Energy Policy in American Faith Communities:“The Power to Change”

Patricia K. Townsend

Patricia K. Townsend is with the University atBuffalo Department of Anthropology as ResearchAssociate Professor. She is vice-president of theBoard of New York Interfaith Power and Light.

Abstract

This paper traces the development of energy policy inthe mainline churches beginning with Margaret Mead andRené Dubos’s 1974 commission to prepare a report to theNational Council of Churches on the use of plutonium asa commercial fuel. The report stirred a controversy and abroader examination of energy ethics that culminated in theadoption in 1979 of a National Council of Churches ofChrist in the U.S.A. policy paper and encouraged constitu-ent denominations to make their own studies of energypolicy. The development and implementation of these poli-cies is followed from 1980 to the present, using the Pres-byterian Church (U.S.A.) as a representative mainlinedenomination. This turn to ethical reasoning to supportchange in U.S. energy policy is a hopeful development,given the stalemate in such discussion when framed inscientific or political terms. [energy policy, religiousorganizations, climate change]

Introduction

The consensus among climate scientists is that thecontinued burning of fossil carbon threatens futuregenerations of human, plant, and animal life on ourplanet. Even if this looming threat could be ignored,as climate skeptics advocate, it can be argued thatenergy conservation and the development of renew-able sources of energy would foster public health,sustainable economies, and international stability. Inthe face of all this, those who hope to promote alter-nate models of energy are tempted to despair by theincreasing power of big oil and big coal corporations

and their owners to control U.S. politics throughdonations to political campaigns.

Given the stalemate in energy discussions as theyare currently constructed in scientific or political terms,the most hopeful alternative may be to frame theargument for change as an ethical one, as philosophersand activists alike have begun to do. For many Ameri-cans, the primary community of ethical deliberation isthe religious community to which they belong. Hence,in order to be most effective, scientific messages aboutclimate change need to be reframed in language appro-priate to multiple faith communities.

The perspective formally known by sociologistsand communication specialists as “framing theory”has not been widely used within anthropology as adiscipline, at least not under that rubric, although it iseasily recognizable as a variant of translation theory or,even more generally, of cultural relativism. The anthro-pologist who has best articulated this perspective inrelation to climate change is Peter Rudiak-Gould (2011,2012), in his work on climate change in the MarshallIslands and his call for other anthropologists to studythe ways that scientific discourse on climate is receivedand acted upon in local cultures. Rudiak-Gouldexplores the phrase chosen for translating the term“climate change” into the Marshallese language, whichhas a broad range of meaning so that cultural as wellas natural changes, causes and effects, weather andclimate are all within its range of meaning. Rudiak-Gould’s interviews indicated that Marshallese have awide acceptance of anthropogenic climate change,partly because of this fortuitous translation. One mightotherwise have expected that Marshallese Biblicalinterpretations and mistrust of scientists might impedeacceptance of a foreign concept.

The best-known exponent of framing theorywithin the climate change debate is cognitive linguistGeorge Lakoff, who has become the guru of framingin the popular press (Lakoff 2010, 2012). Lakoffadvises environmental organizations, as he does pro-gressive political organizations more generally, toframe issues in terms of moral values. He does not

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Culture, Agriculture, Food and Environment Vol. 35, Issue 1 pp. 4–15, ISSN 2153-9553, eISSN 2153-9561. © 2013 by the American AnthropologicalAssociation. All rights reserved. DOI: 10.1111/cuag.12001

regard this as a matter of short-term messaging orpolitical spin, however, but talks in terms of progres-sives building the same kinds of frames—also calledcognitive “schema” or neural circuitry—that conser-vative organizations have built over the long term.

Some of Lakoff’s critics have indicated that anattempt to frame the climate change issue as a progres-sive political issue on a large scale in the mass media isnot what is needed to create a social movement.Indeed, doing so may lead to further polarization.What is needed is engaging the public(s) in dialog at asmall-scale or local level where they participate demo-cratically in the framing (Brulle 2010; López 2010).

As a medical and environmental anthropologistwho in retirement has committed time to bothresearch and activism on energy issues, I have beenexploring the involvement of the ecumenical (or“mainline”) churches in articulating a social ethics ofclimate change and energy and implementing energyalternatives. Anthropologists have generally had littleinterest in doing research in mainline Anglo congre-gations. Our search for the exotic other has generallyled us to choose fundamentalist, Pentecostal, orethnic-minority congregations. But I chose to begin asa participant-observer in the Presbyterian congrega-tion and denomination of which I am a member,moving back and forth between smaller and largerscales and following its linkages to the ecumenicaland interfaith movement on energy and climatechange (Townsend in press, n.d.).

