Mobilizing Methodists: A Movement for Creation Justice Grows in the UMC

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Faiths4Future | May 19

“We didn’t set out to create a movement. But that’s what we did.” — Rev. Pat Watkins

The United Methodist Church is the third largest denomination in the United States, with over seven and a half million members. Though United Methodists have churches in hamlets, towns, and cities across the country—and so a front row seat to rising seas and worsening storms from coast to coast—it has been slow to talk about the climate crisis.

All that is changing. Just as the rising seas of the coast are making the climate crisis harder to ignore, another tide is rising within the denomination—a call for creation care and environmental justice. A true movement is emerging from the faithful, from county to county and state to state, from women’s groups, men’s groups, seminary study and green teams rooted in the local church.

Movements make people sit up and take notice—and movements where real good is being done, those are cause for celebration and investment. Movements also engage our curiosity. What is going on in North Carolina? Tennessee? Minnesota? We wanted to learn more, and invited Rev. Pat Watkins and Cathy Velasquez Eberhart to share about Movement Making at a recent Climate Cafe Multifaith.

“To really look at where new life is emerging, look to find others.”

— Cathy Velasquez Eberhart

Movements start with relationships. There are a number of leaders in this growing Creation Justice movement, and both Rev. Watkins and Velasquez Eberhart were important leaders in shaping its beginning. The question, then, arises: what inspired them to begin?

In the video below, Rev. Watkins and Velasquez Eberhart share a little about who they are, and how they came to care about the creation—this planet, earth.

For Rev. Watkins, things started in Africa. United Methodists are part of a global denomination of 12 million people worldwide. In the early 1990s, Rev. Watkins and his wife, also a Methodist clergyperson, lived and worked in Nigeria “at the end of the earth,” says Rev. Watkins. “We lived in a very, very isolated village.” It was a different way of living and experiencing life, and it made a huge impression on him. “We had to structure the way our life worked around the way the life of the earth worked,” explains Rev. Watkins. “There was no telephone, no electricity, no running water, none of any of that stuff, no internet, none of that. And we learned that we had to live our life in relationship to the way the Earth lives its life.”

Life without technology, indoor plumbing, or even bridges in the rainy season might seem hard to tolerate for those unused to it. But for Rev. Watkins, it cemented for him the idea of what it really meant to be in relationship with the Earth. “I began to fall in love with that kind of existence,” he explains. The experience led him back to school to study the environment, and filled him with a call “to put science and faith together in my own mind and heart.” For Rev. Watkins, he discovered a deep calling to put creation care at the center of his vocation as a clergyperson, working for 15 years within the denomination as a US based “Missionary for the Care of God’s Creation.”

“Just because of this one person, me, that says 'Hey, anybody care about this?' It just happened.”

—Rev. Pat Watkins

Cathy Velasquez Eberhart has an international connection as well. She and her husband own a fair-trade coffee company, and their business and family is connected with Honduras. Velasquez Eberhart was born and spent her infancy at the seminary where her dad was studying. Both her parents were United Methodist pastors. In college she studied political science and religion, and worked for a time with the Land Stewardship Project, and sustainable farming.

Then, in 2010, she began to dig deeper into the climate crisis. She knew it was bad, but in learning more felt the terrible weight of just how bad it really was. She explains, “about 10 years ago I faced that kind of deep chasm of despair about what was about to happen.” She knew that “one way or the other, I needed to do something. I needed to take some action.” It was with the help of her brother, a theologian, and words of hope from Jürgen Moltmann, that helped her process the despair and find a path forward.

Velasquez Eberhart turned her attention to action on climate. She explains, “that basis of being rooted in the church as a kid, of finding that sense of calling,” these things helped impel her forward. She found herself asking, “Where am I? Who am I? What do I have to offer the world, and what does the world need me to do?”

“Where should I act? …relationship building and connection is what sets the stage for what's coming next.”

— Cathy Velasquez Eberhart

From these beginnings, both Rev. Watkins and Velasquez Eberhart took their first steps toward building a movement to address the climate crisis. In the video below, Rev. Watkins and Velasquez Eberhart talk about what it took to build a movement for creation justice within the greater United Methodist Church.

Starting a Movement, Creation Justice in the faith institution from CircleFaithFuture

What started as a personal and spiritual call to address an unfolding climate crisis, grew into a deepening of faith and faithful action for them both. They next worked with colleagues, friends, and an institution to bring about the United Methodist Creation Justice Movement. And that is the next part of the story.

Institutions can be famously frustrating, filled with gatekeepers and slow to change. But institutions also carry the hopes of its founders, the dreams of its youth, and a framework that can be leveraged to support new things and rediscover abundance. Says Rev. Watkins, “We just have to be open, I think, to the Spirit of God—a Spirit that shows up in the movement itself” and also in the “the spirit of the people around us.” If we attend to that, if we “are interested in what they're interested in,” good things will grow.

Both Rev. Watkins and Velasquez Eberhart spent years learning not just environmental and theological things, but also organizing. It started slowly, with email groups, small groups, and then a series of conferences in the Southeastern Jurisdiction. From there, groups turned into strategy sessions, and conferences became summits. Today they offer newsletters, actions, policy information, green team support, and webinar trainings.

