Climate Buttons
The Rev. Dr. Lyda Pierce and other climate activists greet people arriving at the 2016 United Methodist General Conference in Portland, Ore., on May 17. (UMNS Photo by Paul Jeffrey).
A United Methodist Insight Column
We’re starting this week with some reasons behind “why” United Methodists should be paying close attention to the crises affecting the world currently.
Kids face a bleak climate future without remedies
Sober news today (Sept. 27) from an article in the Climate and Environment section of The Washington Post:
“Today’s kids could live through three times as many climate disasters as their grandparents.
"They could see twice as many wildfires, 3.4 times more river floods and 2.3 times as many droughts as someone born in 1960, if the planet continues to warm as expected, a new study showed.
“It doesn’t have to be this way: The world could decrease planet-warming activities, and countries could invest in making communities safer — installing flood barriers, for example — to make disasters less destructive.”
We’re coming up on the end of the ecumenical “Season of Creation” observance for 2021. For the reasons why it’s urgent for United Methodists to put the climate crisis at the top of their prayer and activity lists, I commend to your reading these articles on Insight:
What Is Creation Justice? by Karyn Bigelow and Avery Davis Lamb
Creation Justice in the Psalms by Ellen F. Davis
Indigenous Creation Justice Expresses Reality's Boundaries by Sarah Augustine
Creation Justice in God’s Good Future of Shalom by Steven Bouma-Prediger
Voter suppression, censorship, and similar issues
Why should United Methodists be watching political developments carefully this week in the United States? Our civic duty harks back to Paragraph 164 of the Book of Discipline:
“A) Basic Freedoms and Human Rights—We hold governments responsible for the protection of the rights of the people to free and fair elections and to the freedoms of speech, religion, assembly, communications media, and petition for redress of grievances without fear of reprisal; to the right to privacy; and to the guarantee of the rights to adequate food, clothing, shelter, education, and health care. … The form and the leaders of all governments should be determined by exercise of the right to vote guaranteed to all adult citizens.”
This fundamental right is now under serious attack in the United States, warns Historian Heather Cox Richardson in her Sept. 25 “Letters from an American” post:
… the leadership of the Republican Party, composed now as it is of Trump loyalists, is undermining our democracy. It has fallen in line behind Trump’s Big Lie that he and not Biden won the 2020 election, and that the Democratic Party engaged in voter fraud to install their candidate. This is a lie, but Republicans at the state level are using that lie to justify new election laws that suppress Democratic votes and put control of state elections into their own hands. If those laws are allowed to stand, we will be a democracy in name only. We will likely still have elections, but, just as in Russia or Hungary now, the mechanics of the system will mean that only the president’s party can win.
“This attack on our democracy is unprecedented, and it cannot be ignored.”
I would make the case that constant vigilance of all political parties is our admission price to democracy.
Another way to control voters, as we’re seeing with the Big Lie, is to control their thoughts. This leads me to note that we’re in the midst of the American Library Association’s Banned Books Week Sept.26 – Oct. 2 in celebration of the right to read. In an article for The Lily, Meg Metcalf, a women’s, gender and LGBTQ studies librarian and collections specialist at the Library of Congress, says: “Censorship is a tool to ensure conformity: what people in power consider to be the right ideas.”
Censorship cuts many ways and has become especially pernicious in some of our academic institutions, where we would hope students are taught how to think, not what to think without vigorous intellectual inquiry. To that end, we commend to your reading an article by former Portland State University professor Peter Boghossian. It’s a cautionary tale about the dangers of becoming so immersed in an ideology, even one that seems benevolent and beneficial, that we become the evils we deplore – and that goes for extremes at both ends of the spectrum.
it’s clear that United Methodists in the United States shouldn’t let our “citizenship in heaven” override our American civic duty. Too much is at stake.
Media Mentions as of Sept. 27, 2021
Covid Challenges Congregations, Families In Zimbabwe - NewZimbabwe.com
Cathedral to replace Confederate windows with stained glass reflecting Black life - The ... – The Washington Post*
Zimbabwe: Croco Motors Continues the Fight Against the Covid-19 Pandemic - allAfrica.com
Zimbabwe total suicide rate goes up to 14.1% – The Zimbabwe Mail
Area churches help nourish children in need through backpack program | Rockingham Now ... – Greensboro News & Record
Religious exemptions complicate vaccine mandates | News | bakersfield.com – The Bakersfield Californian
Thousands flee raging California Fawn fire as woman arrested with lighter in her pocket – The Washington Post•
The truth will set you free - The Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Sorority at Methodist University apologizes for racist incident - The Fayetteville Observer*
21 Kids Foundation, Attalla churches unite for vaccine clinic with incentives - Gadsden Times
Scholar discusses religion and the Jan. 6 insurrection | Local News | benningtonbanner.com
*Paid subscription required.
Cynthia B. Astle serves as Editor of United Methodist Insight, which she founded in 2011.