The Churches Address Energy in the 1970s

Contemporary anthropologists seeking to studyor influence public policy on energy issues may not besurprised to find that, as usual, Margaret Mead hasbeen there before us. In late 1974 the National Councilof Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. (NCC) invitedMargaret Mead and René Dubos to cochair a commit-tee to make recommendations on nuclear power ingeneral and specifically concerning the use of pluto-nium as commercial nuclear fuel.1

The 21-member committee assembled to preparethe report and the additional published list of 45endorsers were mostly prominent scientists, a majorityfrom biology and medicine, with a sprinkling oflawyers and directors of nongovernmental organiza-tions. Only one clergyman appeared among the 66. Theendorsers included three senior sociologists—LewisMumford, Robert Merton, and David Riesman—but no

anthropologists other than Mead. The Mead–Dubosreport, The Plutonium Economy: A Statement of Concern,condemning the commercial use of plutonium, wassubmitted to the Governing Council of the NCC inOctober 1975. Mead had already made her own viewson plutonium clear in her Redbook column in Novem-ber 1974.

Mead was at the time serving as President of theAmerican Association for the Advancement of Science(AAAS). In the 1960s she had succeeded biologist BarryCommoner as chair of the policy-influential AAASCommittee on Science in the Promotion of HumanWelfare. During her presidency she organized theOctober 1975 Endangered Atmosphere conference, atwhich the danger of global climate change due tohuman emissions of carbon dioxide was clearly pre-sented (Kellogg and Mead 1977). Even so, it would takeuntil 2007 for the AAAS to issue a strong resolution onthe scientific consensus on global climate change.2

Episcopalian Mead was active in promoting theNCC position statement. An advertisement seekingadditional endorsements appeared over Mead’s namein the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (Mead 1976).Mead took the NCC Statement of Concern to the WorldCouncil of Churches (WCC) meeting in Nairobi inDecember 1975, which adopted a report promisingthat they would take the lead in establishing “a just,participatory and sustainable society.”

In April 1977, President Carter (a nuclear engi-neer, in addition to peanut farmer, carpenter, andBaptist Sunday School teacher) issued a nuclear policythat began with a commitment to defer indefinitelythe commercial reprocessing and recycling of pluto-nium, a position closely paralleling the one supportedby the NCC. It is difficult to assess how significant apart the NCC statement played in this decision or inCarter’s election, as he had already made this policypart of his campaign position on energy in 1975.While it was a less radical position on restrictingnuclear energy than most environmental groupsadvocated, it was a firm disavowal of the previousadministration’s plans to build breeder reactors andrapidly expand nuclear power.

In the months before the NCC was scheduled tovote on the Mead–Dubos policy, the governing boardheard an unprecedented outpouring of opinion fromChristians on both sides of the issue. Because thestrip-mining of coal was another controversial issue ofthe time, the NCC mandated a broader study of theethical implications of energy production and use.3

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Following prolonged controversy within theNCC, in 1979 the governing board adopted an11-page document, The Ethical Implications of EnergyProduction and Use, and sent it to the churches for theirstudy. The report developed the concept of “an eco-logically just society, one based on the values ofsustainability, equity, and participation.” Despite theopposition the NCC had heard from laity employedin the energy industries, the study made clear thatboth coal and nuclear power were high-risk technolo-gies (Birch 1978; Hessel 1979).

Presbyterian Energy Policy: ADenominational Case Study

Each of the NCC member denominations had itsown form of government and consequently its uniqueapproach to responding to the call to study, develop,and implement an energy policy. This paper considersthe response of only the Presbyterian Church(PC[USA]) as a case study.4 As I have argued else-where (Townsend in press, n.d.), the Presbyterianswere well positioned for leadership on energy andclimate change issues because of their highly edu-cated laity and clergy and certain features of theirReformed theology, though their politically conserva-tive membership was a potential source of resistance.5

The PC(USA) is a mid-sized denomination amongthe mainline Protestants, currently third in member-ship behind the United Methodists and EvangelicalLutherans (ELCA) (Lindner 2012). All of thesedenominations have declined in membership in thepast several decades without changing in relativeposition.

Presbyterians are named for their form of polity,the term presbyter being derived from the word inBiblical Greek for an elder. The ruling elders areelected by members of the congregation to serve onthe Session, which then makes almost all decisions onbehalf of the congregation. Ruling elders and teachingelders (ministers of word and sacrament, to use theolder title) together serve on other ruling bodies of thechurch—the regional presbyteries and synods andthe national General Assembly (GA) that met annu-ally from 1789 through 2003 and since then biennially.The policy process in such a denomination will nec-essarily be quite different from that in a denominationwith a hierarchy of bishops (episcopal polity) or withcongregational polity.

