming environmental symposium has been posted online.
The patriarch’s “Symposium VIII — Restoring Balance: The Great Mississippi River” offers a rare opportunity to present Orthodoxy’s distinctive, sacramental understanding of the stewardship of Creation to America and the world. And this trip, which will involve about 200 participants in all, will no doubt generate a huge volume of media attention. We will be following the symposium closely here on the Observer.
If the text accompanying the agenda is any indication, the work of the symposium will be heavily inflected by an environmentalist ethic that looks at humanity primarily as a source of pollution and largely ignores the benefits of balanced economic development that does not degrade or abuse Creation. There is the utopian dream of returning the Earth to its pristine, pre-industrial state. Example:
But the fate of the Mississippi waters is more than one aspect of global warming. It is also, very acutely, an ethical crisis. The exploitation of the great river – its pollution, the disastrous confinements of its course and the draining of its wetlands – is starting to produce catastrophic human and natural consequences. But it is not clear that the lessons of the Katrina hurricane have been learned. Development for short-term gain rushes ahead, especially in the Delta itself.
The Mississippi is a challenge not only to human responsibility for the environment, but to democracy. Many people know what should be done: a curb on development and a massive, costly programme to restore the river to something like its ancient health. But few are ready to vote for it. That is the real Mississippi crisis.
The Symposium agenda writer also notes, about a Day One stop in Memphis at the National Civil Rights Museum, that Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream of racial equality has been only partially realized with the election of President Barack Obama. “Yet fulfilling the dream of economic justice and what is termed today ecojustice, which is of particular concern to the Symposium, has not been realised,” we are told. Continue reading →
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