How do we revise our theology and spirituality in a world suffering such severe climate impacts? Drawing on contemplative, non-dual traditions, Kabbalists, Celtic spirituality, eco-feminism and process theology, Pete Terpenning will lead a reflection and discussion on Earth-centered theology. And we will touch on the theology of the movie Avatar.
Rev. Pete Terpenning is a retired minister in the UCC, most recently serving Community UCC in Boulder, having served churches in Chicago, Cleveland, and Michigan. He has an M.Div. from Duke Divinity School and a D.Min. from Chicago Theological Seminary. Pete is now dedicating his energy to the environmental movement, what theologian Thomas Berry called "The Great Work" of our time. Working with a local non-profit, Earth’s Table, Pete grows food for donation to local food pantries using land and water shared by generous, local landowners. He and his wife, Laura, are also trying to regenerate the house and 2 acres where they live using permaculture principles and sustainable energy solutions. Pete has a blog called "Seeking a Regenerative Life".
The Eco Grief Circles' intention is to offer to anyone struggling with grief around the climate a place and a process that helps them tend to their hearts. As Francis Weller says, grieving helps to keep our hearts open and soft. We will offer an overview of a 7-week eco-grief circle as an introduction and provide resources for those who are interested in a deeper dive.
Rev. Selena Wright is Pastor of Kirk of Bonnie Brae UCC. As a part of her ministry, she has engaged in various grieving ministries including the founding of a children’s grief support group in Morgan County, CO and co-lead an eco-grief circle for the RMC in 2021.
Drawing on Jeff's decade of work leading coalitions in Denver to plan and achieve the city's climate action policies, and the work of Together Colorado climate justice committee at the state level, the workshop will explore a range of ways that individuals and congregations can take part in effective political action. Conversation will provide opportunities for participants to share their stories and wisdom.
Rev. Jeff Neuman-Lee is a retired pastor in the Church of the Brethren. For the last thirteen years he has, as a volunteer, worked at a calling to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases. Until recently, he has helped lead coalitions centered on the city of Denver, with a series of strong victories. In the last three years Jeff has also worked with the Together Colorado Climate Justice Committee, where he chairs the Legislative Team, bringing the priorities of Together Colorado's climate work to the state legislature. His work also has a local aspect as he has recently started a Green Team in his Whittier Neighborhood.
We will tour First Universalist Church, diagonally across the street from First Plymouth. (There will be directions provided for a very short drive, or a long walk without traffic.) The Church has six wells to gather geothermal heat. There are ten geothermal heat pumps. Each acts as an air conditioner run in reverse. We will see a three-dimensional model of the system, and then tour the various components in the building to see how we achieve heating, cooling, and fresh air exchange without using any fossil fuels.
The tour will be led by members of First Universalist who have been active in the transformation of the building into a net-zero structure. Bill Kroesser (a member of the CA planning team) is one of the tour leaders. His career involved teaching manufacturers how to make their products while reducing their emission of pollutants. He has been involved in a number of organizations promoting reduction of fossil fuel use, first to protect the environment, and then to reduce global climate change.
This workshop will explore the concept of "blue justice", or how ocean and climate conservation can support social justice and reduce inequality in communities that rely on the ocean for food and livelihoods, particularly in the Global South. We will also explore "sea slavery" and human and labor rights abuses in the seafood industry, and how climate change will make this worse. We will talk about our responsibilities as citizens of one of the greatest contributors to climate change, as well as practical solutions we can do at home to reduce plastic and care for our ocean.
Sarah Glaser is a Senior Director in the Oceans program at World Wildlife Fund. She earned her PhD in oceanography and she works on ocean conservation, fisheries management, peacebuilding, and climate. She has worked in East Africa for the past decade.
Banks and insurance companies are using your money to finance fossil fuel projects. Join thousands of grassroots leaders around the world in calling for climate justice accountability, an end to fossil fuel expansion and upholding human rights from banks, insurance companies and the finance sector. This session will cover key data from the Banking on Climate Chaos report and provide several opportunities for individuals and congregations to take action.
Ruth Breech is a Senior Campaigner with Rainforest Action Network's Climate and Energy Team. Rainforest Action Network preserves forests, protects the climate and upholds human rights by challenging corporate power and systemic injustice through frontline partnerships and strategic campaigns. She is working to meet the scale of the global climate emergency through corporate accountability campaigns focused on the financial sector, specifically JPMorgan Chase Bank's financing of fossil fuels and climate change; supporting frontline communities impacted by fossil fuels projects, advocating for Indigenous rights and addressing racial justice within the environmental movement. Ruth is working in collaboration with the Stop the Money Pipeline Coalition and the youth climate movement.
In this session Paul will go into how and why our buildings are such a source of pollution, how we can curb the impacts of our buildings while making them much healthier and far more comfortable. He'll also show how buildings have been devastatingly impacted by our changing climate, specifically the Marshall fire tragedy in Boulder County at the end of 2021. Finally, he will show how a spiritual community, 1st Universalist, right across the street from where we are for this conference, went about virtually eliminating the climate change impacts of their building and are now encouraging each of their members to do the same with their individual homes. (Two other Congregations Alive workshop sessions will provide tours of that building.)
Since 1997 Paul Kriescher was the Principal of Lightly Treading. In October 2019 he merged Lightly Treading with PCD/Bowman Engineering headquartered in Reston, VA with whom he still provides Business Development services. He is passionate about helping designers, builders, owners of buildings understand "buildings-as-system" and the benefits of passive house thermal envelopes and building orientation. He is expert in performing airtightness (blower door) testing, IR camera scanning and residential/multifamily duct-leakage testing. He is a verifier for ENERGY STAR, Enterprise Green Communities and National Green Building Standards. He is a frequent speaker at energy-efficiency conferences/trainings and a published author of building performance articles.
