Cities as Solution: The Role of the Urban Church in Moving Toward Environmental
Sustainability
Workshop leader:
Clare Butterfield Organizer Interreligious Sustainability Project Center for Neighborhood
Technology 2125 W. North Ave. Chicago, IL 60647 773-278-4800x125 clare@cnt.org
About the Workshop:
This topic is an important one for a conference on urban ministries If we do not
address the question of environmental sustainability, in all its complexity, we have
failed to draw a complete picture of life in the urban context. Sustainability is a
multi-faceted concept, embracing care for the local ecology and a strong sense of place,
building community, and the establishment of economic justice. Until we address the full
environmental context of life in our highest density human habitations and learned to
provide there the means for a life that is dignified, stable, materially sufficient and
just, our mission as people of faith is incomplete. We cannot hope to preserve the
remaining open spaces and forest canopies of our world unless we adopt our cities as the
solutions which will permit the open spaces to remain open. And we cannot adopt cities as
solutions until the context for life in our cities is a context that we would accept for
ourselves and our children. The Interreligious Sustainability Project is a grassroots
organizing effort in the faith community of the Chicago region which draws on people of
faith to live their own sacred teachings. We organize along the principles outlined by
Paulo Freire in his groundbreaking "Pedagogy of the Oppressed," working to
empower people in the highly diverse neighborhoods where our groups are located, and
moving them all to understand that environmental issues are the webwork on which all life
rests. Ecology is not optional, nor can true eco-justice be accomplished without, as the
name implies, justice. We cannot work to preserve the multiplicity of local species unless
we also work for the elevation of the weakest members of our own. But we do not believe
that true sustainability for our species in the larger creation can be accomplished at the
high-consumption level of the developed world. Some sacrifice and personal transformation
will be called for among the most economically empowered. To guide people to move joyfully
and freely toward sacrifice for the other has always been one of the key roles of faith.
It is one critical reason why the churches may not abandon the cities. The seventh
principle speaks of the interdependent web of all existence. Violations of that web fall
hardest on the poor, who are concentrated in our cities. If we truly support the care for
the environment we must do more than move to protect our remaining wild places. We must
protect our cities as the key refuges of our own species. We are a young effort yet, but
we started our hopefully. The response to our efforts has continually justified our hopes.
Workshop leader biographies:
I am a long-time UU, and have worked for the last year as the Organizer of the
Interreligious Sustainability Project. I have long believed myself with the prophets of
our faith (particularly in the local tradition of Jenkin Lloyd Jones) that a critical role
for our churches is to empower the least powerful through the use of their own reason. I
have also long believed that the UU tradition is singularly well-placed to work in
interreligious settings, though in our history we have displayed some reluctance to do so.
In my current position I spend many hours in urban and suburban neighborhoods all over the
region to draw people of all backgrounds together. I work in the poorest neighborhoods in
Chicago, with populations who have never heard of Unitarian Universalism, and with the
well-to-do suburban communities where some of our largest congregations exist. We have a
role to play in the city to remain the prophetic faith we have long been. By the time of
the conference I will have completed my MDiv from Meadville Lombard and will be ordained
(the former in June and the latter is in the planning stages now for the fall).
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