Video available for interested groups

The Delaware County League of Women Vot­ers recently held a show­ing of the video doc­u­men­tary Renewal, which por­trays sto­ries about America’s religious-environmental move­ment. The film, pro­duced and directed by Marty Ostrow and Terry Kay Rock­e­feller, was made pos­si­ble for show­ing through a grant from the National League of Women Vot­ers from Oxfam and was co-sponsored by Sus­tain­able Delaware, The Delaware Gen­eral Health Dis­trict, the Ecu­meni­cal Youth Group and other inter­ested individuals.

The video is very inspi­ra­tional as it explores the responses of many dif­fer­ent faith cul­tures in response to the ques­tion and prob­lem of cli­mate change. It gave me a sense of great hope and encour­age­ment to see what some reli­gious groups are doing: from the Teva Learn­ing Cen­ter pro­vid­ing envi­ron­men­tal edu­ca­tion for Jew­ish chil­dren, to Chris­tians for the Moun­tains who work with faith­ful Chris­tians to act respon­si­bly on behalf of God’s cre­ation to Green Sangha which pro­motes envi­ron­men­tal activism from a Bud­dhist per­spec­tive — and many, many other move­ments. A group that is lead­ing the way across the coun­try is Inter­faith Power and Light which works to mobi­lize reli­gious com­mu­ni­ties to pro­mote renew­able energy, energy effi­ciency and con­ser­va­tion (theregenerationproject.org).

“We were inspired to make Renewal by the count­less Amer­i­cans who are answer­ing a spir­i­tual call to con­front the enor­mous chal­lenges of envi­ron­men­tal degra­da­tion,” said pro­duc­ers Ostrow and Rock­e­feller. “When so many news head­lines pro­claim the ways that reli­gions divide peo­ple, the heroes of our doc­u­men­tary truly cel­e­brate the poten­tial for multi-faith action to unify our com­mu­ni­ties and the world.”

Copies of the video are avail­able from the League for view­ing at your church or for your inter­ested group for dis­cus­sion and ideas for action. Please con­tact Karen Rainey at info@lwvdelawarecountyohio.com. You can also visit renewalproject.net to see how the doc­u­men­tary is being used in com­mu­ni­ties across the coun­try and for a list­ing of excel­lent resources. As one of the peo­ple in the doc­u­men­tary com­mented, “The one thing we all have in com­mon is respect for the earth.”

Tues­day Trip­pier lives in Delaware, is a writer and mother of three (soon to be four) with a spe­cial inter­est in green living.

Posted by Tuesday Trippier on Jun 20 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.