The 1981 Presbyterian Energy Policy

The Presbyterian energy policy that was devel-oped in response to the NCC call for study was titled“The Power to Speak Truth to Power” (PresbyterianChurch in the U.S. and United Presbyterian Church inthe U.S.A. 1981). The consultant employed to writethe background paper was Robert L. Stivers, a Pres-byterian minister teaching ethics in the Department ofReligion at Pacific Lutheran University. Stivers haddeveloped his first book, The Sustainable Society (1976)out of his Columbia University dissertation on thedebate over economic growth. In his backgroundanalysis for the Presbyterian energy policy, heexplored the current energy issues, the ethical normsupon which energy choices are based, and the biblicaland theological context of these norms: (1) justice, (2)sustainable sufficiency, and (3) participation.

The 1981 Presbyterian energy document, “ThePower to Speak Truth to Power”, declared, “The era ofcheap and abundant energy is over.” It called forChristians to “live frugal lives of energy sufficiency,”focusing especially on economic justice and the need totransfer resources to poor countries, reiterating theethical framework of the NCC report. It called forenergy conservation by congregations and individuals,with the recognition that fossil fuels were becomingscarce and expensive. It acknowledged that nuclearenergy would still be necessary during the transition torenewable energy but pointed out its social, economic,ecological, and human risks. The risk of climate changewas not raised in the 1981 energy policy although ithad already been raised, though not emphasized, inthe NCC energy statement:

Burning more coal could also result in less certainbut irreversible climatic damage from increasedcarbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Changes inclimate can turn agricultural land into deserts.(Hessel 1979:123)

One prominent member of the Task Force wasRichard Carter Austin, a minister, environmentaltheologian, and activist who had organized againststrip-mining for coal in Appalachia. Another wasWilliam States Lee III, Chief Operating Officer ofDuke Power. Following the Three Mile Island disasterof 1979, Lee led the national nuclear industry effortsto restore public confidence and establish best prac-tices and standards within the industry.

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At the time when mainstream Presbyteriansbegan work on their 1981 energy policy, they contin-ued their Civil War division into a northern denomi-nation (the UPC[USA]) and a southern one (thePresbyterian Church in the U.S.), but they wereworking toward the reunion that would form thePC(USA) in 1983, with its new headquarters in Lou-isville, Kentucky. The energy committee was the firstformal effort that they engaged in together, appoint-ing a committee with equal representation of northand south as well as clergy and non-clergy. Eachdenomination adopted it separately so that it wouldbecome their joint policy upon reunion in 1983.

The 1990 PC(USA) Environmental Policy

The denomination formulated its next major envi-ronmental policy when the 199th General Assembly in1987 received overtures that led to the formation of theTask Force on Eco-Justice. The final report of this taskforce, Restoring Creation for Ecology and Justice, wasadopted by the 202nd General Assembly (PresbyterianChurch [U.S.A.] 1990). The Task Force on Eco-Justicewas chaired by Robert L. Stivers, author of the back-ground paper for the 1981 energy policy document.

The consultant/writer of the Eco-Justice TaskForce was William Gibson, who, like Stivers, was asocial ethicist, having received his doctorate in 1972from Union Seminary in New York. From his basein the Eco-Justice Project and Network at CornellUniversity, where he served as campus minister, hepublished a newsletter called The Egg. The newslet-ter was influential in developing and disseminatingthe concept of “eco-justice,” a term that had beencoined several years earlier by staff of the AmericanBaptist denomination to unite concerns aboutecology and economy in an attempt to resolveunproductive “jobs vs. environment” debates(Gibson 2004:10, n.2).

Gibson’s 1989 background paper “Keeping andHealing the Creation” provided a theological andethical grounding for the Task Force (PresbyterianEco-Justice Task Force 1989). Theology is about God’saction; it affirms God as creator and redeemer (libera-tor) of all creation. Ethics is about human response.The broad ethical norms that underlie the environ-mental policy were restated as:

• Sustainability• Participation

• Sufficiency• Solidarity

A prominent ethicist on the Eco-Justice Task Forcewas Holmes Rolston III, professor of philosophy atColorado State University. Rolston had begun hiscareer as a Presbyterian pastor but found himselfincreasingly drawn into natural history and the phi-losophy of science. As he worked toward tenure atColorado State in a secular philosophy department,he sought a basis for environmental ethics that wouldbe acceptable to secularists, an argument that wouldnot rely on acceptance of belief in a creator to confervalue on creation. He outlined this argument in whatbecame a classic founding document of the disciplineof environmental ethics (Rolston 1975). The finalreport to the GA made detailed policy recommenda-tions in five general areas of concern:

• Sustainable agriculture• Water quality• Wildlife and wildlands• Reducing and managing our (solid and hazardous)

wastes• Overcoming atmospheric instability—global

warming and ozone depletion

Gibson was the leading voice for concerns aboutglobal climate change, writing about it in studypapers prior to the adoption of the policy and con-tinuing to write and advocate in this policy area untilhis death in 2006. The 1990 document made tenspecific recommendations about global warming poli-cies that ranged from U.S. participation in firm inter-national agreements for reducing greenhouse gases tostronger fuel economy standards for vehicles to tech-nology transfers that would enable developing coun-tries to achieve energy sufficiency.

