It was not a windy day.

The sky was clear, blue and cloudless. It was as sunny as usual during a typical summer day in June 2001.

The Rev. Charles Morris and the congregation at St. Elizabeth’s Church in Wyandotte, Mich., gathered in front of their church.

“Today is a special day,” Morris said to the crowd. “Today, we are here to celebrate the renovation of our new solar panels and other energy efficient facilities.”

Many facilities were under construction at St. Elizabeth’s. The Church had launched a series of sustainable energy renovations by installing solar panels and wind turbines, changing boilers and replacing incandescent lights with compact fluorescent lamps and diode lights.

Morris climbed 30 feet up a ladder to the roof. Still, there was no wind.
Following the Catholic procedure, he was going to bless and drip Holy water on the solar panels and then say a prayer.

“Everything is fine,” Morris thought to himself. “Except for one thing.”

In the Catholic faith, the Holy Spirit’s presence comes along with mighty wind and voluminous fire. And at this moment, Morris really wanted some symbols of God’s presence.

“OK,” Morris thought. “The solar panels could represent the sun and the fire. But what about the mighty wind?”

After Morris’ prayer, the Church officially turned on the wind turbines and solar panels. Suddenly, there was a strong gust from the north, and the blades began to rotate rapidly.
Morris smiled.

St. Elizabeth’s Church is not the first religious institution to implement energy-saving techniques within the walls of worship. In fact, many religious communities and groups across the United States have acknowledged the importance of environmental protection and taken actions in reducing energy consumption in their churches, homes and vehicles.

“Global warming scares the bejesus out of me,” said Morris, also the director of Michigan Interfaith Power and Light, an interfaith organization that encourages communities of faith to promote energy conservation. “The scale and impact on us and the future generation is enormous, and we have to understand that we are part of the creation, not apart from it.

“In Genesis 2:15, God took Adam and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it,” Morris said. “He wants us to become good stewards of God’s creation, not destroyers.”

Michigan Interfaith Power and Light has more than 90 member-churches across Michigan. The coalition is comprised of members from Baptist, Methodist, Catholic, Episcopalian, Lutheran, Jewish and Buddhist affiliations, Morris said.

By reducing their energy costs, the member congregations have saved a total of $81,000 a year on their utility bills. So far, total emissions have been reduced by 5,548 tons of carbon dioxide, a major cause of global warming; 27 tons of sulfur dioxide, the cause of acid rain; 13 tons of nitrogen oxide, one of the sources of smog; and 0.241 pounds of mercury, a human toxin, he said.

In 1997, the Rev. Sally Bingham at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, Calif., founded Episcopal Power and Light, a religion-based campaign focused on environmental change. It soon became the first campaign of the Regeneration Project, a San Francisco-based public charity founded in 1993.

Episcopal Power and Light sparked the nationwide Interfaith Power and Light program. Today, the program has more than 1,000 congregations across the states, with 350 in California.

Bingham said she often asks the “don’t you want to save some money” question to those who think global warming is not a personal problem and to those who haven’t acknowledged the importance of energy saving as part of the solution to global warming. By investing in energy-efficient equipment, churches can cut energy consumption and save on utility bills, she said.

“The reason why our program has been so successful is because nobody can say ‘No, it’s not a good idea,’” she said. “If you love your neighbor, you don’t pollute your neighbor’s air or water. If you love God, you know global warming is hurting God’s creation.”

According to Urban Options — a non-profit agency in East Lansing, Mich., that provides energy and environmental information and services — the awakening of environmental awareness has spread throughout every denomination in the past decade. And Native Americans are among the most recent to join such interfaith movements toward energy efficiency.

“They told me Native Americans have the tradition of respecting and honoring the earth,” said Urban Options’ Jim Meyerle. “And that it’s time for them to take the lead again and become stewards of the planet.”

Meanwhile, the barrier that keeps conservative Christians from cooperating with environmentalists disappears under the leadership of some environmental evangelicals like the Rev. Jim Ball, the executive director of the Evangelical Environmental Network, an orthodox Christian non-profit organization.

According to Ball, the stereotype and skepticism that environmentalists are liberals whose values and beliefs could lead people astray causes many conservative evangelicals to be very hesitant to discover what the Bible says about environment and sustainability.

But by promoting biblical perspectives on the environment to evangelical leaders in the nation and by the help of many other environmental religious groups like the Evangelical Environmental Network, Ball said the ice is breaking in the center of the community.

“It hasn’t blossomed yet,” he said. “But it will soon.”