This week’s ECN local-project spotlight features the Episcopal Diocese of Spokane in Eastern Washington and North Idaho.
In 2017, the Episcopal Church approved 44 Stewardship of Creation grants for local ministries. Every Thursday, we highlight some of that exciting work here. Maybe your own parish or diocese could do a similar local project!
According to a church press release, the Diocese of Spokane received $5,700 “to support funding for the workshops and network expansion of Creation Care Ministries.”
The diocese has an environmental sustainability committee, called The Faith and Environment Network, chaired by Evita Krislock.
Last fall, the diocese began an annual environmental weekend at Camp Cross on Lake Coeur d’Alene. Earth Ministry led the first weekend, and a second event will take place this September.
Also last fall, the diocese’s annual convention overwhelmingly passing a resolution calling for the planting of local “Paris Groves.” The Spokane resolution was inspired by an earlier churchwide resolution passed by General Convention, the governing body of the Episcopal Church, which urges the church’s 85 camps and conference centers to plant trees that can “serve as a visible witness to the significance of the Paris Accord [on climate change] and do the practical work of sequestration of carbon.” Learn more about the local resolution in this earlier ECN article.
Spokane’s tree planting will begin on April 7 at a Spokane Soil Conservation District site, in an interfaith partnership with Temple Beth Shalom! Could your parish or diocese do something similar?
This picture was taken by the Rev. Jeffrey Neuberger at the Diocese of Spokane’s 2018 annual convention. Full disclosures: ECN’s volunteer editor is a transitional deacon who is canonically resident in the Diocese of Spokane, who was in fact ordained at the aforementioned convention, and ECN’s volunteer deputy editor was a member of the committee that awarded these grants. Both editors are now volunteers on the task force that will administer the next round of grants.
Episcopal Climate News 
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