Today was the first full day of Ecumenical Advocacy Days, a conference for mainly Christian progressives to meet and advocate on pressing social issues. Even though I'm not Christian, I attended because of the eco-justice track.
Given that we work with progressive Christian groups so often, and given our commitment to social justice, I was surprised that out of all the progressive, activisty people there, I could only find two other UUs. Kinda sad. Aside from a couple of "Lord"s here and there, I felt completely at ease. Granted, a non-theist UU might have felt more out of place, but shouldn't the most important thing be the commitment to the issues?
Anyway, yall don't know what you missed because it was awesome. An outsider who didn't know any better might have thought that he'd walked into a den of Neocons because the theme of the conference was "Global Security." But the conference organizers argue, rather cogently imo, that in order to have true security, you have to have justice. The framing was magnificent. For example, global climate change is going to force massive migrations, straining international relations. If you want peace and security, work to address climate change. I could go on with examples from other issues. The presenters made such great points on so many issues such as poverty, immigration, education, defense... But I went to the conference to learn/talk about eco-justice and that's what I've labeled this post, so...
The first track workshop was on the effects of climate change in Asia/the Pacific Islands. Here we were gently confronted with testimony by natives of Tuvalu - a nation of small islands in the Pacific, who quietly but deliberately showed us pictures of their shrinking homeland. It's one thing to read about this stuff, and quite another to know that the way you are living is destroying the way of life of the person standing in front of you. One of the presenters pointed out that the much touted target - cut "80% of carbon emissions by 2050" - assumes that non-industrialized countries will stay undeveloped. That means that, if, for the sake of fairness, we wanted to allow for economic development in these countries, then we will have to cut back much farther on our end than we think we do.
The second track workshop was on the environmental INjustice of the border wall being built between the U.S. and Mexico. The wall cuts right through wildlife preserves that took decades to buy and build, cutting the migration patterns of many threatened species. In terms of humans, the studies show that the wall is woefully ineffective at keeping people out. All it does is make the journey more dangerous and the smugglers rich. Not to mention that not a single terrorist has been caught coming across the Mexican border. Several have been caught crossing the Canadian border, yet we're not building walls there. Lastly, the mass influx of undocumented workers right now is due to NAFTA. If we decide that goods can move freely across borders, why is it that workers cannot?
The third and final track workshop for the day was on the theology of eco-justice, presented by Catherine Keller. I'd never heard of her before but she was amazing. She spent the entire time dissecting out the first few verses of Genesis. Much of what she'd said I'd heard before in various classes, but she put them in the context of feminism, process theology, and eco-justice. For example, God did not create ex nihilo (from nothing). There was already something there - Chaos. Tiamat, which had been a Babylonian goddess. God did not "zap" here and there and create. God said, "Let there be" and the earth offered forth. Creation was much more of a collaboration between creator and created. And God did not pronounce that things were good. He saw that things were good and said so, ie - He recognized what was the case. The picture that Keller painted was of an ongoing creative process, a mutuality, and an element of surprise and delight on God's part. Not omniscient dictatorship.
The eco-justice implications of this? Our relationship with the earth should be partnership, not dominance.
