Episode Transcript
[00:00:17] Speaker A: Good morning, everyone.
It's good to see you all. I am both so glad that the sun is shining and actively angry that it's going to be 80 degrees today because it's October.
But I feel like that really sets us up for what we're going to be talking about today, which is thinking environmentally with Presbyterian Young Adults Friends. I'm Thais Carter. I am one of the members of the Adult Education Committee. It is so good to see you all this morning.
A few things before I introduce this morning's speaker. If you have not already heard or seen the small groups at Nassau Church sign up or kind of information is in the back.
Also, if you were here a few weeks ago and had the chance to hear Tom Coogan talk about his book Deadheads and Christians, another member of the congregation has actually purchased a number of copies for us to now be able to give out.
So if you were sitting there thinking, tom, this sounds real interesting, but I don't know that I want to buy the book now. You can actually I say that with love. I say that with so much love.
But it is a wonderful way to support Tom and I think one of those things where as we continue to look for ways to connect with people outside of this space, I can't think of any better jumping off point than Deadheads and Christians because you will know them by their love, both of them.
So without further ado, this morning's speaker is Emma Marshall. Emma graduated with her M. Div. From Princeton Theological Seminary in May of this year. She is continuing on to complete her Master's of Social Work at Rutgers University.
She is serving this year at NASA as the Fellow for Mission and Outreach at Adult and Adult Education, which means you're going to see a lot of Emma. So if this is your first time interacting with her, it will not be your last. But we are so grateful that she is going to be sharing with us this morning because she also works as the Young Adult Organizer with Presbyterians for Earth Care.
She is a candidate for ordination in the National Capital Presbytery and in her free time she likes to hang out with her dog, Daphne.
So before we welcome Emma up here, would you join me in a word of prayer?
God, we are so grateful for the chance to sit in, bask in and learn about your creation, what it says to us, what it says about you, and how it calls us into a different way of thinking about ministry and presence, belonging. God, we are grateful for Emma for her ministry as it is beginning and for the work that she is doing with us. And we pray, God that you would open our hearts and our ears to what she has to share with us this morning. In your name we pray. Amen.
[00:03:11] Speaker B: Good morning, everyone.
I am so excited to talk to you all today about some of the work I've been doing with Presbyterians for Earth Care.
So I am, as Hayes mentioned, organizing a young adult space with Presbyterians for Earth Care. Presbyterians for Earth Care is a grassroots nonprofit of the PC usa, so it's not out of the denominational office, but it works closely with them. And our young adult space is the Creation Action Network of Presbyterian Young Adults, which spells canopy if you pretend the word adults is not there, which we will be doing.
So I am going to kind of get into what I've been talking with young adults about, what we've been reflecting on together over the past few months.
But I want to start us with just a word of poetry. I love this poem and a lot of the topics around environmentalism and faith based activism can be very activating. They can be very emotional, they can be very fraught. And and so I like to start when I speak with young adults on this topic, kind of grounding us just in creation, in the beauty of the world. And so I'm going to share this poem by Wendell Berry. I'll read it. There's a little question for you to be reflecting on at the bottom, which you're welcome to reflect on as I read. And then I'll give us about 15 or so seconds of quiet before we kind of get into it.
So the question will be, where do you go when you feel despair? And where do you feel, feel grace, the peace of wild things when despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be.
I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.
I come into the presence of still water and I feel above me the day Blind stars waiting with their light for a time I rest in the grace of the world and am free.
Thank you all. I hope that poem is a little bit of a grounding as we kind of get into talking about the environmental crisis from the perspective of Presbyterian young adults.
So just to kind of speak from my perspective and where I am coming at this topic from, I am not an expert on the intersection of faith and ecology, and it would Be insane to claim that in this room. So I am just going to kind of let you know that I, speaking from the perspective of what I've absorbed speaking with various different Presbyterian young adults and representing sort of their stake in this conversation.
So this group has come together with the goals of connecting, educating and learning and taking action.
