Mending the brokenness

Conference participants learn about restoring God’s creation

by Evan Silverstein

     The five-day intergenerational event held here earlier this month was an expansion of the Presbyterian Church (USA)’s annual Peacemaking Conference, broadened this year to include hunger, environmental concerns and economic justice issues. 

      The young member of Trinity Presbyterian Church in Dayton, OH, jumped at the opportunity to bolt to the northwest for the parley at Pacific Lutheran University, about 40 miles south of Seattle.

      The hope of clarifying those questions was enough for Dix to join some 550 Presbyterians of all ages at the conference, Aug 3-7.

       “I wanted to learn more about it, why we went, and just to bring my point of view to the issue,” Dix said of Iraq.

      A number of guests from other countries and PC(USA) missionaries were present for the symposium, whose theme was “Hope for a Global Future: Let’s Pray, Let’s Act.”

      The event was co-sponsored by the Presbyterian Peacemaking Program, the Presbyterian Hunger Program, the Environmental Justice Program and the Self-Development of People Program.

      Conference leaders emphasized that God made all creation, including humankind, good. But that creation has become broken, fractured by such scourges as hunger, poverty, war, injustice and environmental abuse.

      But they also insisted that God’s plan is for hope. For renewal. And for restoration.

      “It is our goal this week for everyone to grow as an inclusive intergenerational family and explore how scripture in a Reformed tradition informs and inspires in us a reverence for God’s sacred creation,” said Doug Grace, conference co-director and former associate for domestic issues at the Presbyterian Washington Office.

      He said other goals of the conference were to help encourage passion for environmental and economic justice, a commitment to sustainable communities and lifestyles and peacemaking in human communities and throughout God’s world.

      “What does it mean then to live in a sustainable world where we don’t have hunger?” Grace asked in reference to the conference focus. “Where we’re working to feed everyone and making sure the pollution problems and Global Warming is taken care of? All of the problems that ail the earth and God’s creation have broken us from creation. Put us back together into that healing and wholeness.”

      Participants examined the conference theme through workshops, worship, speakers and plenary sessions. They huddled in small groups or sang and danced. There were programs for children, young adults and old, separately and together.

      They pondered how their faith impacts choices they make as consumers and residents of the earth, and whether there are enough resources to fill every person’s basic needs in a thriving world.

      The Rev. Agnes Norfleet, co-worship leader, spoke on opening night about the goodness of creation, recalling astronauts traveling to the moon who described how fragile Earth looked from space.

      “We are instructed by God to be creative caretakers of all this goodness,” said Norfleet, pastor of North Decatur (GA) Presbyterian Church. “The problem is unlike the perspective from the distance of standing on the moon. We see the earth up close and we are deeply troubled by what we see. We see too much bloodshed. We see too many bellies swollen from hunger. Too many bombs exploding, too many guns firing, too many young human images of God falling, too long an Israeli wall going up.”

      A few days later reading from the Book of Luke, Norfleet said that Presbyterians must act by becoming “a politically engaged community of believers whose reverence for God will propel us into the environment. The children of the world need the followers of Jesus Christ to shed our possessions, to give to the poor …”

      Organizers noted higher attendance at this year’s conference, especially among younger participants and families who filled the campus chapel for intergenerational worship and  turned out in large numbers for workshops with names like “Searching for Peace in the Midst of War,” or “Think Globally — Worship Locally.”

      “I find it just incredibly spiritually enriching and sustaining,” said Susan Webb, a conference participant from Bowling Green, KY. “I think there’s a great theological and Biblical base for caring for the world and caring for the people of the world and being peacemakers within the world.”   

        There were personal stories, too. An Iraqi pastor in attendance spoke about life in his war-torn nation.

      Some participants said the situation in Iraq was ripe on their minds, but also pointed to other battlefields people of faith must confront.

      “We’re fighting the war on environmental issues,” said elder Helen Hamilton, a participant from First Presbyterian Church in Kent, WA. “We’re fighting the war against hunger. We’re fighting the war against the displacement of people of all shapes, sizes and colors.”

