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Caring for God's Creation Love and gratitude for God's creation lie deep within religious life. From mountaintops to forests, green pastures to still waters, stars in the sky and lilies of the field, we experience the grace of our Creator and the gift of our presence here. With Earth in grave environmental peril, many religious Americans are seeking to respond through our faith. Through the many gateways and galleries of this website, we offer resources and accounts of how people of faith are acting upon God's mandate to be stewards of our precious Earth. Partners in Stewardship The National Religious Partnership for the Environment is an association of independent faith groups across a broad spectrum: the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the National Council of Churches U.S.A., the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life, and the Evangelical Environmental Network. Each Partner — in common biblical faith but drawing upon its disctinctive traditions — is undertaking scholarship, leadership training, congregational and agency initiative, and public policy education in service to environmental sustainability and justice. Together, they seek to offer resources of religious life and moral vision to a universal effort to protect humankind's common home and well-being on Earth. |

St. Bridget Human Concerns Ministry, Richmond, VA Light Up the Night, a campaign of the St. Bridget Human Concerns Ministry in Richmond, VA, gave parishioners the opportunity to purchase energy-efficient compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) to replace inefficient existing incandescent light bulbs. Members at St. Bridget got a head start on complying with the new energy law passed by Congress on December 19, 2007, which requires the incandescent light bulb to be phased out...
Read moreDunkirk, NY Though few people may now be familiar with the concept of “gleaning” — the ...
Read moreMaine Interfaith Power & Light, Inc. Brunswick, ME In 2003, laypeople and clergy from the Saco-Biddeford area of southern Maine came together as a coalition formed between the First Parish Congregational Church, Unitarian-Universalist Church of Saco-Biddeford, and the Sisters of the Good Shepard, to accept the challenge posed by the Maine Council of Churches’ Environmental Justice Program, a state partner in NRPE’s Interfaith Climate and Energy Campaign and Maine Interfaith Power and Light....
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Northwest Jewish Environmental ProjectPortland, OregonJewish, Non-Denominational In 2003, the Northwest Jewish Environmental Project launched a year-long energy campaign, asking the ...
Read moreFirst Presbyterian Church Kirkwood, MO For the third consecutive year in 2005, First Presbyterian Church in Kirkwood, Missouri will celebrate Earth Day through hands-on community service: cleaning up local creeks. The Social and Environmental Concerns Committee of First Presbyterian sponsored the first annual Community Stream Clean-Up in April 2003. On that first Stream Clean-up day, twenty-eight volunteers of all ages ventured into four storm water creeks with large trash bags.
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Wesley United Methodist Church, Yakima, WA Five million pounds. That’s the amount of material kept out of Washington State landfills over the last 30 years thanks to the members of Wesley United Methodist Church in Yakima, WA. The church placed a recycling center in its parking lot almost 30 years ago. A core group of volunteers—with an average age of 76—processes 60,000 pounds of recyclables every month. “This is much more complicated than simply having...
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Abiding Peace Lutheran Church Kansas City, MO Eight years ago, Mary Gerken described the grounds ...
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Interfaith San Ramon Valley San Ramon, CA In May 2003, the suffering of an indigenous people half a world away led a group of Californian pastors ...
Read moreRestoring Eden/Christian Colleges, West Virginia A version of this article By Peter Illyn originally appeared in the Summer 2008 issue of Creation Care magazine. New Generation Bears Witness to Appalachian Destruction Not many students go on spring Break hoping to get their hearts broken. But when ten students representing seven states and three Christian colleges stood on an Appalachian ridge and stared at the barren remains of a mountaintop dynamited out of existence, their hearts...
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Reformed Church of New Paltz New Paltz, New York Sometimes, just one day isn't enough. In April 2004, the Reformed Church of New Paltz, spearheaded by their Caring for Creation Committee, spent a week celebrating Earth Day. The week's events began Wednesday and Thursday with...
Read moreGeorgetown Gospel Chapel Seattle, WA Georgetown Gospel Chapel is a small Full Gospel congregation that sits in the heart of Seattle’s ...
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Fermi Project, Suwanee, GA Adapted from an article, “From Nightmare to Dream Come True” by Jeff Shinaberger, in the Summer 2007 issue of Creation Care magazine. Like many Biblical inspirations, this story begins with a dream, or moreover, a nightmare. Jeff Shinaberger dreamt of a boy, about eight years old, four feet tall, no shirt, wearing only ripped up mud-stained pants, with an extended belly. He watched the boy dip a glass into a filthy puddle...
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Temple Beth El, Bloomfield Hills, MIJewish, Reform Movement Since 1997, the Ellin and Harold Lawson Youth ...
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Adamah Fellowship Program at Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center, Falls Village, CT Beginning in the 1990’s, Zelig Golden became interested in community agriculture and dreamed about farming through experiences he’d had on farms in Idaho and South America. In 1998 he became the first program director of the Northwest Jewish Environment Project in Seattle, Washington (a COEJL affiliate), which drew connections between Judaism and environmental protection. Some of his training to undertake this task came from Adam Berman, Executive Director of...
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