Webinar explores General Assembly overture on caring for wilderness lands in Utah

LOUISVILLE — Last week, Presbyterians For Earth Care hosted a webinar designed in part to explore “On Adopting ‘Protecting Utah’s National Monuments and Wildlands for Ecology and Justice,’” an overture passed by the 224^th General Assembly (2024). The overture calls for ongoing protection of wilderness areas including Bears Ears National Monument and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Listen to the hour-long webinar “Protecting Sacred Lands for Culture, Climate and Justice,” hosted by Jenny Holmes, the co-chair of PEC’s Advocacy Team, by going here.

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Holmes’ guests were Travis Hammill, the District of Columbia director for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, and Tara Benally, the field director for Stewardship Utah.

The Rev. Hansen Wendlandt, pastor of Community of Grace Presbyterian Church in Sandy, Utah, offered a prayer adapted from a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke. Wendlandt asked the Almighty, “Is it not your dream to enter us so holy there is nothing left outside of us to see? What, if not transformation, is your deepest purpose? … Before I was named, I belonged to you. I seek no other law than yours, and I know I can trust the death you will bring. Childhood and future are equally present. Sheer abundance of being floods my heart. Amen.”

The environmental stakes are at present quite high, Holmes said, including “the commodification and industrialization of our national public lands on a scale never seen before.”

“This is contrary to Presbyterian values and faith commitments and to those of many other denominations and faiths, including people of no faith,” Holmes said. What’s needed is for people organize “in all ways at all levels to undergird legal and legislative work.”

“All of us who care need to be engaged to protect God’s Creation and vulnerable people from permanent and large-scale damage over the next four years,” Homes said. “We can’t afford to be on the sidelines.”

Hammill said the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance — commonly known as SUWA — works specifically with lands managed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. “What’s most important to remember is wilderness is the highest level of protection that can be afforded to federal lands,” Hammill said. Four of the five national parks in Utah were first national monuments, he noted.

He said he’s “proud of the work SUWA has engaged with tribal nations and the partner organizations that advocate for the tribes to find support for the legislation we work on, and for conservation of both the natural world and the cultural and historical value these places have for the people groups throughout the Desert Southwest and around the country.”

Benally, who was born a seventh-generation Hopi but was raised on Navajo lands, is involved with the Woman of Bears Ears. She said her people have historically migrated to Bears Ears on a seasonal schedule. Her mother remembers being chased off by law enforcement one spring after Bears Ears had been designated BLM-managed land, “something my family was not familiar with,” she said.

More recently, it’s hard to find “a single pottery shard, a single arrowhead, a fire pit or a hogan or a horse corral” that used to dot the Butler Wash Interpretive Site, she said, adding, “there’s significance in reading the land and understanding it as natural conservationists.”

She thanked those who joined the webinar. “Being part of these conversations is really crucial to us. It’s part of our living, breathing family,” Benally said. The region “has sustained us for hundreds and thousands of years.”

Holmes then explained the history of the overture, an idea that originated with the Episcopal Diocese of Utah, then became an interfaith letter and finally an overture to the 224^th General Assembly (2024), which passed it by consensus. The overture also calls on the PC(USA)’s Office of Public Witness to advocate for America’s Red Rock Wilderness Act and for tribal sovereignty in the co-management of Bears Ears National Monument. That legislation, most recently sponsored in the House by U.S. Rep. Melanie Stansbury of New Mexico, would designate more than eight million acres of BLM land in Utah as wilderness.

As Holmes pointed out, the Book of Order states, “God sends the Church to share in the stewardship of Creation, preserving the goodness and glory of the Earth God has made” and includes “caring for God’s Creation” in the commitment to participate in Christ’s mission.

“This is not an optional thing. It’s considered integral to our faith,” Holmes said. “This is who we are. This is part of our identity.”

Wilderness is also a valuable component of spiritual formation, Holmes said. “We have been taught through the Gospel lessons of Jesus and the prophets of the Hebrew Bible the lessons of pilgrimage into the wilderness and the vital role that an appreciation of God’s magnificent Creation can play in our own spiritual formation.”

Hammill concluded the webinar by outlining the various iterations of America’s Red Rock Wilderness Act. “It’s as old as I am,” he noted. “It was first introduced in 1989.”

He lamented the presence of an unrelated bill to sell off more than 500,000 acres of federal land in Nevada and Utah.

“It’s a really big problem. The idea you can sell federal lands to balance the federal budget is an absolutely bonkers idea to me,” Hammill said. “What is better is to protect these places that people want to visit and experience. That is where the inherent value of the land exists — not on the balance sheet to provide tax breaks for the rich.”