What is Practically Green with Love?

In short, this handbook is a guide to environmental education and action in congregations of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. It talks about care of the environment as "earthkeeping"--caring for the earth as God cares for us, as in, "The Lord bless you and keep you" (Numbers 6:24), and, "The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden to till it and keep it" (Genesis 2:15).

In specific, Practically Green with Love covers the following topics:

• Theological and scriptural arguments for why congregations should practice earthkeeping
• The content of the social statement of the ELCA, "Caring for Creation"
• Existing ELCA programs and resources related to earthkeeping
• Martin Luther and the environment
• How congregations affect the environment--whether they try to or not
• What congregations can do to practice earthkeeping
• What additional resources are available from the ELCA
• What additional resources are available from other sources

Perhaps the best way to describe the handbook’s approach is to use the language of the title:

This handbook is meant first of all to be practical. My hope in writing it is to help people who are concerned about environmental problems and sense that the church ought to be a place to address them, but don’t know how to begin. The handbook contains suggestions for how to introduce the topic, background for explaining why this is a church issue, information on what the ELCA is already doing and what resources it can provide, practical suggestions for action, and resources for additional investigation. Its goal is to promote congregational environmental education and action by making it understandable and practical.

Green is the color of living, growing plants. For this reason, it is often associated with people who love and want to protect the environment, and with a lifestyle that attempts to minimize environmental impact.

In the Christian liturgical tradition, green is the color of church growth. We use it during the season after Epiphany, when we read lessons about the growth of Jesus’ ministry and people’s growing awareness of who he was. We also use it during the season after Pentecost, when we focus on the spiritual growth and maturation of the church. "Being green" has a long history in the Christian church.

People also talk about "being green" with envy. Webster’s dictionary describes this as being "affected by intense emotion". It is often envy and greed that lead to environmental degradation. We want more money, more comfort, more independence, and we want to "keep up with the Joneses," often without considering the environmental consequences. Being green with envy has contributed to the depletion of nonrenewable resources, climate change, and the pollution of air, land, and water. What if the church were green with love for God’s creation, instead?

Christians are called to "be green", not for political or economic reasons, but out of love. Loving God’s creation is simply an extension of what Jesus in Matthew called the two greatest commandments: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind," (22:37) and "You shall love your neighbor as yourself" (22:39). One aspect of loving God is loving God’s creation and appreciating it for the wonderful gift it is. One aspect of loving our neighbors as ourselves is working to maintain a world that can sustain and nurture human life for present and future generations.

The green seasons of the church year are known as "ordinary time." Wouldn’t it be wonderful if it were ordinary for the church to be "practically green with love"--affected by intense love of God’s living, growing creation, and growing in spiritual maturity--and acting this out in practical ways? This handbook is meant to be a first step toward that goal.

Practically Green with Love does not attempt to be a book of environmental facts and figures, and it does not try to prove whether or not there is an environmental crisis. It is also not written to be a Bible study, although some of the material could be adapted for use in a class. Other people have already written excellent materials of this kind, and rather than reinventing the wheel, the purpose of this handbook is to point you toward those existing resources, listed in the "Resources" section.

There are many more earthkeeping topics that are worthy of the church’s consideration, but which this handbook is not comprehensive enough to address--although the resource materials listed could help you investigate them further. These include environmental racism, camping ministries, agricultural policy and its impact on rural churches and communities, the connection between hunger and environmental justice, the environmental impact of church construction and renovation, the health implications of environmental degradation, and what seminaries can do to educate future church leaders about earthkeeping.

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