“Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Matthew 6:21). These words of Jesus admonish us to value our spiritual treasures over our worldly treasures, while reminding us that how we use our worldly treasures reveals what we value. Jesus’ words invite us to let our hearts inform us as we make practical decisions about how to spend or invest our worldly treasures according to our spiritual values.
Fossil Free UMC offers a way to invest our time, energy, talents, and financial resources in a campaign that is aligned with values that the United Methodist Church has espoused for decades. Of course, I am referring to our denomination’s many statements about the need to address the harmful impacts of climate change. In 1980, in a resolution on energy policy that has been updated many times since, our denomination was the first to link the burning of fossil fuels with “global warming” and to urge the transition to renewable energy and conservation. Many other statements in our Book of Discipline and Book of Resolutions call for such a transition.
Yet when looking at the issue of climate change, our investments are not aligned with our values. Although The United Methodist Church has been calling for a just transition away from fossil fuels for decades, our denominational investments (and many of our personal investments) still include corporate giants that make and promote coal, oil, and gas, the very corporations that have hidden the impacts of their products for decades and are still engaged in greenwashing, fostering doubt about climate change, and lobbing governments around the world to prevent strong climate action.
If you want to become part of Fossil Free UMC, we invite you to read our posts and subscribe, join us to get on the main interest list, or donate financially to this work.
Such investments are significant. Our investments in fossil fuel companies fund new infrastructure projects for extracting, transporting, refining, and exporting crude oil, coal, and methane gas. Such infrastructure harms people’s health in vulnerable communities and, because such infrastructure is durable, locks in fossil-fuel-based development for decades into the future. Our investments in such projects dwarf our other climate impacts and counteract any lifestyle changes we make to reduce our use of fossil fuels.
The United Methodist Church is far behind many other churches and faith communities in the burgeoning fossil fuel divestment movement. To date, the total value of institutions committed to some level of divestment from the fossil fuel energy sector now stands at more than $40 trillion. See our post Who Has Divested to find out more.
Investing in Fossil Free UMC demonstrates that we treasure the possibility of a just and sustainable future free of the escalating burning of fossil fuels, the primary driver of climate change. It goes further… it is a way of renouncing profits that come through warming the planet, thus harming God’s creation and people who are most vulnerable, including our young and others being harmed first and worst by climate change. A common sense call for ethical climate action is summed up in this slogan from the fossil fuel divestment movement: “It’s wrong to profit by wrecking the planet.”
By investing in Fossil Free UMC, we amplify the call throughout our denomination and world to take the actions we have been speaking out about for so long. It is time for the United Methodist Church to “put our money where our [proverbial] mouth is.” It is long past time for us to invest our worldly treasures according to our spiritual values by beginning now as a church to transition away from funding fossil fuel corporations and projects and to redirect our investments in goods and services that lead to a just transition away from fossil fuels toward a clean energy future.
Sharon Delgado
Sharon Delgado is a retired UM Elder, Chair of the Cal-Nevada Climate Justice Ministries Task Force, member of the Coordinating Committee of the UM Creation Justice Movement, and Convener of Fossil Free UMC. She is author of The Cross in the Midst of Creation, Love in a Time of Climate Change, and Shaking the Gates of Hell. She blogs at sharondelgado.org.
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One response to “Why Invest in Fossil Free UMC?”
[…] Adding “fossil fuels” to our list of ethical investment screens would be a step in taking environmental stewardship as seriously as we take financial stewardship, and in aligning the two. “Screening fossil fuel investments means walking away from the companies that are most resistant to addressing the climate challenge and toward those that are working on solutions.” (Rev. Mark Davies) To see the exact wording the General Conference Petition to screen out fossil fuels from our investments, read Our First Task. For more on this topic, read Why Invest in Fossil Free UMC? […]
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