Subsequent to this major policy work, severalGAs adopted overtures on particular energy issues,including advocacy in favor of the United Statesratifying the Kyoto treaty and opposition tomountain-top removal coal mining.

Revisiting PC(USA) Energy Policy in the21st Century

At the 214th General Assembly in 2002, the Pres-bytery of Susquehanna Valley presented an overturethat asked for review of the denomination’s 1981energy policy. Susquehanna Valley is the upstate New

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York region that includes the environmentally awareuniversity towns of Binghamton and Ithaca; it wasWilliam Gibson’s home Presbytery. Gibson workedwith Janet Adair Hansen, a young minister active onthe board of Presbyterians for Restoring Creation(PRC), to present the energy resolution, which passedtheir Presbytery and went on to GA. The immediatecontext of the resolution was the crisis produced by asteep increase in electricity prices in the West thatresulted largely from manipulation by Enron in aderegulated market.

Within the denomination, awareness of globalclimate change was increasing. By May 2009, in asurvey of members, elders, and clergy, the Presbyte-rian Panel ranked oil and gas consumption and globalclimate change as the two most serious environmentalproblems at the time. In 1997, global warming hadbarely registered on the list, the top two being airpollution and destruction of the rainforest.6

Unlike the two committees discussed earlier, thiswould not be a task force reporting directly to the GA,but a team reporting to the Advisory Committee onSocial Witness Policy (ACSWP). ACSWP was anelected committee with broad responsibility for publicpolicy initiatives to be presented to GA for vote. In theyears during which the energy policy was beingreviewed, ACSWP’s most absorbing concern was withthe Church’s controversial Middle East policies.

Pamela McVety, the Restoring Creation Enabler(RCE) for the Presbytery of Florida, was chosen to chairthe Energy Resolution Team. She was a biologist/ecologist who had held high-level positions in theFlorida Department of Environmental Conservation.

An influential member of the team was JohnTopping, former director of the Office of Air andRadiation of the United States Environmental Protec-tion Agency under the Reagan administration. Sincefounding the Climate Institute in Washington, DC, in1986, he has served as its CEO. Topping had served aseditor and lead author of portions of the Intergovern-mental Panel on Climate Change First AssessmentReport on aspects having to do with human impacts,risk, and anticipatory adaptation. He was trained as alawyer, like two other members of the Energy Team.He drafted a study document for the team’s June 2005final meeting with pro bono input on technical mattersfrom Michael MacCracken, chief climate scientist atthe Institute (Topping and MacCracken n.d.).

Another influential member of the team withstrong credentials in environmental protection was

Jananne Sharpless. She served as Chair of the Cali-fornia Air Resources Board from 1985 through 1993,pressing for cleaner fuels and electric cars. She thenserved on the California Energy Commission and theBoard of Directors of the Western Electricity Coordi-nating Council.

The other seven members of the team all hadrelevant experiences and perspectives to share.Between meetings they were given “homework,” asArizona attorney Paige Murphy-Young put it; herswas to do background research on the responsibilitiesof corporations, an assignment based on her havingworked for her county government on permits forpower plants. Biologist Frank Gilliam was the onlymember who was a research scientist. None of the tenwere ministers or theologians.

The team met three times to work face-to-face forseveral days in addition to e-mail correspondence.Their report to the ACSWP, the team had decided,was to be short, with a challenge to carbon neutralityas its central theme. They were determined to try adifferent approach than previous reports. Theywanted to put out a “big and concrete” goal thatchallenged Presbyterians to change their behavior. Asthey approached the deadline for reporting toACSWP, relationships with their consultant/writer,Robert Stivers, broke down and he resigned. Coinci-dentally, staff cuts in the Louisville office createdfurther difficulties in winding up the report.

The Energy Team’s 2005 report, A ChristianWitness on Energy, was deliberately brief, at 2,700words, not repeating the extensive Biblical, theologi-cal, and ethical background of earlier policy docu-ments but cutting quickly to recommendations forchanges in public policy and, especially, individualbehavior (McVety 2005). This not only broke withtradition but might have kept the report from servingeffectively as a stand-alone document for congrega-tional study. From the viewpoint of ACSWP and itsstaff and consultant, the report also failed to providesufficiently strong positions that denominationalspokespersons could take into public and ecumenicaldebate as “the Presbyterian policy.”

The leaders of the energy team had deliberatelydecided to focus on personal responsibility rather thanto engage potentially divisive issues such as theenergy impact of the Iraq War7 or the failings of theBush administration with respect to energy (althoughthese were issues upon which even the Republicans onthe team could agree). They wanted to produce a

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report that would not be dismissed out of hand as“political” by people in the pews after being approvedby the ACSWP and the GA, both considered to bebiased to the left by many people in the pews.

