What is the spiritual significance of climate change and humanity’s role in it?
What is the spiritual significance of climate change and humanity’s role in it? Speakers at a one-day event today at The King’s University College in Edmonton will be asking and answering that very question.
“We want to get people in churches and other faith communities talking about the issue,” said Edmonton organizer Randolph Haluza-DeLay, a professor of sociology at The King’s University College. “This whole discussion about climate change usually focuses on the science, but that’s too limited.”
“Human beings will be affected, some quite badly,” Haluza-DeLay adds. “That’s not right, it isn’t just.”
To illustrate, he points to World Vision Canada. “World Vision is one of the largest Christian international development organizations in Canada. Their website says ‘While it’s the industrialized nations of the world that pump out the most greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming, it’s the undeveloped nations of the world that feel the first effects of global warming’.”
World Vision president Dave Toycen will be one of the speakers. The lead organizer is Dr. Mishka Lysack, professor of social work at the University of Calgary.
The event is jointly organized by The King’s University College and the University of Calgary and will take place Monday, October 26. The two sites will be linked by two-way video conferencing software. Several speakers will offer their comments, and there will be group discussion sessions.
Other speakers will be from Climate Action Network, the Sierra Club, A Rocha – a Christian environmental education organization – and university faculty. A key part of the program will be breakout discussion sessions. Participants will discuss their perception of the issue, and what congregations and faith groups can or should do about climate change.
“It’s about our human relationship with the rest of creation” Haluza-DeLay says. “What’s happening, what is the human contribution to global warming – those are things science can tell us, but we have to talk about the morality of the issue.” More details about the event are at www.ucalgary.ca/oikos/Retreat/.
Posted: October 26th, 2009 under Haluza-DeLay, King's Faculty.
Tags: climate change, sociology, values
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