EnviroStewardship: ELCA Speaks

My dad writes a monthly "Environmental Stewardship" column for the newsletter of his church and any other congregations that care to pick it up. I've been posting it here except on the rare occasion when his column is very specific to his own congregation. Here's Dad's column for September:

The recent Churchwide Assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), held in our northern suburb, Milwaukee, is a reminder that our congregation is a member of a much larger organization. The ELCA adopts policies and Social Statements by which we operate along with the Bible, the Creeds and Confessions of the Reformation. These statements and policies don’t always filter down to the people in the pews (or those who are ... less frequently there).

One of the first Social Statements adopted by the newly merged ELCA was entitled “Caring for Creation: Vision, Hope, and Justice.” This was adopted by more than a two-thirds majority back on August 28, 1993 by the Churchwide Assembly in Kansas City, Missouri. Obviously there have been many changes in how we care for or consider that creation in the ensuing years, and there have been other related resolutions passed in subsequent Assemblies, such as the Social Statement “Genetics, Faith and Responsibility” adopted at the 2011 Churchwide Assembly at which I was a delegate. A portion of this Statement reads:

“This vocation (innovative stewards of creation) within God’s creation means humans should not claim for themselves authority to make decisions based solely on human interests. They should consider both the integrity of the other participants in the community of life and their tasks before God. The human vocation as innovative stewards must be guided by the goal to respect and promote the earth’s abundance for the sake of the community of life.
“As one expression of human stewardship, this church affirms science and technology as appropriate means to order and imagine, nurture and invent.” (Emphasis added)

There also was adopted at the same Assembly a resolution strongly opposing any action of the church that would contribute to the extinction of any living species.

But to get back to the 1993 Social Statement: a paragraph in the Prologue states, “We of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America are deeply concerned about the environment, locally and globally, as members of this church and as members of society. Even as we join the political, economics and scientific discussion, we know care for the earth is a profoundly spiritual matter.”

The Statement calls for Justice through Participation, Solidarity, Sufficiency, and Sustainability. Such statements might be considered weak on specifics, but that is what I have tried to add in these essays over the past ten years. In the Commitments section, the Statement states:

“As members of this church, we commit ourselves to personal life styles that contribute to the health of the environment.
“As congregations and other expressions of the Church, we will seek to incorporate the principles of sufficiency and sustainability in our life … We will undertake environmental audits and follow through with checkups to ensure our continued commitment.” 

Other commitments are a little longer, but well worth reading. To read the texts of these and other Social Statements of the ELCA, go to elca.org/socialstatements.

—John Berge