And so these are some of the conversations we've been having to get started in doing that work denominationally and nationally.
So this group is comprised. The sort of perspectives I'm representing come from 38 young adults who have spoken with me in one on one sessions, focus groups and group settings.
We are pretty evenly split. We are 13 ministry professionals, which includes working clergy, chaplains, staff. At the denominational level, we have 13 students, undergrad, graduate, a few seminarians, and then we have some folks who I'm classifying as young professionals. They're not engaged in active ministry work, they're not students. But this is something that's passionate for them. They might be elders or deacons in their home congregation, and they're based pretty nationwide. That's not all the states, but it does span the coast. We have not quite broken the continental barrier. So if you know anyone in Hawaii, have them give me a call.
But we've spanned all the time zones, the continental United States.
So that's sort of who I'm sort of speaking for and with today.
So I want to start with. I'm going to make the claim that environmental justice is, is a particularly salient and activating issue for young adults. And I want to talk a little bit about why that is. When I use the phrase young adults, I'm talking about 18 to 35. So adults, not teenagers, not high schoolers, not youth. And our window, our sort of demographic window is 18 to 35 for the purposes of this project.
So a big reason I think this issue is particularly salient for young people is that environmental justice is incredibly intersectional. It connects with truly every issue.
Of course, environmental justice disproportionately impacts environmental injustice, disproportionately impacts people of color. People of color are more likely to die of environmental causes, toxic waste, health conditions, natural disasters than white people. And more than half of those who live dangerously close to hazardous waste and in the United States are people of color.
Environmental justice also ties in with income inequality. Poorer countries are more exposed to natural disasters, even though richer countries are generating more of the pollution and waste contributing to the climate crisis.
Something that I've learned more about recently is how environmental justice impacts gender inequality.
So climate change, According to the UN almost all of these statistics are from the UN. Just FYI that climate change may push 16 million more women and girls into poverty than men and boys by 2050.
And 47.8 million more women face food insecurity and hunger than men. So this issue also sort of exacerbates existing disparities in communities along gender lines, economic lines, et cetera.
And when I do this with, when I do this activity with people in our group, I like to sort of take some time and think about what else intersects here. And I have this quote, which is actually a tweet from Ursula Wolfracke, which is, it can be overwhelming to take in all the injustices of the moment. The good news is that they're all connected. So if your little corner of work involves pulling at one of the threads, you're helping unravel the whole cloth.
So when I open this up to young adults about what else is coming up for you? When we think about environmental justice, we hear about hunger. Hunger is a big issue. Housing security, also a big issue that comes up as related to environmental justice. A more environmentally just society would have more stable and affordable housing for people. It would have better access to healthy foods. And a big one that comes up is war and conflict, particularly the conflict in Gaza.
So the conflict in Gaza involves the degradation of the land. So part of what's going on is that infrastructure and land are being destroyed to a degree that it's going to take generations to build back the environmental resources that are available in that land.
And so part of that conflict is environmental degradation. And the same is true in Ukraine and in other places of conflict.
So that is also an issue that's extremely activating to young people in this space is what does it look like to bring environmental justice to conflict situations?
And then of course, there's also a disparate impact of the climate crisis on young people.
The worst consequences of the climate crisis will be felt by today's young adults, teens and children, the worst effects heretofore.
So, depending on who you ask, somewhere between 74% and 96% of young people express serious and disruptive concern or worry over the climate crisis. And disruptive means it's hard to go about your daily life because you are spending so much time feeling anxious or distressed about the situation.
And a recent survey reports that 38% of Gen Z reports delaying having children or choosing not to have children due to environmental anxiety. So people are making significant life choices based on their concern over the climate crisis.
So that's Sort of the orientation that this group of people is coming to this conversation with. There's a lot of baggage, a lot of anxiety, and a lot of concern for interlocking justice issues. That can feel overwhelming. It can feel hard to take a bite.
And environmental justice is one place that people are starting.
So with that sort of perspective in mind, this is a little activity that I worked up to do with some of our focus groups, and we're going to do a little mini version altogether.
