2021: A Year in Review

NC Council of Churches

Strength in Unity, Peace through Justice

Let Us Pray for a Clean Environment

· · Leave a Comment

Certainly the BP spill has heightened concern about the environment, but that concern was already growing among many people of faith. It’s an area the Council has been working on for decades, most recently through our program North Carolina Interfaith Power & Light. In October, our Critical Issues Seminar in Greensboro will focus on Creation Care with keynote speaker the Rev. Canon Sally Bingham, founder of the national IPL program.

One of the workshop leaders for the seminar is Warren Wilson College instructor Mallory McDuff, author of Natural Saints: How People of Faith are Working to Save God’s Earth. She will be leading the workshop “Bearing Witness and Responding to Disasters: How to Prepare Your Congregation to Respond to Environmental Catastrophe.” And on August 5, she had this prophetic piece published in the Charlotte Observer.

It reads in part:

As an environmentalist, I pray that environmental organizations will view faith communities as serious allies for action. Such alliances have formed in my current hometown where North Carolina Interfaith Power and Light has partnered with a green jobs training program, Asheville GO, to involve congregations in weatherizing 300 low-income homes. Across the country, people of faith are holding carbon fasts during Lent and installing solar panels on churches based on a moral imperative for justice and care of creation.

— George Reed

About George Reed, Former Executive Director

As I had hoped, I have spent more time reading books in my retirement. One recent read was Jon Meacham’s splendid biography of Thomas Jefferson. I resonated with something TJ wrote in a letter shortly after leaving the White House in 1809: “I am here [at Monticello] enjoying the ineffable luxury of being owner of my own time.” I can’t say that I am complete owner of my time, but I am really enjoying not being controlled by clock and calendar. Well, except when there’s a deadline for Raleigh Report.

Reader Interactions

More Like This

A Season of Renewal
Together: Wholly Sacred and Beautifully Ordinary
Ken Lund | Flickr
NCIPL Director’s Testimony on EPA Methane Rules

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

Anonymous comments or comments that target individuals will not be posted (please include your first and last name). All comments must be on topic and respectful. Comments will not be posted until they have been reviewed by a moderator. Comments do not reflect the positions of the NC Council of Churches.