Churches making greener choices

Union Church in Biddeford switched to energy-saving light bulbs and helps its members make "green" choices at home.

First Parish Congregational Church in Brunswick asked its members to buy $10 worth of local farm produce every week to reduce pollution from transportation. And at the First Universalist Church at Rockland, families stop by a table after services each Sunday to pick up their shares of fresh vegetables grown on a local organic farm.

Motivated by the fear of climate change and its potential effect on people around the world, these Maine churches are leading a national movement to bring the message of environmental justice into their pulpits, pews and communities.

"We are at a moment in time when we're called upon to act," said Lucie Bauer, co-chairwoman of the Green Sanctuary Committee at the First Universalist Church in Rockland.

The role of religious organizations in protecting the Earth will be the subject of an all-day eco-justice conference at the Augusta Civic Center next Saturday. The conference is sponsored by the Maine Council of Churches, a primary force behind the movement here.

"Maine happens to be one of the most active of all state campaigns," said Gary Gardner of the World Watch Institute, author of "Inspiring Progress: Religions' Contributions to Sustainable Development." Gardner is scheduled to speak at the conference next week.

The green churches movement started more than a decade ago, but has expanded rapidly in the past five years because of growing concern about global warming, according to Gardner. It covers a range of religions and denominations, including leaders of evangelical churches who made national news earlier this year by calling for more U.S. action to fight climate change.

Anne D. "Andy" Burt is the environmental justice coordinator for the Maine Council of Churches, which includes eight denominations and about 650 churches statewide.

"I am commited to making sure the Earth is in good condition for the little ones that are coming along. We are leaving them an Earth that is really in trouble," said Burt, a 61-year-old grandmother of four from Edgecomb.

Global warming is galvanizing the faithful in much the same way civil rights once did, she said, because of the wide-ranging impacts it could have, especially on some of the world's poorest people. Warming and melting in the Arctic is threatening the culture and livelihoods of indigenous people there, while rising sea levels are threatening the existence of entire island nations in other parts of the world, she said.

"It is making all of us aware that what I do every day, the choices I make, affects people, plants and ecosystems, not only right in my immediate neighborhood but around the world," Burt said. "It really is a moral, spiritual issue."

Burt has helped churches work for political change, such as promoting local no-idling policies and marching in an international rally against global warming in Montreal. She is now working with churches around the state to support local farmers as a way of fighting climate change, as well as supporting sustainability in their own communities.

Buying locally produced food means the food doesn't have to be trucked in from somewhere else -- a practice that pumps heat-trapping gases into the air thought to accelerate global warming.

At the Universalist Church in Rockland, 14 families have bought shares in a nearby organic farm in exchange for a weekly delivery of produce. The church itself bought a share and donates its share of the produce to a local food pantry.

The system, known as Community Supported Agriculture, helps keep farmers in business by guaranteeing a revenue stream. And that helps sustain local food sources.

The effort also makes for a quaint ritual every summer Sunday, when families file out of the church and collect their fresh food. The farmers set up at a table in front of church beneath a large banner that says: "We Believe in Caring for Our Planet."

"Global warming is something that has really called us as an issue. It's the moral issue of our time," Bauer said.

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