Creation Care

The Creation Care Committee has working groups focused on three key areas of ministry: Gardening, NetZero greenhouse gas emissions, and Spiritual Resilience. Learn more about events hosted by these working groups by subscribing to the e-Communique newsletter. Questions? Email creationcare@episcopalvirginia.org. 

Gardening Working Group

Chair: The Rev. Deacon Courtenay Evans

The Garden Working Group is devoted to networking churches and diocesan institutions with one another to share the love of gardening through discussions of best practices, mentoring and development of partnerships. There is a regular meeting schedule. 

NetZero Working Group

Co-Chairs: Dr. Mary Haberl and Doug Gheley

This working group is dedicated to developing the NetZero guidebook for diocesan parishes and institutions to help them meet NetZero greenhouse gas emissions goals as documented in Resolution 6, which passed during the November 2021 227^th Diocesan Convention. This group is committed to building an infrastructure making it possible for churches to work together and a diocesan accepted set of guidelines over time to meet the goals outlined in Resolution 6. 

Spiritual Resilience Working Group

Co-Chairs: The Rev. Mary Kay Brown and Kathy Ellis 

Many people feel overwhelmed by the enormity of our environmental challenges. This is a place where the Church is called to be present. Worship and prayer are pathways for celebrating God’s creation. They are also vehicles for lament, confession, supplication, healing and hope. This working group is dedicated to developing ministry responses to this experience and engaging Episcopalians in a conversation around it.

The Spiritual Resilience Working Group seeks to:

1. Offer opportunities to seminarians, clergy, and lay people to learn about creation care and climate change; provide support as they initiate discussion in their parishes.
2. Encourage each parish to provide opportunities for celebration of God’s gift of creation.
3. Encourage each parish to provide ways for parishioners to recognize emotions in the face of climate crisis, to offer channels for lament and expression of loss and grief.
4. Encourage each parish to evaluate its level of preparedness for a climate event and to establish a Resilience/Rapid Response Ministry.

National Episcopal Church Creation Care Resolution and Resources

The Episcopal Church comprises 111 dioceses and regional areas in 17 nations; 100 of which are in the United States. The Diocese of Virginia is one of the largest of the U.S. dioceses with 179 churches, two diocesan centers, six diocesan homes, six schools and the largest Anglican seminary in the world.

• Episcopal Covenant to Care of Creation
• Creation Care – The Episcopal Church
• Creation Care Vision
• National Creation Care Advocacy
• Center for Religion and Environment – The University of the South

Diocese of Virginia Creation Care Resolutions and Resources

• R-1: Net Carbon Neutrality by 2030 using Net Zero Checklist, Carbon Tracker, and Supporting the Communion Forest Initiative  (Adopted 2022)
  • Supporting documents and Net Zero Checklist
• R-6: Declaration of Climate Emergency, Commitment to Net-Zero Greenhouse Gas Emissions by 2045, and adoption of the Episcopal Covenant for the Care of Creation (Adopted 2021)
• Creation Care Task Force Strategic Goals (February 2021)

Webinar Recordings

• To Love, Heal, and Bless Creation: Opening Remarks & Keynote Presentation
• To Love, Heal, and Bless Creation: Eco-Friendly Landscaping Workshop
• Seizing and Preaching Hope in a Season of Despair

Gardens

• Creating A Garden for Birds
  
• Food and Faith Podcast
• How to Host a Community Garden Training – Good News Gardens
• Virginia Native Plant Society
• Extension Master Gardener Program
  
• Virginia Soil and Water Conservation Districts

NetZero and Climate Change

• Eco-America webcast series: Let’s Talk Climate
• Climate Change and the Road to Net-Zero by Matthew Hampshire-Waugh
  
• The Money Saving Guide to Going Green at Home

Spiritual Resilience

• Dr. Rowen Williams, 104^th Archbishop of Canterbury: The Future of the Human Race is Now at Stake
• Young people and climate distress
• Hope and Mourning in the Anthropocene: Understanding Ecological Grief
• Solastalgia
• Climate-Aware Therapists
• Climate Anxiety in Children and Young People and Their Beliefs About Government Responses to Climate Change: A Global Study
• Reviving Creation
• Eco-Grief Circles: Blessed Tomorrow
• Eco-Grief Circles: Good Grief Network
  
• Eco-Grief Circles: Creation Care Alliance
• How do I begin to help my planet? – Green Team of St. James’, Warrenton

Establishing a Green Ministry

• Faithful Green Leaders Training Program – Interfaith Partners for the Chesapeake
• Moving Forward Guide – Blessed Tomorrow
  

Sermons from Our Churches

• “God’s Second Book,” the Rev. Deacon Courtenay Evans, Christ Church, Charlottesville
• “Celebrating Creation Care,” the Rev. Susan Hartzell, St. Peter’s in the Woods, Fairfax Station

Creation Care Reading List

• Earth Honoring Faith by Larry L. Rasmussen
• Sacred Earth Sacred Soul by John Philip Newell
• Active Hope by Joanna Macy
• Climate Church, Climate World by Jim Antal
• Crisis Contemplation: Healing a Wounded Village by Rev. Dr. Barbara Holmes
• Rooted and Rising: Voices of Courage in a Time of Climate Crisis, edited by Leah Schade and Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jones
• The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred work of Grief by Francis Weller
• Mystical Hope: Trusting in the Mercy of God by Cynthia Bourgeault
• Spiritual Ecology: The Cry of the Earth by Llewellyn Vaughn-Lee, ed.
• Laudato Si’:On Care for our Common Home by Pope Francis
• Warmth: Coming of Age at the End of our World by Daniel Sherrell
• Ladder to the Light; an Indigenous Elder’s Meditations on Hope and Courage by Steven Charleston
• Beyond Acedia and Wrath: Voices of Courage in a Time of Climate Crisis by Bishop Hirschfield (Episcopal Diocese of N.H.) and the Rev. Steve Blackmer
• The Hopeful Family: Building Resilient Children in Uncertain Times by Amelia Richardson Dress
  

Environmental Justice and Advocacy

• Episcopal News Service
• Episcopal Public Policy Network – Office of Government Relations
• Virginia Interfaith Power and Light
• Creation Justice Ministries
• Plastic Jesus: Real Faith in a Synthetic World