FossilFreeUMC

As we move forward with Fossil Free UMC, I rejoice that a young seminary student named Spenser Ross is inspired and ready to put some time into these efforts. He and I met in June at the California-Nevada Annual Conference when I spoke with the Young Adult Delegation, and again during the plenary when Spenser spoke in favor of our resolution to hold a summit on divestment. He and I will be part of a group working to advance fossil fuel divestment in Cal-Nevada. 

It seems like the right time to republish a blog post written by the Reverend Jenny Phillips for Fossil Free UMC back in 2015 called “The Last Beneficiary.” Many of today’s seminarians and young pastors may still be preaching in thirty or forty years. By the time they retire, many more climate change forecasts will have come to pass. She wrote:

“If our hypothetical last pastor serves in the continental United States, he might spend years of his ministry working on recovery from extreme weather events—the kinds that scientists tell us to expect more of—events like Sandy and Katrina. Or perhaps he’ll work in a church whose endowment came from selling fracking rights, but whose tap water isn’t safe to pour over the babies he baptizes.

“If he’s appointed in Alaska, his church’s building might have serious problems with its foundation, because warming temperatures are thawing the permafrost that has been the ground on which some Alaskan communities are built.

“The effects of climate change will make crop yields less stable, which could make food scarcer and more expensive. That’s a challenge if our pastor is serving a missionary church in Thailand. Many communities there depend on subsistence farming, and they expect more seasons of hunger.

“When I think of that last beneficiary, the one whose pension you’re charged to protect, I can’t help but feel compelled to ask you to really, really explore the possibility that there can be a responsible path in which his retirement account isn’t dependent on the flourishing of industries that will wreak such havoc and heartbreak and destruction and death upon the people he is are called to serve.”

May it be so. Spenser, welcome aboard.