This October, our community gathered for our fall fundraiser, Return and Restore: An Autumn Gathering where we held the first annual Earth Minister/Washington Interfaith Power & Light Congregational Awards. These awards highlighted all the wonderful work being done in different communities around the state. Join us in celebrating our 2023 awardees and learn a snippet of the great work they are doing below.
Do you know communities who are doing amazing environmental justice work? Consider nominating them for our 2024 Awards. Nominations will open back up in the Fall of 2024.
A commitment to intersectional environmental learning, healing, and reconciliation:
Holden Village
Holden Village is an iconic retreat center that offers visitors a unique opportunity to step into the wilderness to form and renew their relationship with God, the earth, and each other.
Their commitment to justice is why they were given the award in this category.
For the sake of Justice, Holden is called to:
- Foster Diversity through deliberate invitation and welcome;
- Deploy an ethic of Equity to confront and dismantle systemic oppression; and
- Practice Inclusion by listening to, learning from, and being transformed by marginalized voices,
- In order to become, together, the community for which God longs.
In their shared leadership vision, Kathie Caemmerer-Bach, Stacy Kitahata, and Mark Bach contemplate a Holden Village for the Life of the World. They hold common commitments to nurturing and empowering a community that engages in diversity, interfaith dialogue, spiritual practice, environmental justice, and holy hilarity.
A commitment to embracing renewable energy:
Keystone United Church of Christ
Keystone United Church of Christ provides a whole host of support for their community from support to the homeless to hosting films and forums on issues of justice and peace, Keystone Church proclaims the good news that God’s realm is in our midst.
Social Justice and compassionate action sit at the center of Keystone’s identity and this includes environmental justice
“As an open and affirming Christian community, committed to social justice and care of our planet, we pledge to take action to increase our understanding and stewardship of God’s good earth. To live out our call to be a force for environmental justice, we will advocate for national and international policies that enable a swift transition from fossil fuels to safe renewable energy and for economic systems that are fair. We will carefully consider how our actions individually and as a congregation can lead to a more sustainable world.”
— The Keystone Green Team
Keystone UCC believes that faith and secular communities must bond together with people of developing countries who will suffer the most from climate change. They believe that they must forge ties with future generations, who deserve a healthy planet, and make mending and sharing our Earth our common cause.
A commitment to meaningful and intentional gardening and/or meal sharing:
Temple B’nai Torah
Temple B’nai Torah: The mission of Temple B’nai Torah’s (TBT) Green Team is to fulfill the Jewish imperative of tikkun olam (repairing the world) and to advance environmental stewardship, sustainability, and awareness in our synagogue community, Bellevue and outlying community, and all people.
As part of TBT’s Social Action Committee, the TBT Green Team will help to further the Union for Reform Judaism’s environmental resolutions, including the December 2017 statement encouraging congregations to advocate for and work to implement climate change solutions.
Arnie Goldstein, Temple B’nai Torah, Bellevue – Mitzvah Garden. Arnie has led the effort for years of growing healthy vegetables and herbs in our TBT raised beds to harvest and donate to Hopelink. He has made this a community effort, especially involving any interested students and congregants in learning the stages of planting, growing, watering, weeding, and harvesting.
Their efforts produce thousands of pounds of fresh local produce to donate mostly to Hopelink in Bellevue. Arnie works with Hopelink staff to learn the preferences of their clients so he can plant what they use. In addition, he coordinates apple picking for members and neighbors in the fall to collect pounds and pounds of apples to be donated. The group has also formed community partnerships. For example, Squawk Mountain Nursery donated many seeds, and plant starts were shared with the Bellevue Urban Garden. This year, with the help of the Tomato Lady in Redmond, TBT acquired hundreds of tomato starts at a great price. Because of all these efforts, they will be able to donate thousands of tomatoes along with other delicious produce to those in need.
A commitment to being, or working towards, a net zero goal:
Peace Lutheran Church
Peace Lutheran Church is a Reconciling in Christ Congregation. Christ calls on them for reconciliation and wholeness, in a world that can be filled with alienation and brokenness. In faithfulness to the Gospel and to the Lutheran heritage, they answer Christ’s call to be agents of healing and safety, particularly for people who have been marginalized by our society.
Peace Lutheran is one of the original members of the Colleague Connections group when it was a group 5 only five congregations working on net zero goals!
They have recently adopted their 2023-2029 Creation Care Action Plan to actively reduce environmental impact, annually assessing impact through Cool Congregations Calculator and purchasing carbon offsets for emissions they cannot yet eliminate, and increasingly engaging their broader community in joining them in pursuing net zero goals.
A commitment to helping green the community beyond congregational boundaries:
University Congregational United Church of Christ
University Congregational United Church of Christ (UCUCC) was given the award for this category for their commitment to helping another organization in Seattle. UCUCC has been fundraising for another organization in Seattle, Green Buildings Now, on Beacon Hill.
Green Buildings Now is working for a just transition to a fossil-fuel-free Seattle by partnering with leaders of historically marginalized communities, funding the installation of non-polluting electric energy systems in buildings, and raising awareness of the need to end the use of gas and oil in all homes and commercial buildings.
Green Buildings Now is a Seattle-based coalition of faith organizations, climate justice groups, civic organizations, and individuals promoting social justice and climate resilience by addressing the urgent task of eliminating greenhouse gas emissions from buildings in a just way.
A commitment to greening your congregation through the work of your green team projects: St. John United Lutheran
St. John United Lutheran’s (SJU) Green team has been working tirelessly to fulfill their mission of identifying and implementing actions to move St. John United to net-zero-emissions status while understanding that the Biblical command of “dominion” in relation to the Earth means responsible stewardship of this sacred planet and deeply valuing ongoing, active collaboration with SJU’s congregation and members of the wider community, including other religious institutions and community groups.
With this framework, two of their action goals are to achieve zero carbon by 2023 and to develop and maintain a program of activities to promote continuous improvement in community resilience to climate impact using community broad-based organizing principles presented by Sound Alliance and the Organizing for Mission Network of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA) to include as many participants as possible in decision-making.
A commitment to thinking big and creatively, sometimes in unexpected ways, with greening projects: Congregation Beth Shalom
Congregation Beth Shalom worships God within the framework of a Conservative, egalitarian community. Integrating compassion and social justice throughout their congregational activities allows them to cultivate a community that values diversity and engagement and nurtures ways to connect with each other.
Their community engagement comes in many forms, including the Shmita Project Northwest, outfitting their property with a rain garden and cisterns to control runoff, featuring fully compostable kiddush lunches, hosting refugee Shabbat focusing on climate refugees, holding a Greener Possibilities Fair with their neighbors at University Unitarian, featuring bamboo toilet paper in their restrooms, and being home to Honi’s Circle, a Climate Conversation between Tamar Libicki and Rabbi Paula Rose available for streaming wherever you listen to podcasts!
Congregation Beth Shalom is also looking forward to several new initiatives this year including a kosher organic challah bake sale to fund a conversion of our kitchen to an electric induction stove from natural gas, having a talk with the Jewish Farmer Network about growing a unique, biblically significant plant called qshishim, and holding vegan dining opportunities, thanks to a grant from Shamayim: Jewish Animal Advocacy.
They are excited about all that the future holds for them as they live into their values of becoming not merely “sustainable” but regenerative and restorative of the health and wellbeing of the Earth in all of their practices in the years to come.