The Rev. Robert Stivers, who introduced Johnston, said the award also recognizes her vital role in the cause of ecological justice over the past two decades. "It also honors her as a writer and speaker active in the life of the church," said Stivers, the PRC's northwest regional representative and a university professor from Tacoma, WA.

Stivers said Johnston has made many noteworthy eco-justice-related contributions to the PC(USA), including her service as a member of a social-policy task force that produced Restoring Creation for Ecology and Justice , a paper adopted by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) in 1990.

"I want us all to start holding up signs at football games that say, 'John 3:17,' which (says) God sent His only son into the world that the world might be saved," Johnston said. "And the Greek is 'cosmos' - that the whole cosmos might be saved. That's what it's really all about. That's why what we're doing, even when it seems so difficult, is so exciting and feels so great, because it's really doing what we're called to do and what God has enlisted us to do."

Presbyterians for Restoring Creation is a faith group created 10 years ago that works for environmental wholeness and social justice, and serves as a prophetic voice for substantive change in the church and in the world.

PRC also presented a Restoring Creation Award to Presbyterian-related Warren Wilson College in Asheville, NC, for creative environmental preservation work on its campus.