For the record, this is not like a highly researched theological tool. This is just based on the themes I heard in my conversations with young adults.
It's a little grid, It's a graph.
We are officially in the realm of geometry, which is officially out of the realm of my comfort. But we're going to do our best.
So we'll do the vertical axis first.
Again, these are themes I heard when I asked people, what do you think of when you think of your faith as it relates to environmental justice? These were some of the topics that I heard coming up, and I tried to sort of systematize it a little bit.
So at the top, we have the idea that humans are stewards of the earth. We're probably familiar with this perspective.
Humans are in some way set apart from creation and have a special role within it. And then at the bottom, we have humans as creation. Humans are just one piece of the whole puzzle of creation. There is no separation.
Humans are just not just. Humans are another created being like all others.
And then on our horizontal axis, we have creation pessimism and creation optimism. I'm going to be honest, I don't love these terms, but. But it was the best I could do. It has been suggested that it's by some young adults in our group that this should be divine agency.
Sorry, human agency and divine agency. That pessimism more aligns with an idea of relying on human agency and optimism is more on God's agency.
But the way I understand this axis is that creation pessimism posits that the relationship between humans and creation is fraught, it's adversarial, it's conflicted. Whereas optimism is more oriented towards the possibility and renewal that's available to us in creation, and that creation is sort of beneficent or gracious in its relationship with humanity.
So I have a few biblical perspectives here that sort of, I think, represent these sort of overlapping and interlocking polls here. I'm going to read through them, but I'm going to ask, as I read them, for you to consider which Quadrant you might plot yourself in today. There's not a right answer. They're all present in our biblical text, obviously, and it changes. So you may find that you feel somewhere today that's not where you usually feel, but whatever's resonating with you today, and at the end, I am going to ask you to turn and share with the neighbor. So I'll read them all, and you can kind of be reflecting on which one's resonating with you today.
So we're going to start with Psalm 8, which represents this Humans as stewards and creation optimism perspectives.
What are humans that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them, yet you have made them a little lower than God. You have given them dominion over the works of your hands. You have put all things under their feet. The beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea.
So that's Psalm 8. Skip to Psalm 72. For humans as creation. This idea that we are all part of the same network with little separation or distinction between humans and the rest of creation. And this more optimistic perspective.
May the mountains yield prosperity for the people, and the hills in righteousness may he defend the cause of the poor, of the people, give deliverance to the needy and crush the oppressor.
So here we have these ideas of prosperity and righteousness really embedded in the landscape, right in the mountains, in the hills.
And these sort of human values of prosperity and righteousness are one and the same as prosperity and righteousness in the land.
And then we're going to go over here. I call this the punk rock verse. This is where things get kind of dicey. So this is creation pessimism and humans as creation.
Now the Lord is about to lay waste the earth and make it desolate. The earth dries up and withers, the world languishes and withers. The earth lies polluted under its inhabitants, for they have transgressed the laws, violated the statutes, broken the everlasting covenant.
So humans experience negative consequences in the land. There's this sort of conflicted relationship between the earth and human action that comes to the fore here.
And then we'll bring it home with one. I'm sure everyone is pretty familiar with Genesis 3.
And here we have humans as stewards. Humans do have a special responsibility for the land and a more pessimistic outlook.
Cursed is the ground because of you in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the plants of the field, by the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground. For out of it you were taken, you are dust, and to dust you shall return.
Okay, so I'm now going to give us, like, let's say, I don't know, three minutes to turn and talk with a neighbor.
It can be someone right next to you, someone behind you about where you find yourself today. Which of these texts is most resonant with you right at this moment? I will leave that to you.
I'm just listening in.
Oh, thank you. That's kind of you to say.
Okay, I'm gonna finish. Take like another 30 seconds, finish the thought you're on, and then we'll come back.
Okay.
If we could start to come back together, I'm going to invite some share outs for the whole group if anyone feels so inclined.
