by Lucy M. Cummings, ED 2013-2019

Written by Dr. Ted Reeve, Executive Director 2000-2013.

Bill (left), Ted (right), circa 2000

This idea of engaging interfaith groups in ethical or common good issues emerged from our cross-country travels in the late 1990s when Bill Phipps was Moderator of The United Church of Canada (UCC). Bill gave special attention to a national consultation on Faith and Economy and so we travelled from coast to coast (unfortunately, not to the third coast) holding town hall meetings on regional economic challenges and how faith communities were responding.

Creator, we know you hear all prayers, no matter the language or the belief of those who pray.

Give us the courage to create and protect the right relationships we know you want all peoples to enjoy. 

Help us recognize and work on the sources of discrimination that separate Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples and that threaten your creation.

We confess that we often ignore and even protect systems that privilege some and hurt others.

Open our hearts with love and compassion to walk together on the path of true justice and reconciliation.

As Canadians, when it comes to actions we can take to protect the climate, we automatically think about energy conservation. We head over to the local hardware store for some caulking, insulation, a new Energy Star window etc., to fix up our buildings that will in turn, help lower
maintenance costs, save energy, and save the planet.

But that only works if you live in a city or close to a large hardware store. Have you thought about how difficult it is to get an energy audit for a fishing port village church on a remote coast of Newfoundland, with the nearest energy auditor over three hours away? Have you though  about trying to fly in new windows and doors to a remote northern Manitoba reserve’s church without any being damaged?

A guest post by Doug Daley, Greening Initiatives Lead & Don Atkinson, Past Chair (St. Paul’s United Church, Orillia).

When Rev. Ted Reeve joined St. Paul’s United Church in 2014 as our new minister, the congregation was looking for opportunities to increase the use of the 150-year-old building. 

With input from Rev. Bill Phipps, a very close collaborator of Rev. Reeve’s on numerous initiatives, a vision to “turn ourselves inside out for the benefit of the community” as the friends described it, was adopted.

Within our faith communities we all help out; that’s the ‘community’ in faith community. Some people take care of the building — often the most thankless job, because if they do a good job, no one notices anything. These dedicated people care about the building, but unfortunately don’t always understand how their building works, which is completely normal. In highschool, we were not taught how to maintain our homes let alone maintain and operate large, oftentimes massive places of worship. For example, the huge decorative ceiling grilles in many places of worship are, from my experience, 95% of the time open to the attic. One church I worked with had four 8-foot diameter ceiling vents and the congregation couldn’t worship in the space in the summer because the heat coming off the roof drove them out! How would people know this? They wouldn’t, since we don’t have anything comparable in our homes. So to the building maintenance teams reading this, don’t be hard on yourselves.

In partnership with EnviroMuslims and with generous funding from Olive Tree Foundation, Faith & the Common Good has launched Greening Canadian Mosques, the first program of its kind giving Canadian mosques the tools and resources they need to embed sustainable practices and policies within their facilities.

“In this Easter season of renewal, let us pledge to love and esteem the beautiful gift of the earth, our common home, and to care for all members of our human family.”
Pope Francis, Earth Day 2020

The growing signs of springtime wonder can help renew us as we deal with this third wave of the pandemic. Our own health and wellbeing is deeply interconnected with the health and wellbeing of others and our common planetary home. Yet inequalities are deepening as climate change, the pandemic and vaccine shortage continue to disproportionately affect the poor and vulnerable.

The pandemic has not put climate change on hold. Earlier this month NOAA reported that greenhouse gas emissions surged in 2020 despite pandemic shutdowns. Carbon dioxide reached a level last seen on earth around 3.6 million years ago when sea levels were about 78 feet higher and large forests grew in the Arctic.