The Episcopal Church and Fossil Fuel Divestment

Happy Fourth of July!

I’m interrupting the Gift of Data series to follow up on a Twitter conversation about the Episcopal Church divesting from fossil fuels. Today the New York Times ran a story about the United Church of Christ’s recent decision to divest.

I tweeted a link with a question:

and received this reply:

I thought that was an excellent question, and I didn’t know the answer, so I started poking around the internet. I discovered just enough to make me think that a roundup of resources was in order.

Here’s what I found:

• GreenFaith has a new program called Divest and Reinvest, and just recorded an hour-long webinar on June 20 introducing it. Their Executive Director, the Rev. Fletcher Harper, is on Twitter.
• The Episcopal Diocese of Western Massachusetts is definitely considering divestment; its trustees have published a statement about their reasons and process.
• According to this article, the Diocese of Massachusetts is also being pushed to consider divesting.
• The Rev. Bob Massie, an Episcopal priest, is a leader in the fossil fuel divestment movement and brings the lessons he learned as a leader of the South Africa divestment movement. I can’t tell from Google whether the Episcopal Church has called on him, but Google has its limits.
• The University of the South (Sewanee), an Episcopal college, has a divestment movement on campus.
• The Episcopal Church already has the Episcopal Climate Justice Network which would logically be part of a conversation about divestment. That conversation would also likely need to include the Episcopal Ecological Network and other Eco-Justice ministries.

The Episcopal Church’s General Convention Resolution B023 passed in 2012. It states that

The 77th General Convention calls on congregations, institutions, dioceses, and the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society of The Episcopal Church, to work for the just transformation of the world’s energy beyond and away from fossil fuels (including all forms of oil, coal, and natural gas) and toward safe, sustainable, renewable, community controlled energy…

The Episcopal News Service article on the resolution is here.

One of B023’s sponsors, the Rt. Rev. Marc Andrus, responded to the Episcopal Cafe on Twitter with a statement supporting fossil fuel divestment by the church:

I’d love to continue the conversation about fossil fuel divestment in The Episcopal Church. Is anyone else interested?

Please add your thoughts and resources in the comments… or, if this conversation is already happening somewhere else, please let me know where!