Am I going to cross? No, you're good. I'm going to ask for feedback, share outs from everyone in just a minute. I'm just debating if you want to share with the whole group where you plotted yourself or something interesting that came up in your.
In your chat.
I can come around and take a couple. If anyone is like very attached or just regular attached to where they plotted themselves and wants to share out or any observations from thinking about this grid.
Any share outs.
There was a lot of talking.
[00:20:41] Speaker C: Just a comment about Isaiah 24. Is that any different than 65 million years ago when the asteroid hit? Yeah. The dinosaurs died out. The humans will die out, but the earth survived.
[00:20:54] Speaker B: That's a really interesting observation about that text. Thank you. Yeah.
So I can see everyone. Other thoughts.
Where are people plotting them? Maybe we'll do it this way. If you plotted yourself, I'm going to call you out here, raise your hand.
Okay, great.
If you plotted yourself here, raise your hand. Okay, awesome.
And here and here.
Okay, awesome. Interesting. Thank you all so much. Okay. Very cool. Yeah.
Of each of these. Oh. Can you say a little more about that?
Not a whole lot more.
[00:21:37] Speaker D: I mean, as I read each one.
[00:21:39] Speaker B: I have that sense of pessimism, of.
[00:21:41] Speaker D: Optimism, of faith, of doubt.
[00:21:45] Speaker C: So I found it hard to choose one.
[00:21:48] Speaker B: Okay, thank you. That's the perfect segue. So thank you. That's why I made you say more about it.
So that is perfect because I was really surprised by where our young adults plotted themselves on this.
I was also.
We had a lot of that sensation that these are not. These perspectives are not poles. These are sides of the same coin. These are part of the same experience. These are all true in our biblical witness in our lives, in the world as we see it. So I'm going to show you the right answers. I'm just kidding. I'm going to show you where our young adults plotted themselves. So this was the each dot represents a focus group participant. The one with two represents two focus group participants.
So it was pretty even.
And we had a few people with you here in the middle, like, I'm not picking. I can't pick sides. And we only had one person who felt resonant with that humans as stewards and optimism perspective. And that surprised me initially just because I was expecting a fairly even distribution. But the more I thought about it, I think it makes a lot of sense that for the generation I'm working with in this group, there's not a lot of evidence that a stewardship model can produce positive results. That humans treating the earth as separate from them in some way, or creation as separate from them in some way has not been a terribly generative relationship. Or maybe what it's generating is just not what we want it to be.
So this was really interesting to me. It was a lot of fun to talk to people about this topic.
But I am really, I think part of our goal has become what does it look like to be aware of the responsibility and power that humans have in the creation ecosystem while still maintaining a sense of optimism and possibility.
And is that a worthy goal to pursue, to try to give us the ability to occupy that side of the biblical witness as readily as we're able to occupy maybe this like punk rock side of the biblical witness?
So this was just like an interesting insight, I thought into the minds of people thinking about this issue from a faith based perspective.
So I'm just going to offer two little sort of nuggets from the PCUSA and then we'll kind of do a big overarching themes and a little wrap up here.
The other piece of this conversation with our Presbyterian young adults. We've talked about environmental justice, we've talked about our faith tradition.
This group is specifically targeting Presbyterians.
I'm not carding people, but it is mostly Presbyterians.
So I've been curious what people know about our denomination as it relates to environmentalism.
I'm also the answer for me before June was nothing. I knew basically nothing about the PC USA as it related to environmental justice specifically.
So I did some digging and I found this document from 1990, which was sort of a seminal statement in terms of the PCUSA thinking about the environment. It's a powerful statement. It was kind of unique at the time.
It was a bold statement for 1990.
And the PCUSA describes the statement at the top here.
It provided recommendations. It's from the 1990 General assembly, and they say it provides a thoughtful review of the deteriorating ecology of our entire world. Also provides guidance for ways in which we can participate in God's redemption of creation. So I'm going to read the sort of thesis statement of this document for us, and then we're going to Skip ahead to 2016 from a more recent document and I'm going to be curious.
