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October 20, 2001 Rosemary Radford Reuther: "Interreligious Sustainability Project of Metropolitan Chicago" On Friday, October 20, 2000, 14 of us gathered at the Starr King School chapel to talk with Rosemary Radford Ruether over lunch. Therese led us in an opening prayer, Susannah facilitated, and Craig introduced our guest, Dr. Rosemary Radford Ruether. Greg provided Dr. Ruether with lunch and refreshments, and Dana recorded. Dr. Ruether presented an overview of a collaborative project that took place in the bioregion in which she used to live while working at Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary. The project was entitled "Interreligious Sustainability Project of Metropolitan Chicago." It was organized around the prinicple of neighborhood sustainability by the group called Center for Neighborhood Technology which itself addresses issues of livable urban life, such as transportation. This group worked with the local branch of the Parliament of World Religions to seek a way of mobilizing various communities of faith to cooperate with local seminaries and secular groups (such as the zoo, field museums, and gardens) around the theme of social justice. They contacted members of local seminaries to form with them a core group that would articulate a statement of vision for their 6-county bioregion. This statement was intended to address sustainability at multiple levels that would include not only environmental toxicity and racism, but also fair access to work, transportation, and relatedness to community. The group eventually developed a model for linking the following three elements: Neighborhood orgs., churches, and seminaries. The first step was to ORGANIZE FOR THE RAISING OF CONSCIOUSNESS in the broader community. This happened in two primary ways: 1. The coalition group created and distributed a one-issue newspaper, entitled One Creation, One People, One Place, to local congregations and community centers that was to serve as a study guide for discussion. This contained profiles and maps that documented toxicity region by region to reveal environmental racism and classism. It also addressed urban sprawl, methods of development, and access to economic resources. Its intended audience included youth groups. We received sample copies of this publication. 2. The group facilitated the formation of sustainability circles. These were small, core neighborhood groups that gathered around a specific issue in order to take action on a local project. Examples included planning to restore local parks as butterfly habitats, rehabilitating housing and teaching residents skills in the process, and the partnership of a city with local farms. All circles were contextualized within the relationships of the bioregion. When asked how involved were the seminaries, Dr. Ruether replied that Meadville Lombard and the Lutheran Seminaries were most involved thanks to broad faculty support. This core coalition also developed a three-sided approach for introducing environmental consciousness into seminaries. The three aspects are as follows: 1. integrate ecological issues across the curriculum into all areas. 2. integrate ecological issues into the physical dealings of institutions with their environments. 3. equip students with tools to take into congregations, helping them contact local organizations. We then had questions and answers. Dr. Ruether spoke of the fact that this model did not work very well at Garrett because there was no support for the small environmental organization there. She indicated that such a group needs more than just one faculty sponsor. She then inquired as to why CTNS has not mobilized on this issue to give our group an ongoing institutional basis. Susannah et. al. explained that at one point they preferred to remain separate and envisioned the environmental group as its own center. And yet, it seemed that to get to that point, one center has to take initiative to help us get moving in that direction. Whitney and CTNS staff affirmed that CTNS is indeed very interested in what TREES is doing. Citing an example of broad institutional support, Dr. Ruether noted how at the Lutheran seminary in Chicago, they devoted one whole day each Fall, in classes primarily, to address new students and incorporate eco'l. concerns into the curriculum. Dr. Ruether noted that one potential problem here at GTU is that members of areas prefer to keep their fields separated from one another and that many theologians view ecology as just an "ethics" problem. Craig cited his experience at the Grace Cathedral Earthday project as an example of a supposedly interfaith effort that in reality lacked some faiths and ethnic diversity, and inquired if the Chicago project encountered this. Dr. Ruether responded that a systematic neighborhood by neighborhood approach gathers in all varieties of people, and that their connection with the World Parliament of Religions helped. She noted that if people are invited to come into the organizer's space [as has been the case with the Grace projects], that they feel they are merely "representatives" and are not mobilized to be organizers themselves. However, if events can be situated and organized out of their own space, that works better. For example, the World Parliament of Religions rotated the classes on world faiths' approaches to ecology to a different congregation location each time. One question came up as to whether or not there was such an umbrella organization in the bay area that specializes in networking other groups. Possibilities were the Green Party, the National Park Service, the Ecology Center, Bay Area Action, etc. We could approach them, even though in her project it was the secular organization that approached the seminaries. Dr. Ruether concluded by voicing her support of us as a group, and she also said that she doesn't want to be the only one on the faculty who does this. We need to find allies, work with a school that can serve as a model in ecological practices (the connection between CDSP and Sally Bingham of Episcopal Power and Light came up, in addition to the high representation from PSR and SKSM which points to them as likely candidates), and become a learning center that will attract others.

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