      Meanwhile, Presbyterians Emily Krause and Patti Nussle recounted meeting residents in a remote mountain town outside Lima, Peru, who the two claim are being poisoned by toxic emissions from an American-owned plant there.

      “The children in La Oroya, Peru, had levels of lead in their bloodstream four, five and six times the safe limit,” said Krause, a member of Broad Street Presbyterian Church in Columbus, OH.

      She traveled to the small town two years ago on a mission trip with Nussle, who also worships at the Columbus church, scooping up soil samples and testing the blood of about 100 men, women and children.

      “The soil that they live in and farm in and work in and play in have levels of lead in it,” Nussle said. “Not twice the normal limits or three times the normal limits, but six times the normal limits. The amount of arsenic was just horrendous. It’s no wonder crops don’t grow there anymore.”

      PC(USA) General Assembly moderator Rick Ufford-Chase spoke about economic injustice in Central America, while a United Nations official helped celebrate 35 years of action by the Presbyterian Hunger Program (PHP). (Full story)

        PHP was established in 1969 as a channel through which Presbyterians can be engaged in the fight against hunger in the United States and around the world. Since then the hunger program has helped Presbyterians put more than $100 million to work in direct feeding programs, hunger education, development activities, public policy advocacy and the promotion of sustainable lifestyles.

       “We have consistently raised our voices to call for more effective responses to hunger in the U.S. and abroad,” said the Rev. Gary Cook, associate director for Global Service and Witness in the PC(USA)’s Worldwide Ministries Division. “What we most celebrate at this anniversary is the unswerving commitment of Presbyterians to this cause.”

      Cook announced PHP’s newest global hunger outreach initiative with the Joining Hands Against Hunger network, which links anti-hunger and human rights programs in eight countries with networks of Presbyterian congregations in eight presbyteries for mutual support, education and advocacy.

      Ufford-Chase, an elder and mission co-worker from Tucson, AZ, who was elected moderator in June, said people earn an average of $6 to $7 a day in Nogales, Mexico, where a gallon of milk cost $3.30.

        “You have to work for five-to-six hours to make enough money to purchase that gallon of milk,” said Ufford-Chase, co-founder of BorderLinks, a binational organization on the U.S./Mexico border whose mission is to connect and educate people of faith from both sides of the border.

      “We will never ever be secure until the following is true,” said Ufford-Chase. “A secure world is a place where a day’s wage is enough to provide for the basic need of one family, period. No exceptions. We need a secure world. That will only happen when my use of the world’s resources is appropriate and modest. So that I am not destroying the environment where someone else lives.”

      The Rev. Flora Wilson-Bridges, a plenary leader and Baptist minister from Seattle, WA, examined connections between the brokenness of God’s creation and justice issues. Worship co-leader, the Rev. Thomas John, a theologian and ordained minister with the Church of South India, spoke about the brokenness through the lens of poverty and hunger.

      “I think the speakers, the leaders of worship and the plenary sessions are very powerful,” said Webb, the conference-goer from Kentucky and member of The Presbyterian Church in Bowling Green. “They’ve also been very informational and inspiring and the workshops also. I’ve been really impressed.”

      Mosala Raboko said he expects attending as an international guest will allow him to return home to Lesotho, South Africa, with important information to share. 

      “This event we are coming to learn more about the world and how to keep peace with each other, to understand the word, the meaning of peace,” said Raboko, one of a handful of participants from South Africa. “In Lesotho, most people don’t have knowledge about what is happening around the world. So we are here to learn.”

      The Rev. Jeff Peterson-Davis, associate pastor at Pleasant Hill Presbyterian Church in Duluth, GA, said the conference hit home for him on many levels: as a pastor, as a Christian, as a parent, and as a citizen of the world.

      “We’re worshipping in a multi-ethnic, multi-racial Presbyterian gathering from around the world,” Peterson-Davis said. “It’s phenomenal. I’m just really glad that our church is taking these issues seriously.”