I'll ask you first, what jumps out at you from this statement and what jumps out at you from the. And then we'll do what jumps out at you from the 2016 statement and then we'll kind of see if. See what's different, see what's changed.
So this is the mission statement or the thesis statement from the 1990 document.
In response to the environmental crisis, the General assembly calls the PCUSA to respond to the cry of creation. Human and non human engage in the effort to make the 1990s the turnaround decade, not only for reasons of prudence or survival, but because the endangered planet is God's creation.
And draw upon all resources of the biblical faith and the Reformed tradition for empowerment and guidance in this adventure of restoring creation.
So I'm curious, are there any phrases or ideas that are jumping out to you as surprising, inspiring, meaningful, or that you don't like is also an acceptable response?
What do we think?
[00:26:44] Speaker C: Adventures of restoring Creation.
[00:26:47] Speaker B: Adventures of restoring creation. Yeah. It's very potent. Yeah.
Yeah.
[00:26:58] Speaker D: So I guess I'm drawn to the politics of this, these statements and the history of the Presbyterian Church in the United States.
I mean, it was very, very foundational. As part of the group that formed the country almost 250 years ago.
Our President of the United States currently claims to be Presbyterian, although it's hard to believe that.
And I'm wondering what the role of the Presbyterian Church is now in drawing on the Reformed tradition and it's speaking to.
To power and also to other evangelicals who seem to have deserted the Bible.
[00:27:40] Speaker B: Yeah, we will. The next slide we'll talk a little bit about the current sort of perspective and advocacy work that's happening. I would say for the time, this was a pretty bold statement for a mainline denomination. It was.
There was sort of a prophetic voice happening here.
On the next slide, I'm going to ask us to reflect on what the impact of that kind of strong statement maybe has been both for us as Presbyterians and as worshipers in the Presbyterian Church and then thinking more broadly. So we'll come back to it. Yeah.
[00:28:14] Speaker E: Well, the phrase the turnaround decade slaps you in the face.
[00:28:22] Speaker B: Thank you. Yes. That is the one that most of our young adults were, like, the 1990s are the turnaround decade. I was born in 1998. Like, that's.
I don't think so.
Okay. I saw one here and one here. I will come back.
[00:28:38] Speaker F: I just wonder, is there a theologian, is there somebody who's done the work of threading the needle of all those scriptures in light of a Presbyterian witness to help us embrace a system of approach to this in a faith based way?
[00:29:03] Speaker B: I would say. I don't have a name for you, but that's an interesting question. What does it look like from the Presbyterian perspective to sort of loop these, thread these together?
Yeah. Okay. So a hand here and a hand here and then we're going to jump to 2016.
[00:29:20] Speaker E: I'm a little surprised that you focused on 1990 because we were having the same struggles when we were young adults in 1970.
And I'm surprised that we're still saying the same thing.
[00:29:37] Speaker B: Yeah. So that will be interesting. So looking at the 2016 one, I think this was the sort of first document that's readily available within the denomination. So this is why I picked it.
But I will be curious to see if we think how we feel the conversation has changed when we flash forward here in just a second. Did you want. Did I see your hand? Yeah.
[00:29:59] Speaker G: So I was baptized with my identical twin sister by Peter Marshall.
And I have the books because my mother depended on those and that's what I grew up with and I think is still reverent to today's world.
[00:30:21] Speaker B: Thank you. So that resource has been meaningful in sort of your journey and is meaningful maybe continues to be meaningful in this conversation. Yeah. Cool. Okay, so let's fast forward just a little bit here.
Okay, so this is from the. There's a longer title for it. I'm going to call it the Collaborative Agenda. It's a more recent statement on the various agencies of the pcusa, which it's a little bit different now, but the various agencies working together regarding environmental stewardship. So it was all six agencies coming together to each commit to certain things with regards to environmentalism.
And I'm going to read our little thesis statement here.