Some churches have one Earth Day service a year, and others bring a deep commitment to Earth community into almost every worship occasion. Allyson and Peter will lead conversations that explore basic principles for environmental worship, specific occasions and opportunities to address these themes, and resources for pastors and worship teams in planning new styles of worship.
Rev. Allyson Sawtell's ministry has included a wide range of parish and non-profit settings, where she has enjoyed developing innovative worship and liturgy. In her retirement, she has assembled a website of her worship resources and poetry, Not Ordinary Church (Allyson.RevSawtell.org).
For 20 years, Rev. Peter Sawtell was the executive director of Eco-Justice Ministries, where he stressed that relevant worship is essential to any church with strong environmental ministries.
The workshop will explore the concept of just transitions, or how the costs and benefits of global climate action can be shared in an equitable and inclusive manner that avoids replicating the mistakes of the hydrocarbon age. We will discuss the legacy of the 20th century's scramble for natural resources and how it reinforced existing inequalities and exclusionary governance practices. We will talk about our responsibilities as citizens and consumers as the world's energy systems begin to decarbonize in earnest.
Cullen Hendrix is a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and Professor at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. He studies the economic and security implications of climate change.
Join in the conversation about how climate change is impacting water supplies, consumption and agricultural practices throughout the country. In this interactive session, we will discuss places that are experiencing too much or too little water and how public health and the environment are being impacted.
Chelsea Campbell is the department chair in the Water Quality Management program at Red Rocks Community College. She has been teaching students about water sustainability issues for the past 9 years. Chelsea is passionate about protecting public health and the environment.
Archway Communities (a sponsor of Congregations Alive), is a significant provider of affordable housing in Colorado. The workshop will be a discussion of faith based affordable housing and community development. Archway will discuss current and former projects with UCC churches to repurpose them for affordable housing. Repurposing existing buildings can have dramatically lower climate impacts than new construction.
Sebastian Corradino is the Chief Executive Officer of Archway Communities.
We will tour First Universalist Church, diagonally across the street from First Plymouth. (There will be directions provided for a very short drive, or a long walk without traffic.) The Church has six wells to gather geothermal heat. There are ten geothermal heat pumps. Each acts as an air conditioner run in reverse. We will see a three-dimensional model of the system, and then tour the various components in the building to see how we achieve heating, cooling and fresh air exchange without using any fossil fuels.
The tour will be led by members of First Universalist who have been active in the transformation of the building into a net-zero structure. Bill Kroesser (a member of the CA planning team) is one of the tour leaders. His career involved teaching manufacturers how to make their products while reducing their emission of pollutants. He has been involved in a number of organizations promoting reduction of fossil fuel use, first to protect the environment, and then to reduce global climate change.
The national UCC's office of environmental ministries has a Creation Justice certification program for churches that are committed to environmental and climate justice. Four congregations in the Rocky Mountain Conference have that certification: Kirk of the Bonnie Brae (Denver, CO), Holladay UCC (Holladay, UT), First Congregational (Boulder, CO), and First Plymouth (Englewood, CO).
Representatives of each of the four congregations will explain the certification program, and how their congregation has been enriched by the process.
Around the world, agriculture is a major contributor to environmental harm, including climate change. This is especially true of meat production. Join Ms. Peters to learn about plant-based foods that are enjoyable and tasty, healthier than meat, and lessen your impact on the environment. She also will share recipes, meal ideas, and personal experiences of making the change. There will be excerpts from two excellent documentaries on this subject: "Forks Over Knives", and "Game Changers".
Channie Peters is a member of the Green First Task Force at First Universalist Church of Denver. She has been vegetarian (pescatarian) for 30 years, originally because she discovered that she was unable to digest meat. She says that now that she knows the damage raising animals does to the environment, and to human health, she would choose to be vegetarian.
In 1982, as a response to an experience of non-violent civil disobedience in North Carolina where the state chose a predominately poor African American community for the placement of a toxic waste landfill, the UCC Commission of Racial Justice commissioned a study to examine what was at the time perceived to be an intentional placement of hazardous waste sites in communities of color and the working poor. In releasing the findings of the study in 1987, Rev. Benjamin Chavis, CRJ Executive Director referred to this process as "Environmental Racism." Over the years this process has continued to get worse, including right here in the Denver area. Rev. Chris Gilmore from the RMC Anti-Racism Ministry team and few members from GES (Globeville, Elyria-Swansea – "the most polluted ZIP Code in America") will engage participants in a dialogue around what environmental racism is and how we can find ways to organize against it.
Rev. Chris Gilmore is the Lead Minister of Sixth Avenue UCC in Denver.
Efforts for our society to move rapidly away from fossil fuels, and toward renewable energy, have major impacts on workers and communities who have been closely tied to the production and distribution of coal, oil and gas. Initiatives for a Just Transition recognizes that these workers and communities must be provided with assistance (job retraining, tax support, housing adjustments, etc.) if the move from fossil fuels is to be achieved quickly and fairly. The State of Colorado has an Office of Just Transition, dealing only with the coal industry; addressing the oil & gas transition is much more complex.
Heidi Leathwood is the Climate Policy Analyst for 350Colorado. She has been a member of the Just Transition Roundtable, a policy development project of the Alliance Center in Colorado. She has a graduate certificate in Environmental Policy from University College at DU, and is nearing a paralegal certificate from Arapahoe Community College.