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Bringing Hope to the Climate Crisis through Faith and Action with Rev. Dr. Jim Antal
June 4, 2016 @ 10:00 am - 12:00 pm
ECO-JUSTICE WORKSHOP with REV. DR. JIM ANTAL
The scale and urgency of climate change requires our generation to reassess our lives, repurpose our religious practice and reorient our assets in ways that align with our covenant with God and preserve the Eden into which we were born.
Come to this workshop to be inspired by courageous initiatives already underway, and to consider how you and others might harness your religious communities to meet the greatest moral challenge humanity has ever faced.
As Archbishop Desmond Tutu has said, “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.”
We welcome the Rev. Dr. Jim Antal, Minister and President of the Massachusetts Conference United Church of Christ since 2006 – a covenant of 360 UCC churches along with over 800 authorized UCC ministers who serve throughout the Commonwealth.
Renowned minister and environmental activist Jim Antal ’78 M.Div. will be this year’s featured preacher the Yale Divinity School Fall Convocation. Jim has served as Minister and President of the Massachusetts Conference of the United Church of Christ since 2006. He has been an environmental activist since the first Earth Day, in 1970, and is now the UCC’s chief spokesperson on climate change.
After teaching and leading two national peace organizations, Rev. Antal spent twenty years leading vital churches of all sizes in Massachusetts and Ohio. Rev. Antal brings insight from his mentors – Henri Nouwen and William Sloan Coffin, Jr. – to his work on climate change. He authored and was lead proponent of the UCC’s vote in 2013 to divest from fossil fuel companies – the first denomination to do so.
He has also engaged the spiritual discipline of civil disobedience numerous times, most recently at the White House to stop the Keystone XL pipeline. In his role as Conference Minister, he is the public voice and strategic leader of the Conference seeking to enlarge the witness of the UCC in Massachusetts.
Join us on Saturday morning from 10am to 12Noon at United Church of Chapel Hill. For more information,www.unitedchurch.org or 919-942-3540.