Monday, May 14, 7:30pm. Climate Church, Climate World argues that climate change is the greatest moral challenge humanity has ever faced. Hunger, refugees, poverty, inequality, deadly viruses, war—climate change multiplies all forms of global social injustice. Environmental leader Reverend Jim Antal presents a compelling case that it’s time for the church to meet this moral challenge, just as the church addressed previous moral challenges. Antal calls for the church to embrace a new vocation so that future generations might live in harmony with God’s creation. After describing how we have created the dangers our planet now faces, Antal urges the church to embrace a new vocation, one focused on collective salvation and an expanded understanding of the Golden Rule (Golden Rule 2.0). He suggests ways people of faith can reorient what they prize through new approaches to worship, preaching, witnessing and other spiritual practices that honor creation and cultivate hope.
The Reverend Dr. Jim Antal serves the Massachusetts Conference of the United Church of Christ as the Conference Minister and President. Antal’s leadership in the areas of the environment and climate change is noteworthy. Most recently, he authored the resolution to divest the UCC from fossil fuel companies which passed in 2013. He has also engaged the spiritual discipline of civil disobedience numerous times, most recently at the White House to stop the Keystone XL pipeline. He provides leadership for the Mass. Conference Environmental Ministries group and regularly convenes the New England Regional Environmental Ministries reps from the six New England UCC Conferences. He speaks frequently in churches, regionally and nationally on the essential role people of faith must play to counter climate change