As the people of God, we are therefore called to work in response to God's calling to see that all of God's creation is protected, nurtured and enabled. To reach the potential for which God has created it. The concrete implications of that for those of us who are a part of God's family in the PC USA include a call to prayer, education, advocacy, and other forms of direct action to glorify God in our care of creation.
So I will ask again, same question. What phrases, ideas are jumping out at you as particularly meaningful or notable?
And in particular, if you have an eye backwards, what do you feel like has changed? What do you feel like is the Same? In the 26 years between these two statements.
[00:31:57] Speaker G: The language seems much more abstract and the pledge could apply to all kinds of things. It's sort of lost the focus, I think.
[00:32:10] Speaker B: Thank you. Yeah, I agree. And it was something that surprised me as I was getting into these texts, that of course, this is a longer document where there are specific commitments made, but thematically speaking, there's some undefined terms here, whereas in the last one we had phrases like the turnaround decade, which was a pretty specific commitment. We. Whether or not we did it.
So, yeah, I am interested in sort of the.
This feels more thematic and the last one felt more. With those bullets. It felt more action oriented, maybe. Yeah. Other thoughts? Yeah.
[00:32:46] Speaker G: I think what I see that's different is that the earlier one had the word survival and something else. And that did not appeal to me.
The theological side of doing it, because it is God's calling and God's desire is something that would motivate me where the survival idea seems so hopeless that I'd fall off on the pessimism side.
[00:33:14] Speaker B: Thank you, I appreciate that. And a major theme that's been coming up in our conversations is that is this idea of moving from a sustainability or conservation model to a justice model. So recycling is great and everyone should do it. And if you can drive an electric car, also great.
Lowering your heating, all good things.
Those, I think maybe to this idea of survival feeling sort of hopeless.
Those are drops in the bucket and they are important.
But what does it look like to be values based and ethically based in our conversation about this? And what does it look like to talk about justice when we talk about the environment?
I think for a lot of young people leading in the their congregations, they're curious about what it looks like to start changing the conversation, maybe to be a little more theologically based, to be a little more spiritually inclined, and maybe to sort of rebuild some of that hope that was missing in our graph. Yeah.
[00:34:19] Speaker H: In reading this statement, one of the things that kind of jumped out to me is attention that I feel in the last section.
So there's the phrase the concrete implications, which implies that, like, we can't just put out statements. There actually needs to be forms of action that we. That we take, which I completely agree with. But then at the very bottom, it says other forms of direct action, which feels very vague and unclear. And that's something that I often feel personally when having these conversations. I recognize that, like, things need to be collectively done on every level, but what those actions actually are are often very vague and undefined.
[00:35:01] Speaker B: Thank you.
Yeah, so I would say as turnaround decade was our, like, headline phrase for our young adults in the last statement, other forms of direct action was our most common. Like, that stands out to me for our young adults, because this is a genuine question that implies that prayer, education, and advocacy are forms of direct action.
And so then what would other forms of direct action look like as that list continues?
And that has come up?
What is the PCUSA asking for when they ask for other forms of direct action? What's acceptable? What's within the realm of what people are. They're going to sort of give their imprimatur for organizing for?
And what goes further than that? What is this asking for? And how can we sort of discern what that is? So thank you for raising that. And actually, that brings us to our last little thematic wrap up here.
Thank you.
Okay, so this is just a quick.
I called this, like, the menu. I would show this to young adults and say, like, order off the menu. If you could pick one from each of these columns, what would you pick? Or they were allowed to add their own.
It was a very loose restaurant.
But these were sort of the main themes that came up for my individual conversations with these 30 or so young adults. I tried to boil them down into some headlines, but I want to offer this to this group here.
This is what people are hungry for. This is what people are longing for in their communities, in their faith communities, in their school, in their organizing spaces, in their leadership roles. This is what people need to feel supported to do this work.
