Environment

Baltimore Church Joins International Climate Campaign

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Representatives from nine of the world’s major faiths are joining forces to help address climate change …including a delegation from Baltimore’s New Psalmist Baptist Church. Reporter Matthew Wells has the story.

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KATY CLARK: I’m Katy Clark and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI, and WGBH Boston. Many heavens, one earth. That’s the slogan bringing together religious leaders from around the world next week. They’ll be discussing climate change at a meeting in the Royal Castle at Windsor in England. The aim is to come up with a concrete plan of action to help save the environment. Among the American delegates at the Windsor conference will be members of the New Psalmist Baptist Church. It’s based in Baltimore. Here’s more from reporter Matthew Wells.

WALTER THOMAS: We’re going to Windsor Castle.

MATTHEW WELLS: Bishop Walter Thomas, founder and lead pastor, tells his 7000 strong flock about the multi-faith conference during back to back services. The overwhelmingly black congregation are proud their church has drawn up its own seven-year environmental plan. Their delegation to Windsor will perform a gospel song written especially for the event. Today they’re hearing it for the first time.

SONG: He gave his life for all creation.

WELLS: The bishop keeps his message simple and direct. Going green is about social justice and putting right to centuries of neglect.

THOMAS: We are seeing climate change. We are seeing people crying out for help. We know we can. The great movements of history and life have always been founded somewhere in the faith community. In Windsor we have the opportunity to see faith communities from all over the world representing billions of people making a statement that will be read and picked up and incorporated in the lives of billions of people.

SONG: Praise him all creature here below.

AL BAILEY: My name is Reverend Al Bailey. I am the minister of Missions and Outreach here at New Psalmist Baptist Church. 2005 we actually took our first trip to Nairobi, Kenya. We saw the need for you know water in Kenya – clean water – and began to take action right from there. We began to show our congregation just how other people in the world live. They immediately said okay we need to do something to help this issue.

WELLS: The reverend Al is one of the team responsible for the church’s seven-year plan. He says small local steps will empower a new global movement.

BAILEY: We’re really looking to focus on practical lifestyle issues and changes that we can make personally as congregants of the church. We’re seeing how we can make our church green.

WELLS: Until just a few years ago many high profile Baptist leaders were suspicious of environmentalism. Some still are but increasingly Evangelicals are spreading a new green gospel of caring for the earth as a core part of their theology. Jim Ball is southern Baptist minister and former president of the Evangelical Environmental Network. He’s now a senior director of their climate campaign.

JIM BALL: Some of the more conservative political members of our community were concerned about government regulation, over regulation. For those of us who are really in what we call the Evangelical Creation Care Movement we’re all pretty pragmatic. Let’s just get the gunk out of the air and the water and what’s the best way to do that.

SONG: How great thou art. How great thou art.

WELLS: Lead singer James Morant is a key part of the Baltimore choir and the delegation to Windsor next week. As a former senior official with the Environmental Protection Agency he fostered international links on climate change for years. He believes that the African-American Baptist tradition of social campaigning in the civil rights era and beyond makes them especially well place to lead on the environment.

JAMES MORANT: We come from a struggle and we come from a people that have had to innovate constantly. It’s because of the richness of the experience and the opportunity that I see to make incremental change that keeps me moving forward and I think keeps the church moving forward.

SONG: How great, how great thou art.

WELLS: For The World I’m Matthew Wells, Baltimore.

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