August 28th

No Small Thing!

I teach Environmental Studies and Geography at The King’s University in Edmonton. I have just come back from my first year-long sabbatical, which was a wonderful gift of rest and time to focus on research. My project involved collecting stories of Mennonite environmental initiatives and activities over the years. I did this by searching the archives at Canadian Mennonite University and Conrad Grebel University College, interviewing people, and perusing books. In collaboration with one of my Psychology colleagues and some students at King’s, we also conducted a survey that was sent to all Mennonite Church Canada congregations to ask about environmental attitudes and activities. The research is still ongoing – I have more interviews that I hope to do, and only the survey data has been analyzed systematically, but I would like to share some preliminary reflections and emerging themes.
 
We have been doing work with an environmental dimension for a long time in a variety of ways. Many people I talked to referenced stewardship of God’s creation through our farming heritage that goes back centuries. At the organizational level, the Mennonite Central Committee’s Native Concerns office led by Menno Wiebe, which opened in 1974, was the first initiative with a clear environment focus. This work also has many faces in our community. It includes walking with Indigenous peoples facing the environmental consequences of resource extraction, creating educational and worship resources, participating in Environmental Assessment hearings, policy development within church organizations, political advocacy, public demonstrations, and lots and lots of practical projects – recycling, building retrofits, agriculture/land use committees, cookbooks, community gardens, sharing libraries, and more.
 
There are diverse perspectives in the community about how important these environmental or creation care issues are and how they should be addressed. In the survey, for example, some respondents condemned politicization, alarmism, and “disasterism” in the way we talk about climate change, while others used terms like “the climate crisis” and called climate action “a primary and urgent task of the church today.” Despite these differences, there appears to be fairly strong consensus that caring for the creation, whether through political advocacy about climate change or through stewarding the land as farmers, is a foundational part of our faith. The motivations that underlie these commitments include honouring God the Creator and loving our neighbours, recognizing that harm to the land also harms people who depend upon it.
 
In my research studying faith-based engagement with environmental concerns, it has been clear that churches have been far more involved in this work than many people realize. And it is clear, as I mourn the losses in Jasper and read about the planet-wide biodiversity crisis, that there is much more to do. But my research shows that we have resources to support us: our tradition of simple living, our commitment to peace and justice, our love for and connection with the land, and our ability as a community to organize and work together to get stuff done, which is no small thing!