So there's some tangible. There's some, like, learnings that people need. And I think you were just speaking to these. Some of these, like, what do the actions actually look like, what's possible and what's effective. So we want to learn about best practices and how tos, the kind of tangible actions we can take our folks. Some of them are leading in congregations that are not very engaged in justice conversations, and some of them are leading in congregations that are very involved in and justice conversations. Both of those pose unique challenges to sort of channeling energy.
So that was a big topic. And then how do we bridge our worship and our faith into meaningful action, those sort of other forms of direct action. What does it look like to walk out of worship and know what you're going to do with what you heard there?
And then there were some issues people wanted to take on. The big one was battling hopelessness and helplessness. I think a lot of these people feel hopeless and helpless themselves at times and they see their peers feeling that way as well.
Promoting environmental justice as a framework for thinking about environmentalism. Denominational divestment continues to come up. It has not been totally achieved and young people are interested in that, especially clergy, I think, who are invested in the investment of the denomination's funds in a particular way.
And then policy and advocacy at the local and national level. People wanted to make a difference and be sort of maybe a counter narrative for the type of faith based advocacy that is that we are seeing around us right now.
And then there was a big. This one kind of surprised me. There were a lot of feelings, words that came up. People, really people in this 18 to 35 age group, they're longing to feel connected to a faith group. A lot of them are transient. A lot of them might have moved away from home for the first time or from a faith community that's been meaningful. And they maybe feel disconnected. A lot of young people look around their congregations and they don't see their peers there. And so it's hard to feel connected and supported.
They want to feel confident as church leaders. Like they are entrusted and have a stake in the direction of their worship communities. And they want to feel taken seriously as leaders. So not just, you know, a youth member of the session, but a youth member who is chairing a committee or entrusted with some meaningful voice in worship leadership, things like that. And then people want to feel inspired. That's that counter narrative to that hopelessness and helplessness. People want to feel like people care about this and are working on making it happen.
So I will invite people, the folks in this room, to be thinking creatively about what it might look like to be a part of offering that to the young people in your lives and your communities.
And with that I will wrap up. Thank you. And we can we have a few minutes for questions?
[00:39:27] Speaker A: Do we have questions?
[00:39:28] Speaker B: Questions for Emma?
I can go back.
[00:39:35] Speaker C: Just a question. I think the most important things up there are in the right panel, the middle three, supported by peers, confident as church leaders, taken seriously as Leaders.
I think that is really important because I think you're the ones that are going to do it.
[00:39:51] Speaker B: Well, we hope so.
But no, I think those.
I didn't go into these conversations looking for sort of those affective terms, those feelings terms, but people wanted to share them. And I think these are people who feel very strongly about their faith communities, and they are looking for their faith communities to feel similarly strongly about them.
And not in the, oh, it's so lovely when we see, like, new young folks coming to church. But this is. In some ways, these people are leaders in this denomination and they bring unique gifts and experiences that we should be making. Nurturing.
[00:40:35] Speaker I: Baby Boomer certainly didn't accomplish what many hoped we would accomplish.
As I look around, anytime I'm in any kind of environment, whether it's in Princeton or out, even in the woods, I see people on their phones, using their phones, and many of them are young people.
Baby boomers didn't grow up with that. What are younger people doing to unplug from the phones?
[00:41:05] Speaker B: Failing at that, actually. Well, I know some young people that have gone back to a flip phone. Couldn't be me, but I believe that it's happening. I would say. I think a lot of this kind of organizing that's going on is actually happening on the phones. I'm not here to defend phones, but I would simply never. But We've built a WhatsApp group where people are sharing resources and keeping in touch with each other.
There's also.
It's called Inaturalist. It's an app where you can take pictures of wildlife, plants, animals you see, and then actual scientists identify it, and it's contributing to scientific research.
So I do think there's a.
I think the phones may be here to stay. And so part of my role is thinking about what does it mean for this group of people that's interested in organizing and making environmental change, to use those tools positively and staying connected, getting information to people, sharing best practices, sharing resources. That is happening on those phones. A lot of other stuff's happening there, too. But we will take what we can get.
So I don't have an answer for how to unplug. If I did, I would have done it.
