A
lot of environmentalists – people who recycle, donate to the Sierra
Club, ride the train to work – are also church members. But they often
don’t see those two parts of their lives intersecting.
A resolution to be taken up at the Conference’s 202nd Annual Meeting
June 8 and 9 aims to change that, by calling for more environmental
activism within the Conference.
A second resolution deals with the effect of globalization on the world’s
people and environment, and a third would revise current clergy compensation
guidelines.
The Environment
The resolution on the environment calls for more environmental education
within the Conference, and it calls on local churches to consider making
the environment a high priority when they make personal and congregational
choices. It also calls on pastors and lay leaders to work for public
policy changes aimed at defending and healing the earth.
“The environmental movement is perceived as secular. The culture of
the environmental movement is that people who are part of organized
religion don’t talk about it while they are out working for the environment,”
said Susan Grant Rosen, who brought the resolution to the Commission
on Mission and Justice. “But the members of our churches are also part
of the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, etc. I see this as an effort to build
some bridges.”
Rosen last year founded the Hampshire Interfaith Council’s Environmental
Task Force [see related story] for
just that reason – to build bridges between people of faith and environmental
activists.
“The vast majority of American people are involved with some kind of
organized religion. The more the environmental movement can reach out
to these people, the better,” she said.
Robert Gardiner, pastor of the First Congregational Church in Southampton
and a member of the task force, said the environment and the churches
are naturally linked. “To treat the environment with disrespect is to
slap God in the face. It is His creation. Saving the environment is
not only crucial to our survival, but it is sacred.”
[Read
the full text of the resolution here]
Economic Globalization
The resolution on globalization calls on churches and members to study
the implications of an increasingly globalized economy, and to consider
getting involved with campaigns that seek a more humane form of globalization
“which holds up persons and the environment over markets and profits.”
The resolution also supports a sister resolution that will be taken
up at the 23rd General Synod this summer, which calls for the convening
of a national commission to study the impact of globalization.
This resolution follows in the footsteps of the Annual Meeting vote
taken in 1999 in support of the Jubilee 2000 movement, which called
for the forgiveness of the debts of many Third World countries. Stan
Duncan, pastor of the United Church of Christ in Abington, said the
hope is that churches who embraced the Jubilee 2000 campaign will continue
to be active in global economic issues.
“The Jubilee movement is very important, but it is just one piece of
the globalization issue,” he said. “Globalization is inevitable, but
it is moving so rapidly that it is causing almost as much damage as
it is good.”
Economic globalization refers to the growing movement toward international
integration of markets and production, and includes lowering tariffs
and trade barriers and opening up markets for foreign investment, trade
and capital flows.
[Read
the full text of the resolution here]
Clergy Compensation
Each
year, Annual Meeting delegates are asked to approve guidelines for clergy
compensation.
For 2001, two changes are being proposed to the guidelines.
The first change would add $1,000 to both the bottom and the top of
the salary ranges recommended in the guidelines. For example, the new
guidelines would recommend that a pastor with 4 to 10 years of experience
serving a 100 member church receive a salary of between $27,000 and
$40,000 a year. That is an increase from the $26,000 to $39,000 range
in the 2000 guidelines. This would mark the first increase in those
ranges in two years.
The second change comes in the description of jobs in the community
which should be comparable, in terms of compensation, to the pastor.
The current guidelines state that compensation should be at least equal
to that of “the local high school principal.”
The new guidelines state the package should be: “at least equal to that
of professionals requiring three or more years of post graduate training
such as school superintendents, secondary and middle school principals,
engineers and other professionals in administrative positions…”
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