Anabaptist Collaboration on Climate Change
RESOURCES
CSCS Documents
CSCS Impact Report. This document outlines our impact in the first five years of operation, and articulates our vision going forward.
CSCS Strategic Plan. This 5 year strategic plan was updated in 2021 from the original CSCS strategic plan.
2020-21 Annual Report. This document outlines metrics for the July 2020-June 2021 period.
October 2021 Newsletter. Our biannual newsletters thematically highlight activities and resources of interest to our general constituency. This is our latest newsletter, featuring the Climate Ride.
Meeting Presentations and Documents
Published in Mennonite Quarterly Review by EMU Professor Peter Dula. This article situates four decades of Anabaptist writing on environmental ethics in relationship to Laurel Kearns and Willis Jenkins’s typology of eco-justice, stewardship, and eco-spirituality. It argues that while stewardship discourse dominates the early work, it has faded in significance as Anabaptist theology increasingly appropriates varieties of eco-spirituality such as agrarianism and watershed discipleship. It concludes with a turn towards recent arguments that eco-theology, in all three varieties, has over-emphasized questions of cosmology and worldview at the expense of what Jenkins calls “prophetic pragmatism.”
Article in Stanford Social Innovation Review, arguing, “Large-scale social change requires broad cross-sector coordination, yet the social sector remains focused on the isolated intervention of individual organizations.”
“This report is the result of her research in the area of collaboration among non-profit agencies and between non-profit agencies and businesses. The document includes information about partnerships and collaborations, factors determining success, conflict areas and solutions, as well as information on working with businesses along with an appendix that provides information for possible collaboration agreements.
Reference Documents and Sites
Advocacy in Churches CSCS White Paper. This survey sought to understand how churches are engaging with the issue of political advocacy for climate justice. While some churches are interested in this work, there remains significant work to be done in educating and equipping churches to advocate. Only 20% of churches said that they were actively involved in political advocacy as a part of their work. A further breakdown of the types of advocacy that churches are doing reveals that churches are drawn to certain types of advocacy over others, especially letter writing and making phone calls. The data also indicated an affinity for extra-political advocacy such as vigils and protests.
Article from Grist by Goshen College graduate Kate Yoder, who writes eloquently on climate issues. This article is helpful as an example of how an Anabaptist ethos influencing one aspect of thinking about climate change.
Article by Laura Pauls-Thomas, Communications & Young Adult Associate, MCC East Coast, on her experience riding for a week with the CSCS 2021 Climate Ride.