The report used the concept of a “witness”through one’s actions as a Christian. This was awitness that would speak powerfully to one’s neigh-bors about one’s personal commitment to preventingdevastating climate change. The change to “witness”was a last-minute inspiration, replacing the moresecular “bold initiative” of earlier drafts. Here laypeople were taking the lead in a theological framingtask that is usually taken by ministers from the pulpit.

McVety presented their work to the ACSWP attheir October 2005 meeting in the form of a 2,700-word document, A Christian Witness on Energy, and anaccompanying PowerPoint presentation (McVety2005). ACSWP could not entertain a report that madeno reference to the vast energy costs expended by themilitary in the Iraq War, against which the energyconservation efforts of a tiny minority of Americanhouseholds seemed to pale. The “geopolitical context”of energy policy had been neglected. The denomina-tion had already taken a strong stand against the war;consistency throughout Presbyterian social policy wasseen as important by ACSWP.

The energy report was rejected by ACSWP at theirnext meeting in January 2006, and they sought aconsultant to rewrite the study document in time forthe committee to approve it and present it to the 2008General Assembly. In order to save something fromtheir work, the energy team was encouraged by theelected GA Moderator Rick Ufford-Chase and the newACSWP staffer Chris Iosso8 to present carbon neutral-ity, the key concept that they had chosen as their focus,as a separate resolution to the 2006 General Assembly.

The 2006 Carbon Neutral Resolution

The parliamentary tactic that would enablepassage of the core recommendation of the energyteam was a commissioner’s resolution, a motion thatcould be entered in advance of the meeting by twodelegates. The chair, Pam McVety, drafted a resolutionthat did not duplicate the longer report that ACSWPwas sending out to a consultant for rewriting andfound two commissioners to present it. The resolutionmade the case for the urgency for individual Presby-terians to become carbon neutral.

At the GA meeting in June 2006, the resolutionwas assigned to the Social Justice Committee forreview. Committee assignments are made randomly,assuring that committee membership is relatively rep-resentative of the ministers and elders attending theAssembly. The committee passed the resolution over-whelmingly, with 55 affirmative votes, 3 negativevotes, and 3 abstentions, and it was adopted by thewhole GA without significant dissent.

Radical as it was in environmental terms and in itsexpectation of individual sacrifice, the Carbon NeutralResolution received almost no publicity beyond itsbrief announcement by the denomination. Searches ofthe Internet and newspapers reveal almost no noticetaken at the time. Not until the following year wasthere a prominent mention of the Presbyterian action inthe media, in a sarcastic article about carbon offsets inUSA Today (Schweizer 2007). “Everyone from Al Goreto the Presbyterian Church” is pushing carbon offsetsto escape the moral quandary of not wanting to changeone’s lifestyle despite one’s belief that it is having direeffects on the climate, the author notes. He goes on toparody the concept, writing of “adultery offsets” andopportunities to become “fat neutral’ without actuallydieting or exercising. The writer failed to note that thePresbyterian resolution asked individuals to reducetheir own carbon emissions as much as possible andpurchase offsets for what remained, not to pay penancebut to increase investment in renewable energy andcarbon sinks.9

Even the denomination’s own publications wereslow to pick up the concept of carbon neutrality.Partly this was due to a radical downsizing ofstaff due to financial constraints; the restructureannounced in April 2006 eliminated the Office ofEnvironmental Ministries. The outcry from the grass-roots resulted in the reestablishment of Environmen-tal Ministries with a full-time staff person in 2009, butmomentum had been lost.

The website of the Climate Institute, Topping’sorganization, did have extensive coverage—but it wasalmost the only Internet presence for the GA action onenergy.10 Media coverage of the mainline denomina-tions in those years was almost entirely directedtoward gay ordination/gay marriage controversies.

The 2008 PC(USA) Energy Policy

The ACSWP engaged James Martin-Schramm as aconsultant to write the much longer report that it sent

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to the 2008 General Assembly. Martin-Schramm, aprofessor of religion at Luther College in Iowa, hadstudied ethics with Stivers as an undergraduate beforedoing his PhD in social ethics at Union Seminary. Thetwo of them had coauthored a college text on Christianenvironmental ethics (Martin-Schramm and Stivers2003). Judging from their writings, both are Christiansocial ethicists cut in the same mold as William Gibson,leading to a consistency in framing PC(USA) eco-justice policy around the ethical norms of sustainabil-ity, participation, sufficiency, and solidarity throughseveral decades. Though Martin-Schramm was a Luth-eran, the ELCA and PC(USA) had been in full com-munion since 1997, and theologians from the twodenominations had long been in conversation abouteco-justice (Hessel 1992; Martin-Schramm 2010).

