Fighting climate change side by side

Earlier this year, the United Nations issued a warning that humanity has two years left to take urgent action on addressing climate change. The historic heat waves, ravaging wildfires and surprise floods of Summer 2024 underscored this warning. The Insurance Bureau of Canada reports that Summer 2024 was the costliest on record, with seven billion dollars in insured losses due to severe weather including the wildfires in Jasper, hailstorms in Calgary and flooding in Ontario and Quebec.

The Assembly

In the midst of the summer heat, delegates from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada (ELCIC) and the Anglican Church of Canada (ACC) met in Calgary from June 27-July 2. The theme of the Assembly was “Let There Be Greening.” The two denominations have been in full communion since 2001, but this is only the second time that the General Synod of the ACC and the National Convention of the ELCIC have been held simultaneously with room for shared worship, prayer and conversation. 

“It was a time of great celebration and great promise,” writes Rev. Cynthia Haine-Turner in Anglican Life. “Our full communion relationship has more than lived up to that promise as we have met and engaged in ministry together over the last 22 years, and as the relationship between our two churches has grown and deepened. Our respective executive bodies have a member from the other Church. We uphold each other in prayer regularly. There are ministries where Anglican and Lutheran communities share facilities or programs or worship, where they share priests, pastors and/or deacons, ministries where a community is served by a priest, pastor or deacon of the full-communion partner and merged or combined communities.”

After the Assembly, Rev. Michael Pryse, a bishop in the ELCIC, reported back to the Eastern Synod, sharing the long list of creation’s ills that had been discussed at the Assembly. “Care for creation needs to be a top priority for all of us as congregations and individuals,” he remarked. “We need to safeguard and protect the creation which God declared to be good!” 

Season of Creation

The Eastern Synod of the ELCIC has now formed a Climate Justice Task Force, urging its 50,000 members of 182 congregations from Sault Ste. Marie to Halifax to join them in taking action in the climate crisis. From September first to October fourth, Lutheran churches participated in a global ecumenical campaign to mark the Season of Creation. This movement began in 1989, when Ecumenical Patriarch Dimitrios I proclaimed the first of September as a day of prayer for creation for the Orthodox. Now Season of Creation is a month-long campaign uniting the world’s 2.2 billion Christians, including the World Communion of Reformed Churches, World Council of Churches, A Rocha and many other organizations for the sake of creation care. 

Étienne Eason, a spokesperson for the Lutheran church’s Eastern Synod Climate Justice task force, says a main goal of the campaign was encouraging congregations to attend existing climate demonstrations and organize letter-writing events. 

“The church has an interesting role to play here,” she wrote in our email conversation. “In the past, it has often upheld mainstream social values that have benefitted the same systems that have led us into the climate crisis.” 

Taking action

Throughout their campaign this fall, the ELCIC Eastern Synod has worked to “subvert the notion of the church being [passive]” through various stewardship efforts. Integrated creation care sermons and climate talks provided congregations with resources and information, and members were encouraged to participate in climate demonstrations and letter-writing campaigns. One goal of the letter writing was to push elected officials to implement the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, which would commit the Canadian government to ending fossil fuel expansion. 

Advocacy measures depended on the size and location of a congregation. Larger churches such as St. Peter’s Lutheran Church in Ottawa, Ontario collaborated with Fridays For Future to host an “art-build” event where participants could make signs and posters for the Climate Culprits March on September 21. 

Think bigger

When it comes to the methodology of stewardship practices, Eason says she would like to see more churches develop an advocacy-oriented approach, as a common stumbling block for congregations is their inability to look beyond their building’s walls. Though localized environmental efforts are needed, Eason stresses the importance of pushing governments to end unsustainable habits. 

The ELCIC is not alone in honouring the Season of Creation. Eason says other churches from various denominations are establishing stewardship programs of their own. Ultimately the task force would like to make its work interdenominational, as well as combine efforts with other faiths and secular groups.  

“I’m not sure whether the firefighters in Jasper had ever conceived of flames over 100 metres tall until this summer,” Eason tells me, mourning the disaster. “In the same fashion, we must come together as [the] church and work in ways no one has conceived of before. After all, subverting notions of the possible is at the core of what it means to have faith.”