Environmental Justice at Saint Mark's
About the Creation Care Ministry
The Creation Care Ministry of Saint Mark’s Cathedral strives to faithfully address the crisis of climate change. As stewards of the life-giving goodness of God’s creation, we will work with the Saint Mark’s and broader world communities to educate ourselves and take action together to preserve our shared planet and sustain life for the generations to come.
The Vestry has adopted the goal for the entire Saint Mark’s campus and community to have a net zero carbon footprint by the year 2030. We encourage parishioners at Saint Mark’s to sign up with the Episcopal Church Carbon Tracker at www.sustainislandhome.org, a tool to help our community measure its collective carbon footprint and take action to reduce that footprint. Click here for more detailed instructions about how to use this resource. Why is measuring your carbon footprint is important? Listen to this excellent podcast about why our collective actions really do make a difference!
The Creation Care ministry has researched several carbon offset programs and suggests that parishioners donate to the Carbon Offset Fund here at St. Mark’s when making offset contributions. These funds will then be directly passed through to either the Carbon Offset Cooperative Mission | The Episcopal Diocese of Olympia (ecww.org) or to COTAP.org.
We recognize our commitment as a unique opportunity and responsibility in our time to address the many social justice issues tied to the climate crisis. And through engaging in collective action that makes an effective impact, we will grow into the joy of transcending our fears and sense of powerlessness around the issue of climate change. Saint Mark’s is a member of Earth Ministry (earthministry.org) and Earth Day NW 2020 (earthdaynw2020.org) If you are interested in being a part of this work at Saint Mark’s, please contact ministry leader Marjorie Ringness.
If you missed the recent forum titled Sacred Ground: Cultivating Connections Between Our Food, Faith and Climate, a complete video is available below. Click here to download a pdf of resources and references related to this event, and here for a list of recipes shared by panelists.
During Lent 2021, the Creation Care Ministry posted virtual prayer cards once a week to the cathedral's Instagram account. Check out the complete set here (click to enlarge):
