Posted on 09/18/2019 4:40:30 PM PDT by lightman
These arent the church plants you were thinking of, but students at New Yorks Union Theological Seminary held a chapel service on Tuesday during which participants confessed to plants.
Today in chapel, we confessed to plants. Together, we held our grief, joy, regret, hope, guilt and sorrow in prayer; offering them to the beings who sustain us but whose gift we too often fail to honor, Union tweeted on its official account. What do you confess to the plants in your life?
Rather than confess transgressions against an endangered grove or old growth forest, the student-led September 17 service featured what appeared to be a collection of houseplants and herbs.
A photo accompanying the tweet shows a young seminarian seated on the floor facing an assortment of cattails, a peace lily, a majesty palm, and potted basil.
Union is among the most theologically progressive U.S. seminaries, known for political activism and various liberation theology expressions tied to identity. Originally established by Presbyterians, the independent seminary is officially non-denominational.
The Episcopal Divinity School merged into Union as an Anglican studies program following the shuttering of its Cambridge, Massachusetts campus in 2017. Union also educates Unitarian Universalists and has Muslim faculty, among other religious traditions.
Union mirrors the decline of other storied Religious Left institutions on Manhattans upper west side: the National Council of Churches abandoned the God Box interchurch center for smaller quarters in Washington, D.C. years ago, and Harry Emerson Fosdicks famous Riverside Church has dwindled to about 600 attendees on a Sunday, down from 3,600 in the 1950s. Union itself has dropped from 330 fulltime enrolled students in 2003-2004 to 218 in 2018.
Twitter had a field day of its own poking fun at the plant confessional:
Jesus Christ speaks about plants on multiple occasions, noting in Matthew chapter 6: Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?
Later in Matthew chapter 21 verses 1822, Jesus curses a fig tree, but it is unclear what theology informed the chapel service.
The Sacrament of Penance (confession) is one of seven sacraments in Roman Catholicism. In liturgical Christian traditions, including Catholicism, Orthodoxy and some forms of Anglicanism, a priest hearing confession provides absolution for the remission of sin and adherents are reconciled with the church community. It is unclear if the Union chapel service sought absolution from the plants themselves, or with what community (eco-system?) the participants were reconciled.
I reached out to the communications office at Union to ask about the inspiration for the plant confessional. I will update this blog entry with further information when I receive a response.
Update: Union Seminary on its Twitter feed explains that the chapel was conducted as part of Union Professor Claudio Carvalhaes class, Extractivism: A Ritual/Liturgical Response.
In worship, our community confessed the harm weve done to plants, speaking directly in repentance. This is a beautiful ritual. We are in the throes of a climate emergency, a crisis created by humanitys arrogance, our disregard for Creation. Far too often, we see the natural world only as resources to be extracted for our use, not divinely created in their own rightworthy of honor, thanks and care.
We need to unlearn habits of sin and death. And part of that work must be building new bridges to the natural world. And that means creating new spiritual and intellectual frameworks by which we understand and relate to the plants and animals with whom we share the planet.
Churches have a huge role to play in this endeavor. Theologies that encourage humans to dominate and master the Earth have played a deplorable role in degrading Gods creation. We must birth new theology, new liturgy to heal and sow, replacing ones that reap and destroy.
When Robin Wall Kimmerer spoke at Union last year, she concluded her lecture by tasking usand all faith communitiesto develop new liturgies by which to mourn, grieve, heal and change in response to our climate emergency. We couldnt be prouder to participate in this work.
And heres the thing: At first, this work will seem weird. It wont feel normal. It wont look like how were used to worship looking and sounding. And thats exactly the point. We dont just need new wine, we need new wineskins.
But its also important to note that this isnt, really, that radical a break from tradition. Many faiths and denoms have liturgy through which we express and atone for the harm weve caused. No one would have blinked if our chapel featured students apologizing to each other.
Whats different (and the source of so much derision) is that were treating plants as fully created beings, divine Creation in its own rightnot just something to be consumed. Because plants arent capable of verbal response, does that mean we shouldnt engage with them?
So, if youre poking fun, wed ask only that you also spend a couple moments asking: Do I treat plants and animals as divinely created beings? What harm do I cause without thinking? How can I enter into new relationship with the natural world?
Change isnt easy: Its no simple business to break free from comfortable habits and thoughts. But if we do not change, we will perish. And so will plants and animals God created and called good. We must lean into this discomfort; God waits for us there.
Today in chapel, we confessed to plants. Together, we held our grief, joy, regret, hope, guilt and sorrow in prayer; offering them to the beings who sustain us but whose gift we too often fail to honor, Union tweeted on its official account. What do you confess to the plants in your life?
These are very demented, neo pagan people.
Worshippers of Baal.
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