The 2008 energy study paper bore the title, “ThePower to Change,” echoing the 1981 report, “ThePower to Speak Truth to Power.” Its understanding ofclimate change issues and its recommendations weresimilar to those the energy team had proposed in 2005.More importantly for its acceptance, it echoed thereasoned presentation of a theological and ethicalfoundation that had been the hallmark of Presbyterianstudy papers. It also included a few paragraphs aboutthe Iraq war, carefully worded to sidestep politicalminefields:

Politically, various studies estimate that the U.S.spends between $55 billion and nearly $100billion each year on the military to secure oilsupplies around the world. These estimates donot include more than $100 billion spent each yearsince 2003 for the war in Iraq, which has theworld’s third largest proven reserves of oil.Recently the National Petroleum Council warnedthat international energy development and tradeare more likely to be influenced by geopoliticalconsiderations and less by market factors. Presi-dent Bush acknowledged this reality in his 2006State of the Union address when he remarked:“America is addicted to oil, which is oftenimported from unstable parts of the world.” Ourdependence on fossil fuels is a threat to peace.[Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) 2008:6]

Implementing Presbyterian Energy Policies

The only persons who can be directed to imple-ment Presbyterian policies are the denomination’s

staff, as much as those who develop the policiesmight hope for wider impact among clergy andwithin congregations. The small Washington office forpublic policy advocacy includes staff with expertiseand interest in climate change and energy legislation.Because it works ecumenically on Capitol Hill, it isable to extend its influence. It communicates withPresbyterians who express interest in advocacythrough print and electronic newsletters and calls foraction. The Washington offices of the Presbyteriansand other ecumenical denominations are arguablymore effective in mobilizing letter-writing campaignsthan secular environmental organizations (Moody2002; Wuthnow and Evans 2002).

The PC(USA)’s participation in the movement forsocially responsible investment is another particularlyeffective channel for extending its influence onmodels for the production and distribution of energy.Mission Responsibility Through Investment (MRTI) isthe denomination’s agency for managing its pensionand endowment funds. MRTI played a key role in thedivestment movement in South Africa, widely cred-ited as a major factor in the successful end of apart-heid in 1994. Some of MRTI’s proposals are bound tostir controversy both within and outside the denomi-nation, as did the more recent proposal to divest fromseveral companies listed as contributing to MiddleEastern conflict. In 2004, when “phased divestment”in Caterpillar (manufacturer of equipment used byIsrael to wall out Palestinians) was first proposed toGA, the PC(USA)’s total investment portfolio ofapproximately $8 billion in retirement and endow-ment funds was said to provide it with “substantialleverage” for negotiation with companies (Clarke2005:47).11

Though its Middle East proposals may not havesucceeded, MRTI did successfully negotiate withowners of power plants for more environmentallyresponsible policies. It used shareholder resolutionsand discussion without having to get to the point ofrecommending divestment. Even shareholder resolu-tions that do not reach anything like a passing voteoften prompt corporations to take action in order toavoid unfavorable publicity.

The PC(USA) participates in both the InterfaithCenter for Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) and Ceres.Ceres was formed in 1989 after the Exxon Valdezdisaster to enlist the voluntary compliance of corpora-tions in a set of principles for corporate environmentalresponsibility.12 Bill Somplatsky-Jarman of MRTI was

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the first clergyperson on the Ceres Board of Directors.He has an extraordinary record of experience inworking on climate change issues, having representedthe PC(USA) at the 1992 Rio Conference and attendingnearly all of the United Nations climate conferencessince then. At COP8, held in Delhi, India, in 2002, hedelivered the WCC Statement to the plenary, “A Call toAction in Solidarity with Victims of Climate Change”(World Council of Churches 2011:37).

The Environmental Justice office in Louisvillethat was formed as a recommendation of the 1990environmental policy encouraged congregations intheir work for eco-justice and provided educationalmaterials for them as well as awards and smallgrants. One of the mechanisms by which they didthis was by developing a network of RCEs, who arepart-time paid or volunteer staff at regional (Pres-bytery) level.

The Louisville office also worked closely with PRC(now called Presbyterians for Earth Care), a grassrootsmembership organization. Their most visible collabo-ration is a series of biennial conferences for severalhundred attendees. Most of these have some energyfocus. The one held in Oregon in 2002 had as its theme“Earth’s Energy, God’s Light” and was almost entirelydevoted to renewable energy. Even in the few yearswhen the Louisville environmental office was closed,PRC continued to thrive, with its own part-time staffand volunteer officers, newsletter, and conferences.Because the energy and environmental policies wereinfused throughout the Louisville program depart-ments, staff from other areas continued to do relevantwork, particularly the hunger program, which wasfunded from a special offering, One Great Hour ofSharing (see, e.g., Bartlett 2007).

It is much more difficult to evaluate how thor-oughly the denomination’s energy policies are imple-mented at congregational level (Barnes-Davies 2009).One striking measure is that an Internet search revealsnumerous Presbyterian congregations around thecountry whose websites proclaim that they haveinstalled photovoltaic systems on their buildings.They have done so despite the fact that federal taxcredits are not available to nonprofits, includingchurches, though state incentives have been availableto them. At least one Presbyterian congregation hasinstalled a geothermal system to replace its aging oilfurnace.13 These installations are typically conspicu-ous in their local communities and are accompaniedby a good deal of discussion in finance and buildings

and grounds committees, which are also commonlyengaged in energy conservation practices in order tocontrol utility costs in their aging buildings.

