Signs of the Times: Worship, the Climate Crisis and the Creator God

What is the connection between worship and care the earth? What is the connection between God and addressing climate change, the suffering caused by rising sea levels, and the frightening intensity of storms? Are we so unique that we don’t need to account for our kinship with every breathing creature brought forth from the earth (as the second creation story in Genesis 2 tells us) and with all the inanimate elements, planets and stars? How shall we worship this Creator God who not only creates, but who holds in being, and promises fulfillment for every element under and in the heavens? Does worship of the Creator God have implications for our sense of responsibility within all creation?

It is taken for granted in the liturgical field that worship forms the community that participates in that worship. A pressing question, therefore, is whether our present worship practices are adequate to help build a consistent ethic of care for our planet in crisis? Who are the creative spirits who can put words into our mouths that ring true and deep, that name the pain, count the costs, and still hold out hope? In addition, within Christian liturgical Churches, who decides what gets put into denominational prayer books, eucharistic prayer texts, hymn texts, and worship environments? In other words, how do worship traditions change and evolve?

As a liturgical scholar with a profound interest in how liturgy develops, I have become involved in an international, interdenominational, Orthodox and Roman Catholic effort to address exactly the questions mentioned above. In March, Tomás Insua of the Laudato Si’ Movement organized a conference in Assisi to address many of these questions.

One hundred twenty scholars, church leaders and activists, as well as one hundred online participants, gathered to discuss the possibility of shaping a worship celebration that honors the Creator God and that would align with the Churches’ overall commitment to environmental responsibility. Participants included the present and immediate past Archbishops of Canterbury, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew; the president of the World Council of Churches, representatives of all the mainline Protestant Churches, and four Roman dicasteries, as well as systematic and liturgical scholars who have worked in this area of concern. At a time when ecumenical efforts in liturgical reform have been minimal, the energy to cooperate in such a project was palpable; it lit up the room with excitement.

The proposal under consideration is twofold: whether we could celebrate as a major solemnity or feast in our various churches the very idea of the Triune God as Creator. While God is spoken of as creator frequently enough in the liturgies as they now stand, there is not a specific feast that celebrates God as Creator. The Liturgical Year, now celebrated by so many churches, is centered on the mysteries of Christ (except Trinity Sunday and Pentecost). No specific effort has been made to celebrate the entire Trinity’s role in Creation as part and parcel of God’s redemptive love.

In addition, we are interested in raising consciousness of the dignity of all creation gifted to us by this selfsame Creating God. The church, by emphasizing the uniqueness of human persons (as evidenced in the first creation account of Genesis 1), has inadvertently devalued the rest of creation to the extent that creation is often viewed as merely instrumental to human needs, rather than as having its own intrinsic dignity given to it by our Creator God. Participants in the Assisi Conference argued that whatever we say about God as Creator (for example, each time we say the Creed), it is painfully obvious the Christian people have not been galvanized toward the kind of ecological conversion that the current environmental crisis requires. Something must change.

No liturgist would ever argue that the liturgy can do everything, but no liturgist worthy of her or his salt would question the contribution worship can make to the ethical commitments of the Churches. It will require a concerted effort by the Magisterium (like the encyclical Laudato Si’), the theological community working on creation theology and environmental ethics (like Elizabeth Johnson, Denis Edwards, and Ilia Delio), movements of popular piety (like Earthday celebrations and the Season of Creation) as well as the work of liturgical prayer writers, hymn writers, worship space designers, etc.

At the end of the Assisi Conference, there was near consensus that such a project was worthy of our attention and our commitment to bring a Feast of the Creator/Creation to fruition. No one was naïve about the implementation problems of ecumenical subsidiarity, on the one hand, and Roman and Orthodox centrality, on the other. However, the desire of the participants to have the churches witness to the world our responsibility for the very future of the planet and the important role worship plays in the Christian community’s life was without question.