But I am curious, and we are thinking hard about what does it mean to be useful to people in their phones in some way? And there's community that's developing there for this group that I'm excited about because we are from California, we're all the way across the country, and so it's going to Be a big part of what it looks like actually for this group to stay together.
[00:42:47] Speaker J: Have you thought of any ways of pairing young people with older people who. When I go to the protests, which I do find out out on my phone, but at these protests, I'm seeing my peers and people much older than I with their sign that says, I can't believe I still have to do this.
And I agree. I can't believe I still have to do this.
But as we tend to in the older crowd, maybe have a hard time maintaining our hope because I can't believe we still have to do this.
If paired with a younger person and saying, this is how you effectively protest. This is the way to do it. Do it this way. Let's go here, you know, or just this is why this kid has hope for making change. And how can they help one another to build more power going forward?
[00:43:47] Speaker B: Yeah, no, thank you.
Intergenerationality is a big theme that has come up in these conversations. People are interested in part of being connected to a faith group. Right. Is being connected in an intergenerational space. And that is meaningful for people.
I think that is one of the strengths of faith based organizing is that it is often intergenerational. This group, I can tell you a little bit, Presbyterians for Earth Care conceived of this group because they are run by a board of mostly retired clergy. And they were starting to feel ready to hand the baton and they went like this and no one was there. And so they are starting to think about how to cultivate existing leaders in the church or in environmental justice spaces and sort of bring them together.
And so that is sort of why we have focused generationally as we have. But I think part of this is like putting a link in a chain that is maybe not there at the moment, that you can't have intergenerationality without this generation. And so bringing this group to the table is in their churches, in their communities, in their local spaces, and then in the denominational world, which is very intergenerational, that hopefully that can be.
Those are the people that maybe need to be invited to this table right now and with an eye towards creating, bringing all these forms of knowledge together and being able to build power that way. So, yeah, but thank you for that. And it is something people are curious about and hungry for. So I'm hopeful we'll be able to make it happen.
[00:45:22] Speaker E: My comment is along the same vein because all through this talk I've been saying we were there in the 70s, we did all of this.
Where is the music. And when I go to the protests, where are the young people? I mean, there are 80 and 90 year old people out protesting, but no 20 year olds.
Well, I'm curious, and maybe that's not the right way to do it now, but we have made giant strides in our lifetime. There are still giant problems, but there are other problems that have been majorly improved in our lifetime.
And where's the connection?
[00:46:03] Speaker B: Yeah, so, I mean, I can, I think that's really interesting. I think thinking back to that sort of these sort of shifting frameworks that we're hearing of, like what does, what does other forms of direct action mean? What does an environmental justice framework look like? These questions, I would say are there is sort of a disconnect in how different people from different backgrounds might answer or respond to those questions.
I do think there's a lot to learn for young people who want to make change because to your point, incredible strides have been made and can be made.
And how do we sort of access that insight and information?
And part of organizing in the Presbyterian Church is relying on this reforming tradition that knows how to make change and in fits and starts. But that's a possibility in this space and it is a possibility that we can rely on historically, looking backwards and so thinking about what does it look like to apply those sorts of, of reformed and reforming resources in that tradition as we think about this kind of organizing.
[00:47:12] Speaker A: Yeah, I love that a bunch of people wanted me to bring them the microphone as soon as we started talking about like protesting and organizing. But we are almost at time. So Len, let's put that in the parking lot of like future adult Ed things. I think this would be such an interesting group to talk about what different kinds of direct action have been effective, both in terms of kind of Presbyterian advocacy, but in terms of, you know, within the United States, how that's changed since COVID how we want to engage. I think that would be a really rich conversation which we cannot get into right now, friends, because we are at time. So can you join me in a round of applause for Emma?
And we are continuing with our Faith in Action October conversations next week where we'll be welcoming Liz Heinzel Nelson, who's going to be talking about suffering with crime, Christ in a world of plenty. Thank you all so much for being here this morning.