The 21st-Century Landscape of Ecumenicaland Interfaith Energy Policy Work

The influence of the NCC is not what it was inMead’s day, and it has radically downsized its staff.This was inevitable as the membership and financialresources of the mainstream denominations shrankand their contributions to this ecumenical workwere reduced. Nonetheless they continue to worktogether on relief and development through theNCC’s partner organization, Church World Service(CWS).14

The new landscape of collaboration in advocacyby religious groups is both wider and more issuespecific. For a recent example, one of the speakers atthe 2012 Democratic National Convention was one ofthe “nuns on the bus” who had traveled the countryin June, speaking for the Christian ethical imperativeto care for the poor and in opposition to the severecuts in the social safety net in Congressman Ryan’sproposed budget. The nun was Sister Simone Camp-bell, executive director of Network, a Catholic socialjustice lobby. The “Faithful Budget Initiative” was themain issue around which the Ecumenical AdvocacyDays in Washington in March, 2012, had organized.Catholics (never members of the NCC) and Presbyte-rians had been first and second, respectively, in thenumber of attendees, and both Network and thePC(USA) Washington office were conspicuous inthe planning. Two years earlier Ecumenical AdvocacyDays had been focused on the issue of climate change;Presbyterian lay people mingled with Franciscans intheir rope-belted brown robes as they made visits toCapitol Hill.

New issue-specific ecumenical and interfaith orga-nizations have formed, of which the most significantwith relevance to energy is Interfaith Power and Light(IPL), which identifies itself as “a religious response toglobal warming.” IPL advocates on energy and climatechange at national level while the affiliates (currently in37 states) lobby primarily at state level, where much ofthe legislative activity has been taking place during therecent gridlock in national politics. Advocacy is pairedwith programs that encourage congregations of allfaiths to become energy efficient.

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Conclusions

The main strength of faith communities for theeffort to change entrenched energy models is theirability to reframe the issues as moral ones. Secularphilosophers can do this, as excellent recent textsillustrate (Gardiner 2011), but they do so largely inacademic terms lacking wide currency. Religiouscongregations and denominations have already-established networks of communication—schools,magazines and newsletters, bureaucracies and regularmeetings—through which they can deliver themessage in terms that their members understand andrespect, often framed in language that includes termssuch as “creation,” “witness,” and “stewardship” thatare familiar from sermon and liturgy.

There are sources of resistance within religiousorganizations, nevertheless, particularly when politi-cally conservative messages are able to override anethical/theological framing. The most egregiousexample within the Presbyterian fold is RepublicanSenator James Inhofe, ranking minority member andformer Chair of the Senate Committee on Environ-ment and Public Works, who is a member of the FirstPresbyterian Church of Tulsa, Oklahoma. In speecheson the Senate floor he has called the threat of cata-strophic global warming the “greatest hoax ever per-petrated on the American people.”15 The danger ofaggressive climate skepticism (or, in the Inhofe case,what is even worse, conspiracy theory) is that byreframing faith-based energy policy as “political,” itmay silence even environmentally engaged parishio-ners and preachers.

The theological and ethical framing of energyissues is particularly significant because it urgesadherents to take a long view, reaching forward tofuture generations (“our grandchildren” or “theseventh generation”) and back to the religious cre-ation stories. This is distinguished from short-termeconomic and political cycles, or, worse, the briefissue-attention cycles of journalism. Similarly, congre-gations see their houses of worship as structures builtfor the long term, or at least a few generations, andtherefore worthy of investment in energy-conservingmeasures and renewable energy sources with a longpayback period that will ultimately save on futureutility bills. Businesses and homeowners might nottolerate such long payback periods, given the possi-bility that they may need to sell out in a few yearsbefore recouping the investment.

Even if climate skepticism becomes widespread ina religious group, particularly those Christians whoexpect an imminent Rapture, there are other powerfulethical and Biblical arguments for working towardchange in energy systems. The strongest of these forreligious groups are the public health argumentsagainst air pollution from coal-burning power plants,water pollution from mountain-top-removal coalmining or hydraulic fracturing, and the horrors ofradiation from nuclear power plant disasters. Health,healing, and care for the welfare of one’s neighbor arethemes with wide resonance in faith communities.

What Mead and her fellow scientists said aboutthe plutonium economy may now be said of the fossilcarbon economy as well:

These are hazards so grave that every citizenshould have a voice in deciding whether this isthe road to energy independence we—oranyone—should take. All who believe that everycitizen should serve human values should join inopposing the plutonium economy and in seekingto divert into safer and more constructive chan-nels the vast resources being devoted to nuclearpower. [Mead 1976:49]

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to the many Presbyterian leaders,both staff and volunteer, who generously shared theirtime and recounted their experiences during tele-phone and face-to-face interviews and e-mail corre-spondence with me during this year of research. Ihave been inspired by my colleagues during severaldecades of participation in ecumenical and interfaitheco-justice activities, beginning with Love Canal.

