Seminar Day 1: Environmental Justice

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Today the Micah Corps had the first day of the seminar at the General Board of Church and Society. Monday night, four other United Methodists from Nebraska joined the Micah Corps so they could attend the seminar with us. There are now eleven of us total in D.C for the seminars on environmental justice. We are staying at Trinity Lutheran Church in D.C. in the basement. Not only are we staying in this church basement, but also there are about 40 middle-schoolers from the South.

This morning we had to be at the General Board of Church and Society (GBCS) at 9 am. Yay! Not too early! We started the seminar off with learning how the United Methodist Church connects Mercy and Justice. We compiled a list as a group, together with our leaders from the GBCS. What we came up with in a nutshell is that mercy is instantaneous; it gives us as an instant gratification from being able to help the immediate need. On the other hand, justice is looking at the root cause of an injustice; it takes time, and can be controversial. After comparing mercy and justice we looked at why mercy tends to be done more often than justice does in the church. Some of the conclusions that we came up with were that justice takes more time than mercy does, and is more controversial than mercy is. This session was taught by Susan Burton who is the Director of the United Methodist Church Seminar Program discussed poverty for just a short while. Her whole discussion on poverty was to set us up to see how environmental justice and poverty intertwine with each other.

As we continued on after that we looked at “God’s Renewed Creation: Theological Reflection” by Rev. Neal Christie who is the Assistant General Secretary at the GBCS. Rev. Neal Christie really got us thinking about how to connect environment with poverty and with the Social Principles of the United Methodist Church. We were put into groups of three to discuss how we felt and what experience we could bring to the different questions Rev. Neal would ask. This was a good way to learn what background and what new ideas the others at the seminar had.

After lunch we had a session on Environmental Racism. This session was taught by Paz Artaza-Regan, who is the Director for Program and Outreach National Religious Campaign Against Torture. This session was very informational and needed lots of processing after hearing some of what we were taught. It’s interesting to see how the environment and racism relate, but if you really take time to connect the dots you will see the connections. Some of these connections may be a stretch, but something that is always good to remember is that there are faces in the destruction that are being hurt just as much as the environment, God’s earthly creation.

Call to action: Get involved in your local church and take small steps to saving the earth!