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UM Creation Justice Movement | Aug. 29, 2022
Methodists have a rich tradition of proclaiming beautiful words as a faithful response to the world’s problems. The first Social Creed, written by Methodists in 1908, addressed issues of economic justice. The creed spoke against child labor and sweat shops and spoke for workplace protections and sabbath rest. Within the year, the Federal Council of Churches adopted the Social Creed and soon expanded it to address a broader range of issues. How did creation justice emerge from this tradition?
This article presents a sampling of significant statements and events in the history of Methodist environmental witness over the past 80+ years. Creation justice is the most recent chapter in an evolution of thought in the United Methodist environmental witness. Over the past eighty years, United Methodist, Methodist, and Evangelical United Brethren churches have engaged with environmental issues through the Social Creed, Social Principles, resolutions, and bishops’ documents. This tradition of beautiful words and actions shows United Methodism thoughtfully and faithfully engaging the most pressing environmental problems of the day—in each and every generation.
Conservation, and Stewardship (1930s–1960)
In 1939, The Methodist Church promoted a program in rural areas “pertaining to people in their relationship to God, to soil and all natural resources.”
In 1960, General Conference expanded this statement on “town and country life” to address “people in their relationship to God, to the stewardship of the soil and the conservation of all natural resources.”
Population Control (1960s–1970s)
Both The Methodist Church and the Evangelical United Brethren Church expressed concern for the worldwide “population explosion” as an environmental and stewardship issue. The United Methodist Church continued to support contraception and family planning as acts of environmental stewardship.
An Interrelated and Complex Set of Problems (1970s)
For Earth Day 1970, the UMC General Conference resolved “to initiate action to resolve our ecological crisis.” (!)
Through the new Social Principles in 1972, United Methodists declared, “We repent of our devastation of the physical and nonhuman world.”
The longstanding resolution, “Bishops’ Call for Peace and the Self-Development of Peoples,” identified (over)population, environmental degradation, and war as intertwined issues threatening global humanity.
The UMC’s 1976 statement on environmental stewardship spoke of a worldwide “ecological crisis” due to increasing population, unchecked technological advances, depletion of natural resources, and military environmental destruction. Thus, the UMC prioritized human rights over property rights, advocated for life-style changes in consumption, and urged the reshaping of unjust institutional structures in cooperation with the United Nations.
Stewardship and Shalom (1980s)
The UMC first expressed concern about what is now called “global climate change” in 1980, through its “Energy Policy Statement” resolution.
In a resolution on “Agricultural and Rural Life Issues,” the UMC declared “stewardship of earth’s resources” as a necessary expression of faith guided by “our personal and social salvation in Jesus Christ and the leadership of the Holy Spirit.”
In the 1984 resolution, “Environmental Stewardship,” the UMC declared shalom, “the complete and harmonious interrelatedness of all creation,” as an environmental goal demanding stewardship: “how we bring all of the resources at our disposal into efficient use in our participation in the saving activity of God.”
Conversion and Discipleship (1988–2008)
The UMC’s 1992 resolution, “Environmental Justice for a Sustainable Future,” addressed “global warming” and advocated “justice for all of creation.” United Methodists called for “conversion to a sustainable society” and named “ecological responsibility as a key element of discipleship.”
In 1996, General Conference passed a resolution, “God’s Vision of Abundant Living,” presenting “a theology of ‘enough’” to counter rampant consumerism and exploitation of the environment. United Methodists called for “individual conversion to a simplified lifestyle.”
In 2008, General Conference established a denominational Creation Care/Climate Change Task Force, approved a “Resolution on Global Warming,” and adopted a new subsection of the Social Principles titled “Global Climate Stewardship.”
Environmental Holiness (2009)
In 2009, the Council of Bishops promoted the idea of “environmental holiness” in their pastoral letter and foundation document, God’s Renewed Creation: Call to Hope and Action. In addition to global warming, the bishops named consumerism and population growth as distinct but related problems negatively impacting the environment.
Creation Care and Climate Justice (2016–present)
In 2016, General Conference adopted the resolution, “Caring for Creation: A Call to Stewardship and Justice,” calling for conversion to “a new lifestyle rooted in stewardship and justice,” noting the interrelatedness of environmental and social concerns.
The resolution, “Climate Change and the Church’s Response,” focused on principles of justice and sustainability while advocating for “climate stewardship” as an aspect of “care for creation.” This resolution boldly proclaimed a counter-witness to so-called climate skeptics and presented “climate justice” as encompassing environmental, economic, and spiritual concerns.
The UMC Creation Justice Movement traces its origin to a series of creation care conferences held after General Conference 2016.
A Remarkably Consistent Witness
United Methodists have put these beautiful words into action in many diverse ways. Individual conversion and stewardship witness to lives of environmental holiness throughout each generation. Missionaries, such as Earthkeepers, have made vocational commitments to environmental justice and stewardship. United Methodists have been active participants in efforts of the National Council of Churches, the United Nations, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, COP21 climate change talks, earth summits, climate marches, and many other broad coalitions and activities. United Methodists and their general agencies have also promoted socially responsible investments, argued over divestment from fossil fuels, and committed to net-zero emissions. Methodist environmental witness is longstanding and multifaceted. It is also surprising.
The history of Methodist environmental witness is surprising for several reasons. First, environmental ethics was not an established field of study prior to the 1960s, yet the Social Creed considered what it means to be in ethical relationship to the natural world as early as the 1930s. Second, the UMC and its predecessor institutions have never issued a prominent document or undertaken a denominational study focused solely on the environment. Instead, Methodists typically discuss environmental ethics in conversation with other issues and concerns, such as poverty and violence. Third, creation justice contrasts sharply with other issues that have been politicized within denominational polity, such as responses to homosexuality. While environmental ethics has been politicized in wider US society, this is not the case within the UMC. Refreshingly, United Methodists have not made the environment a divisive issue within intradenominational power struggles.
The consistency of environmental witness in the history of the UMC and its predecessors is remarkable. The UMC produces its aggregate environmental witness through multiple entities and genres. Methodism has voiced its environmental witness primarily through a consistent stream of smaller statements over the decades, evidencing an organic evolution of thought. Despite significant mergers, changes, and divisions within the denominational structures, the history of Methodist environmental witness has evidenced a creative, faithful response by Christians increasingly aware of the challenges of living faithfully in relation to the natural world.
Note: This article is drawn from Darryl W. Stephens, “From Environmental Stewardship to Environmental Holiness: The Evolution of Methodist Environmental Witness, with a Focus on Climate Change,” Journal of Religious Ethics 47, no. 3 (September 2019): 470–500, https://darrylwstephens.com/environmental-ethics/. Look for an updated version of this research, including attention to the Creation Justice Movement, in the author’s next book, Reckoning Methodism: The Public Church Divided (under contract with the University of Tennessee Press).
Darryl W. Stephens holds a PhD in Christian ethics from Emory University and is an ordained deacon in The United Methodist Church. He has authored over fifty articles, chapters, and books for scholarly and church audiences, focusing on the church and social change. He currently teaches at Lancaster Theological Seminary. You can read more about his work at http://www.ethicsconsidered.com/.