Newly Organized Environmental Stewardship Team to Serve as 'Clearinghouse'
Episcopal News Service. April 24, 1992 [92097]
Describing the Episcopal Church's new Environmental Stewardship Team as "brokers, catalysts, and enablers in a nationwide religious response to a global problem...," Bishop Frank Cerveny of Florida said that the organization was "open and in business."
Cerveny, elected chair of the 14-member team during an April 7-9 meeting in New York City, said that it would offer "personal, communal, national, and international responses" to the environmental crisis.
The team, a creation of the Episcopal Church's 1991 General Convention in Phoenix, will develop strategy to implement resolutions adopted there. One clear principle guiding the work of the team is support for the environmental work already happening throughout the church. "Our role is to educate, motivate, and facilitate action at the local and diocesan levels," said Bishop William Winterrowd of Colorado, a member of the team.
"The environment is an issue where people in the grassroots are out front," said Ethan Flad, staff assistant for environmental concerns and special projects at the Episcopal Church Center. Flad, who will provide staff support for the team, said that it will not try to reinvent the wheel nor to "devise programs for parishes, but to serve as a kind of resource or clearinghouse for the wider church."
"There are many Episcopalians involved in environmental concerns," Flad added. "We need to help the church identify the experts and to put people in touch with each other."
Flad said that the team would also prompt people "to look at the biblical and moral dimensions of their activism. The team hopes to help the church ask the theological questions that confront the ecological crisis." He added, "We're really talking about a complete change in consciousness -- from looking at the environment as a single issue, to one that is integrated in all other concerns."
The team has appointed several subcommittees to help gather and share information throughout the church and to promote involvement of Episcopalians in other religious and secular organizations involved in environmental work.
- Bishop Frank Cerveny, chair, Diocese of Florida
- Bishop William Winterrowd, Diocese of Colorado
- The Rev. Canon Carla Berkedal, Diocese of Olympia
- The Rev. Dr. Edmundo Desueza, Diocese of Costa Rica
- The Rev. Dr. Frederick Quinn, Diocese of Washington
- The Rev. Roger Wharton, Diocese of California
- Jamie Boyll, Diocese of Mississippi
- Thomas Chappell, Diocese of Maine
- Susan Fisher, Diocese of Newark
- Jaime Hampton, Esq., Diocese of Arizona
- Ginette Olsen, Diocese of Michigan
- Frank Potter, Diocese of Virginia
- The Hon. Gregory Watson, Diocese of Massachusetts
- Peggy Welch, Diocese of West Texas
- Diane Porter, executive for Advocacy, Witness, and Justice
- Ethan Flad, staff assistant for environmental concerns and special projects