Notes

1. Mead had previously cochaired a Task Force on thechurches and technology that was sponsored jointly bythe NCC and Union Theological Seminary. They metover a period of two years and produced a report that(as only one among several issues) discussed energyfrom fossil fuel and nuclear plants in terms of risk andjustice (Carothers et al. 1972:52–54). Mead’s cochair wasRoger Shinn, professor of social ethics at Union. Thecollaboration reflected the fact that the offices of theNCC, the seminary, and Columbia University are neigh-bors in Morningside Heights. One of the participants in

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the task force, Robert Stivers, then a graduate student atColumbia, will appear later in this paper as a majorforce in the development of Presbyterian energy policyup until the present time.

2. The AAAS statement is available at http://www.aaas.org/news/press_room/climate_change/mtg_200702/aaas_climate_statement.pdf, accessed Sep-tember 13, 2012.

3. Dieter Hessel, a Presbyterian minister, chaired theenergy committee. Chris Cowap, an Episcopal laywoman, was the NCC staff person assigned to theenergy issue. Hessel went on with Cowap to becomefounding staff of the NCC Eco-Justice Working Group.From 1965 to 1990 he was a Presbyterian denomina-tional headquarters staff member in social justiceeducation. From 1993 to the present he worked inde-pendently of denominational structures, with anemphasis on environmental theology in seminaryeducation. This work is detailed at http://www.ecojusticenow.org, accessed November 9, 2011.

4. In addition to the PC(USA), there are several smallerand theologically more conservative Presbyteriandenominations in the United States, including the Pres-byterian Church in America, Orthodox PresbyterianChurch, and the Evangelical Presbyterian Church. Thesedenominations will not be included in the discussion.

5. The argument I made in that paper about Reformedtheology and climate change policy is equally applicableto certain other issues of social justice, including energypolicy more generally and toxic pollution. In my workon the interfaith response to Love Canal I found asimilar pattern of response: the Presbyterians issuingthe first call for the formation of an Ecumenical TaskForce (Townsend 2001).

6. The PC(USA) is extraordinarily transparent in the col-lection and publication of data by its office of ResearchServices. The PC(USA) website shows membership andfinancial trends in detail at the level of the congregation.The results of the survey research of the PresbyterianPanel are presented on line at the denominationalwebsite and printed reports. The Presbyterian Panelconsists of nationally representative samples ofordained ministers, elders, and members drawn everythree years. During the three years the participants areasked to respond to questionnaires on various topics.The surveys in May 1997 and May 2009 addressedenvironmental issues. Research Services designed itsAugust 2004 survey on energy specifically to meet theneeds of the Energy Team.

7. One team member who had been actively protesting theIraq War at the same time as serving on the energy teamwas shocked to learn from the interviewer in 2011 thatthe omission of the Iraq War was one grounds forrejecting the report because the topic had simply “notcome up” in their meetings.

8. The position of staff to the ACSWP is titled Coordinatorfor Social Witness Policy. It is currently occupied byChristian Iosso, who replaced Peter Sulyok, who wasdismissed in late 2004 in the wake of a controversialMiddle East trip by ACSWP members. Iosso’s firstmeeting in this position was the October 2005 meetingat which McVety presented the team’s report, but hewas not new to PC(USA) energy policy, having servedas a young staffer on the 1981 energy policy team.

9. Environmental indulgences did not originate with theUSA Today author. The moral basis of green taxes andthe “polluter pays” principle were discussed systemati-cally by Goodin (1994) and, more recently, the HarvardLaw Review (2010).

10. The Institute’s web page calls the Presbyterian action a“stunning development.” http://www.climate.org/topics/national-action/presbyterians-climate-neutral.html, accessed December 15, 2011.

11. Discussions with Caterpillar, Motorola, and Hewlett-Packard about their contributions to Israel’s humanrights violations continued unfruitful and MRTI pro-posed divestment at the 220th General Assembly in2012, where it was voted down by the Assembly afterbeing recommended by the Committee on the MiddleEast and Peacemaking Issues.

12. The formation of Ceres is discussed at http://www.ceres.org/about-us/our-history, accessed Septem-ber 23, 2011.

13. Huguenot Memorial Presbyterian Church in Pelham,New York.

14. The history of the sometimes troubled relationshipbetween CWS and NCC is explored in Gill (2004).

15. Senator Inhofe’s speeches are quoted at http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/01/senator-inhofe/, accessed October 1, 2011. More recently(Inhofe 2012) he has published a book attributing theclimate hoax to the United Nations.

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