DWTX from Anaheim – Episcopal News Service — Future generations will look back on the Episcopal Church aghast that it spent 30 years talking about human sexuality and largely ignoring the ecological disaster affecting the world, said Bishop Steven Charleston in his July 15 sermon during a General Convention Eucharist that celebrated creation care.
“For years now the environmental movement has told us that there is a clock ticking, a clock, ticking, a great organic ecological clock that is ticking away the time of our lives to that when we no longer will be able to reverse the damage that we have done to this planet through our own greed, negligence and ignorance,” said Charleston, assistant bishop of California and provost of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.
Charleston said the reason we do not hear the cry is that “we have been distracted.”
In addition to being distracted by discussions on human sexuality, the church has been worrying about its institutional survival; its relationships in the Anglican Communion; money, budget sheets and head counts, Charleston said.
“I am here to tell you that unless we recognize that there is a higher, deeper calling that lies behind all of these needs … none of our hopes and dreams, whether they come from conservative hearts or liberal minds, will sustain the day on anything we have been discussing, for all will be for naught, all will be for naught lest we wake up and pay attention to the underlying great issue of our day.”
The Episcopal Church continues to address environmental issues, including global warming, through legislation passed at General Convention, advocacy work by the Office of Government Relations, and its commitment to the Millennium Development Goals, the seventh of which specifically underscores the issue of environmental sustainability.
There are up to 15 environment-related resolutions under consideration at the 76th General Convention that take steps to address climate change, global warming, economic and environmental justice, renewable energy, nuclear energy and weaponry, and the establishment of a liturgical creation cycle during Pentecost.
– Lynette Wilson
Tags: eucharist