A Study Guide for Individuals and Faith Communities
Texts and reflections to share with your faith community by deep thinkers, spiritual leaders, and activists.
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Purposes of this unit:
- To understand the spiritual foundation of our role as Friends, as Christians, to care for the many gifts of Creation.
- To see where the Bible guides and informs our actions today.
- To consider a Christian approach to Earthcare from the perspective of someone who is not a Friend.
- To prompt spirit-led discussion about what our next steps might be in bringing our lives into right relationship with Creation.
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Purposes of this unit:
- To explain the development and purpose of a Quaker testimony.
- To show how a Quaker concern for the environment is a radical response to the shortcomings of 19th and 20th century conservation and environmental movements.
- To show how a Quaker Earthcare testimony serves to integrate all of the Quaker testimonies, reaching back to historic roots and fundamental principles of Quakerism.
- To show how a Quaker Earthcare testimony, as an example of “continuing revelation,” fits into a broader spiritual ecology movement that reflects knowledge and perspectives that are different from those of previous generations of Friends.
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Purposes of this unit:
- To become better acquainted with what the Bible reveals as God’s plan for creation.
- To explore differing opinions about the Judeo-Christian tradition’s relationship to Earthcare.
- To inspire responsible Earthcare/stewardship.
- To help us to describe and understand our role in Creation
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This unit contains:
- A sample Sunday service
- Three sample sermons
- A sample Sunday School lesson
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Purposes of this unit:
- To make the connection between our concerns for peace and our concerns for ecological integrity. This relationship becomes clear as we approach the issues from a broader perspective and consider them in a longer time frame.
- To see from a broader, ecological perspective that God’s Creation is an interwoven fabric. Everything is interconnected and what is done to a single thread affects the whole.
- To discern long-term causes and effects, to learn where the seeds of war were planted, how they were nurtured, how they blossomed and bore their awful fruits. With this knowledge of history, we can work at prevention.
- To take our peace work beyond reaction (protesting government policies, trying to reconcile those with differences, attempting to limit the use and type of weapons, and working to alleviate the suffering of war) to emphasizing the reduction or elimination of conditions that can lead to war.
- To teach the value of prevention, just as healthcare and fire-fighting professionals have done. It’s time for peace activists to put this tool into their kits. War, its preconditions, and its aftermath have devastating environmental implications. Destruction of the environment increasingly is a precursor to war.
- To become proactive, and therefore more effective, in our peace work. We must make the connections: Peace on Earth must include Peace with Earth.
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Purposes of this unit:
This is about making changes in our lives. It will present some concrete ways to examine the how and why of making changes that enhance the integrity of our lives and of the world we share with others. We should recognize that all of us are in different places on our personal path to simpler living and that we each have a unique set of life circumstances. We each should think about what simpler living means to us and be mindful of the many factors that influence our daily decisions. Although all areas of our lives are interwoven, it sometimes helps to ask this question before buying something, making a trip, or becoming involved in another cause: “Is this the best possible use of my or the world’s resources?”
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Purposes of this unit:
- To celebrate ecosystem integrity as the expression of Spirit in nature.
- To consider the inseparability of traditional Quaker testimonies and ecosystem integrity and highlight the importance of food choices in creating ecosystem health.
- To seek greater congruence between Quaker values and food choices.
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Purposes of this unit:
- To call attention to the significant ecological impacts of North Americans’ lifestyles, particularly our choices in transportation and housing.
- To identify those short-range and long-range steps that Friends in different life circumstances can begin taking now to reduce their “ecological footprints” in meeting their transportation and housing needs.
- To focus on current trends in energy use that call into question the long-term sustainability of our society’s materialistic orientation.
- To examine our dilemmas regarding these and other lifestyle choices in light of Quaker principles and values
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Purposes of this Unit:
In this unit, we aim to promote a deeper understanding and appreciation of the soil beneath our feet and largely beneath our notice—what Quaker soil scientist Francis Hole calls “the hidden, secret friend, the root domain of lively darkness and silence.” In that hidden domain lives 80% of the earth’s biosphere, “cooking away in the warm dark,” in Gary Snyder’s words. Utterly dependent on its productivity, inventiveness, and intelligence, we need to walk more lightly and reverently as well as to understand what we can do to restore the soil community and thereby limit climate disruption, heal ourselves, and restore the community of all creatures of the earth, water, and air.
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Purposes of this unit:
- To become better acquainted with the issues of care of the land and land conservation.
- To explore the connections between the land and our spirituality.
- To examine why conserving the land makes us better neighbors.
- To look at ways we can be active in land conservation.
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Purposes of this unit:
- To consider how water functions in the world God designed. This includes our own wateriness, the concept of the watershed, how water travels through Creation (the water cycle) and how much water there is.
- To look at the world’s water crisis.
- To learn about the already-present trend towards the privatization of water.
- To learn ways that Friends can make a difference.
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Purposes of this unit:
- To learn about the issues of air quality.
- To discover the underlying spiritual basis for caring about the air.
- To learn ways Friends can make a difference.
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Purposes of this unit:
- To give the background facts about rapid population growth in modern times.
- To describe the link between population numbers and human impact on the environment.
- To illustrate how Friends have a unique witness on population concerns.
- To provide resources for further information, reflection, and action.
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Purposes of this unit:
- To state and illustrate briefly what scientists know, understand, and project about climate change and its effect on Earth process.
- To describe and illustrate briefly the policy and lifestyle challenges for society at large and for Friends.
- To help Friends educate themselves about what they already understand and what they need to learn more about
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Purposes of this unit:
- To show, using “ecological footprint” analysis, that the earth cannot sustain modern industrial economies in their current form.
- To show that, without policy interventions, markets and money are apt to steadily increase the concentration of wealth, and cannot function within ecological limits.
- To assert that progress toward peace, justice, and an Earth restored will require fundamental changes in our society’s economic policies and expectations, and that this needs to become a corporate concern of Friends.
- To raise questions about an extremely complex and important subject, for which our society needs to find answers.
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Purposes of this unit:
- To help us relate to nature at a deeper, spiritual level.
- To help us recognize and perhaps reduce the “armoring” that blunts our full awareness of nature.
- To offer some regular practices that can make spiritual relationship with nature more a part of our everyday life.
- To help us discern our own path of activism in preserving and restoring the natural world.
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Purposes of this unit:
- To bring about a Copernican-like revolution in our thinking, arising from the New Story of the evolutionary universe and the new understandings of the nature of matter.
- To help us move out of the dangerous objectification of matter that many of us learned in our studies, and to find a spiritually based foundation for changing our relationship with the earth.
- To show that people are creative beings within a creative universe. This is basis of hope that we can create a sustainable future in this unique time.
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Purposes of this unit:
- To learn about the Earth Charter, its history and current status as a hopeful vision for the future with which all people can unite.
- To compare the various principles of the Earth Charter to Friends’ Testimonies.
- To learn what steps can be taken within your Meeting or church to study and possibly endorse the Earth Charter.
- To take steps within your community to enact the principles of the Earth Charter.
- To learn what others have done to support the Earth Charter (see last page of this unit).
How is this resource working for you and your community?
We are hoping for your feedback: comments, questions, and suggestions to help us make this the best resource it can be. Please send your responses to info@quakerearthcare.org.