CREO Spring Event

Sunday, May 15, 2016

Speaker to Promote a Christian Response to Climate Change

Renowned minister, author, and environmental activist the Rev. Dr. James Antal will be the featured speaker on Sunday, May 15, at the Spring event of the Capital Region Ecumenical Organization (CREO). The program begins at 4 p.m. at First Church in Albany, 110 North Pearl Street, near the Palace Theater. A worship service will follow led by the Rev. Daniel Carlson, Associate Minister at First Reformed Church of Schenectady, and featuring the Festival Celebration Choir.  Admission is free, and all are invited.

Rev. Antal will speak on “Bringing Hope to the Climate Crisis through Faith & Action.” He will show how the scale and urgency of climate change requires our generation to reassess our lives, repurpose our religious practices, and reorient our assets in ways that align with our Christian values and our covenant with God.

Pointing to the responsibility rooted in God’s covenant with Noah and all things alive now and in the future, Rev. Antal calls on Christians to recognize that the Earth is the Lord’s and that there is much at stake. He cites Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s writing in The Guardian (April 10, 2014), “Twenty-five years ago, people could be excused for not knowing much, or doing much, about climate change. Today we have no excuse....  To serve as custodians of creation is not an empty title; it requires that we act, and with all the urgency this dire situation demands.” In a similar vein, Rev. Antal wrote in an article about the ecological consequences of the Keystone XL pipeline, “As the first generation to foresee and the final generation with an opportunity to forestall the most catastrophic effects of global warming, this is the time. Now is the moment.” 

Rev. Antal is Minister and President of the Massachusetts Conference of the United Church of Christ, the largest Protestant denomination in the Commonwealth.  He has a long history of activism on behalf of the environment. After celebrating the first Earth Day at Princeton University, his work at Yale focused on the yet-to-be-born field of environmental ethics.  He founded a national organization to train activist high school students to oppose nuclear war and later served as Executive Director of the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR-USA), an interfaith pacifist organization.  He taught for 13 years, then led UCC churches in Newton, MA, and Shaker Heights, OH.  In 2010, he founded NEREM (New England Regional Environmental Ministries).  Their most recent project was “A New Awakening — Season of Prophetic Climate Witness through Preaching, Prayer, and Practice.” He has also engaged the spiritual discipline of civil disobedience numerous times, most recently at the White House in 2011 to stop the Keystone XL pipeline.  In 2013, he authored and waslead proponent of the UCC's vote to divest from fossil fuel companies, the first denomination to do so.  He speaks on climate issues all over the country. 

For more information, contact Edith Leet, Coordinator, at creoboard@gmail.com or call 482-6612.