“Hey, anybody out there care about God's creation?”

— Rev. Pat Watkins

For Rev. Watkins, that spark of movement—the organizing—began with an email to colleagues in the Virginia Conference. Says Rev. Watkins, “I decided, all by myself, I just decided that the Virginia Conference ought to have a creation care ministry team. I didn't ask anybody. I didn't go to the bishop... All I did was prepare an email and I sent it out there saying, ‘Hey, anybody out there care about God's creation?’” It turned out that about 40 people did—a biblical number! And with 40 in support, “we just started having meetings…and then it grew from there.”

One of the things that grew was a program called the Earthkeepers. Says Rev. Watkins, “We know a little bit about the science of climate change and other environmental degradations. We know a little bit about the theology of all of this. We know a bit about political advocacy, both federal and state level. But what we don't seem to know very well is how to organize in our communities, how to identify local issues in our communities, and identify the resources that that it would take to solve those problems. …that's why we started Earthkeepers.”

Earthkeepers is a program that offers a way for United Methodists to live their call to serve God by serving the creation. The Earthkeepers program began in 2016, and structurally, it is wedged in tight to the denomination. Under the Board of Global Ministries, it is connected to and by United Methodists from different annual conferences, jurisdictions, and churches. Earthkeepers themselves are not just trained, they are commissioned, meaning their effort and call to serve the creation is recognized as a Spirit-filled and Spirit-led ministry it its own right by the denomination.

“This denomination…it needs to be moved. A movement needs to be built and the resources of this institution need to be put to work.”

—Cathy Velasquez Eberhart

Says Velasquez Eberhart, “we are calling folks to an identity and to their purpose. It's gathering, bringing together people so they can build relationships.” Earthkeepers, laid in at the structural center of United Methodism, was intended as a place for relationship building and mobilization. A place to “connect and collaborate… with the goal of mobilizing folks for collective action.”

Prior to committing her time and energy to Earthkeepers and the United Methodist Creation Justice Movement, Velasquez Eberhart credits time spent with Minnesota Interfaith Power and Light as instrumental to learning about movements, coalitions and mobilization. In returning to the church where she was born, she felt that what she had learned outside the church needed to be brought inside to benefit all. She explains, “we need practical things like solar and composting, and we need systemic change like advocacy. And we need institutional organizing.”

“…there ain't no one size fits all and there's no prescribed method for starting a movement.”

— Rev. Pat Watkins

Though Rev. Watkins has spent more time focused within the UMC, he has also spent time connecting more widely outside the denomination and with interfaith groups and state policy. But he turned at some point to focus on building a movement within the church. He explains, “I found a way to immerse myself within the United Methodist Church doing this work… I still feel a bit selfish about that…. But, I guess I justified it by saying that we've got a long way to go here.”

The beauty of the United Methodist Creation Justice Movement is that as it is coming together it honors the work done both inside and outside the church. The phrase ‘one size fits all,’ explains Rev. Watkins, does not apply to movements. Says Velasquez Eberhart, “In terms of our United Methodist organizing, some of us are focused really heavily on the denomination, but folks in the local context are absolutely going to need to and want to work in really interfaith and secular ways, collaborative ways, to build out on all those resources.”

From the inside out, or the outside in, Rev. Watkins believes that what matters most is the faith and conviction you bring. He explains, “I feel like there is a uniqueness that those of us who are people of faith bring to this movement. There's a faith component to it… That doesn't make us any better than anybody else, but I think it gives us maybe a bit of an additional motivation to be a part of this movement, hopefully, anyway, hopefully.

That's my hope and dream that it would.”

Hope is always a big part of any movement, and Rev. Watkins and Velasquez Eberhart share their hopes in the video below.

What gives you hope? from CircleFaithFuture

As the movement grows there is a lot of room for those who feel called to step up and step in. An institution can bring the gifts of resources, networks, shared history, and shared promise. These gifts can be amplified by those who have learned to connect and mobilize more widely. The two together can reshape each other. Says Velasquez Eberhart, “There are some theological underpinnings behind why we are damaging our Mother Earth. And so we have to also rework our theologies, we have to rework our understanding of our relationship to creator and to creation, or we're going to keep causing the same problem.”

This is a commitment to the earth and the future that the United Methodist Creation Justice Movement intends to keep.

How to get involved:

Website: www.umcreationjustice.org

Monthly Update Newsletter: Sign up and/or peruse the Archive.

For Creation Justice Tips: Sign up and/or find the Archive.

Join the UMCJ Facebook Group:

A short Introduction video.

And/or connect via email.

Connect with Rev. Jenny Philips, senior technical advisor for Environmental Sustainability, to learn more about the Earthkeepers and upcoming trainings.

More Links!

The “Big Idea” talk at 2018 Creation Care Summit - Calling the Church to Transformation of the World.

Timely Topics Session One handout: A Faithful Response to Climate Change (2013)

From Minnesota Interfaith Power and Light, Building a Movement.

UMCJM website and 3 Minute Introductory Video.

Rev. Richenda Fairhurst is here for the friendship and conversations about climate, community, and connection. She organizes the Climate Cafe Multifaith as a co-leader of Faiths4Future. Find her in real life in Southern Oregon, working as Steward of Climate with the nonprofit Circle Faith Future.