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Environment brings activists together in faith
April, 2001
The Hampshire Interfaith Council’s Environmental Task Force is proof of how people of faith, working together, can make a difference when it comes to the environment.
Formed almost two years ago, the group brings people from 20 different faith communities – Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Buddhist, Unitarian and Baha’i – together to engage in environmental education and political activism.
The task force, which includes participants from eight Massachusetts Conference churches, has gained credibility as an environmental force in Western Massachusetts. Last year, the group earned an award from the Massachusetts Clean Air Now Coalition for its work mobilizing people in the campaign against the “Filthy Five” power plants. The task force was one of the groups that turned out 150 area residents to a Department of Environmental Protection hearing in Amherst on proposed regulations for the plants.
The task force has also held two town-hall style meetings on the environment with state legislators. The latest, in January, attracted 60 people. “We have a lot of credibility with a lot of legislators – when we hold a gathering, it’s a real audience. We’ve gotten good press. When our name appears, people notice,” said Lois Happe, a member of the group and pastor of Westhampton Congregational Church.
In addition to its political activism, the task force holds regular educational forums on such topics as genetically engineered foods, toxic threats to child development and personal environmental choices. The group also works to showcase the connection between spirituality and the environment.
“Seeing a faith-based group doing this work is inspiring people who are marginal in faith, but who have vague ethical and moral concerns about the environment,” Happe said. “Those people can be encouraged and supported and enriched by having an experience with our task force.”
Happe said encouraging the connection between the environment and church is also an important way to reach people on the margins of their congregations.
“A lot of people don’t have a great deal of commitment to the institutional maintenance stuff - this gives them the opportunity to latch on to something that is their passion,” she said.
Susan Grant Rosen, the group’s main organizer, said another focus of the task force is to encourage people to bring their own environmental activism back to the church.
“It is quite easy to draw a group of individuals together and to get them involved in some activism they care about,” she said. “It gets harder when you ask them what they are going to take back to their congregations.”
Rosen’s church, First Churches of Northampton, voted in February to become the first Massachusetts Conference church to sign on to the National Council of Churches’ Environmental Justice Covenant Congregation Program. The vote followed a year of study.
The program encourages churches to consider the environment in all aspects of congregational life - in worship, in Christian education, in the church’s own lifestyle and in its community involvement.
For more information on the Covenant Congregation Program, visit: www.webofcreation.org/.