Friends, thank you all so much for your continued engagement with our process, considering whether or not UCG is called to become a Creation Care, Climate Justice Congregation (a designation through our denomination, the United Church of Christ). Over the past seven months we have posed questions and solicited responses, had great discussions and gathered your thoughts which are now compiled and incorporated into the statement you can read below.
Our ultimate goal is to have us incorporate care for all of creation into our spiritual lives, and the life of our church. We hope you will engage our proposed statement. You can make comments that will be taken into consideration by our C3J Task Force, then presented to Church Council. And we hope you can join us on Sunday, April 23 at 10:30 am for a Seminar discussion of the statement. We will then make final edits before going to Church Council for final discussion and approval, and then to the congregation at our May meeting for your vote to either approve or deny our proposal.
Here is a link to the proposed covenant from the Creation Care/Climate Justice Task Force.
You may make comments within the document, or email Jim Harper (jimwharper@icloud.com). Please make your comments by April 12.
I prefer the terms “conservancy” or “stewardship” in place of “justice” in the title, which would then read the “Creation Conservancy Covenant” or the “Creation Stewardship Covenant.”
The word “justice” is just too constraining a term for the title and does not reflect the more inclusive body of the covenant. The new covenant title could then be used in place of the very ambiguous title to the task force, “Creation Care/Climate Justice,” when titling the UCG board or committee charged with implementing the ministerial functions of the covenant.
The term “justice” comes from UCC: “As one of the UCC’s eight Just World Covenant programs, Creation Justice Churches guides congregations in discerning how they can best embody a commitment to care for God’s creation.”
We can choose a different name for our UCG committee, but we are planning to join the program of Creation Justice Churches.