The United Church of Canada (UCC) will mark Earth Day on April 22 in a high-tech but low impact way: by going online.
The church will host a live, interactive webcast starting 3:00 p.m. EST that will focus on “healing soul, community and creation,” said UCC moderator Mardi Tindal.
The hour-long program will explore “how these three go together and how the healing of any one of them contributes to the healing of the other two,” Tindal said.
In a statement, the UCC said the webcast is in keeping with Tindal’s “Care of Creation” theme as moderator of Canada’s largest Protestant denomination.
“I wanted this event to be a low-carbon national gathering, and that is what it will be,” said Tindal.
The webcast will be co-hosted by former member of Parliament David MacDonald, a UCC minister who chaired Canada’s first parliamentary committee on the environment.
Following some theological reflections, the webcast will look back at the United Nations “Earth Summit” on the environment held in 1992 in Rio de Janeiro, and will include comments from Dr. David Hallman, who was the UCC’s point person on environmental issues at the time.
The program will then feature Joy Kennedy, program coordinator for poverty, wealth and ecological justice issues for the UCC, who will speak about preparations for the Rio+20 UN conference on sustainable development, to take place in Rio de Janeiro from June 20-22 .
The environment, especially climate and ocean change, are “the great spiritual and moral challenge of our time,” Tindal said. “Unless we deal with the ecological challenges before us, the social and personal challenges of well-being are going to become increasingly more stressful.”
The program will also touch on greening sacred spaces. Tindal pointed to one example: Richards Memorial United Church in London, Ont., which has installed a rooftop solar panel in the shape of a cross.
Earlier this year, every congregation in the church received a packet of seeds in preparation for Earth Day.
The webcast will be at livestream.com/unitedchurch. Questions and comments may be posted live via Facebook (facebook.com/UnitedChurchCda) and Twitter (hash tag #modearth).
