EP. 11 The Most Reverend Michael B. Curry - Hope

Negative impact on people of color from environmental degradation, environmental ignorance and sabotage of communities of color.  Disrupting the harmony with God and each other has consequences.

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Wading Deep Podcast

The Most Reverend Michael B. Curry

Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church

SPEAKERS: 2

Speaker 1–Reverend Jemonde Taylor, Rector – St. Ambrose Episcopal Church

Speaker 2–The Most Reverend Michael B. Curry, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church

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Speaker 1

0:24

Podcast Introduction-This is Wading Deep, a podcast that explores the connection between environmental justice and race. 

I'm your host, Reverend Jemonde Taylor Rector at St. Ambrose Episcopal church, Raleigh, North Carolina, a congregation with a long history of challenging environmental racism. 

I am honored to welcome today's guest, The Most Reverend Michael B. Curry, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church. Welcome, Most Reverend, sir.

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0:51

Speaker 2

Thank you, Good Father, it's good to be with you. Good to be good to see you, again.

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Speaker 1

0:56

Always good being with you. What is environmental racism in your own words?

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Speaker 2

1:03

Environmental racism really is the negative impact of peoples of color on environment from environmental degradation, environmental ignorance, and deliberate sabotage of communities of color. And I can go into that in more detail, except that it's not an accident that poor folk have the worst water systems. Flint, Michigan was not an accident. It wasn't that somebody deliberately said we are going to impact poor people. It was that they didn't fix the infrastructure in poor neighborhoods and made decisions where poor people were going to be inordinately affected. It's not an accident that at Standing Rock, the Sioux Reservation that the decision was made to run a gas pipe under the water… under the water, that was the only source of water for the Sioux Nation.  There were other alternatives but the Sioux were picked out. It is not an accident that talks about drilling on Gwich’in land of indigenous peoples in Alaska. There are other alternatives for getting oil, but the…the peoples of color were easy to pick on it, I could go… I could call down the list. It is not an accident that there are… that historically, there have been toxic waste dump sites on the neighborhoods and near the areas of poor folk… not an accident that there are… what do you call  those things?  The electric… current power lines…power lines, or lines …there are all sorts of issues. What …do they cause cancer? Are there issues…? You don't see that in wealthy neighborhoods. None of that is an accident, that sometimes by intention, sometimes by neglect, sometimes for a variety of reasons; but poor folk and people of color suffer in ordinately in this country, from environmental race…environmental…what we call environmental racism, but now the whole world's gonna deal with it now. And if you look around the globe, it has been historically, the developing countries which have been countries of color again, who have suffered the most. Now climate change has made suffering an equal opportunity employer.

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Speaker 1

3:16

Misery has company in disrespect. Yeah. You're right, Presiding Bishop Curry, it is not happenstance. It's not happenstance that the city of Raleigh during segregation zoned an area for Saint Ambrose to locate in Rochester Heights as the first planned neighborhood for black people again during segregation, and it's where the city of Raleigh dumped raw sewage for 70 years and they dumped trash… the least desirable, becomes now the best place for people of color… black people. You spoke about “global” and people may think the Episcopal churches is only in the United States. It's..it's global, I think 16 or 17 countries around the world. And we know that Becoming Beloved Community is certainly one of your priorities as presiding bishop and Creation Care as a part of that. Can you speak a little bit about maybe the connection with Becoming Beloved Community and Creation Care… how those two dovetail or work together?

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Speaker 2

4:11

Yeah, you know, I really but this is a fundamental theological perspective for me that comes I think, from clearly from the teachings of Jesus, building on the teachings of the Hebrew scriptures, that the that God has so created this world, that it is a network of interconnected relationships. A network of mutuality as Dr. King once said, that it is all connected and that we are meant to live in harmony with our God with each other and with all creation. If you read the… the creation story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, as long as they are in communion, in harmony with God each other in creation, they are in paradise. The moment the relationship with God each other and the creation is broken and fractured by their sin. That's when they get kicked out of paradise. This is not rocket science, the Bible is trying to tell us something very clearly, God has made this world for harmony with God with each other, and with the creation and disrupting any of those relationships has consequences. And so, the beloved community, as Dr. King popularized it, which was a way of talking about what earlier theologians and philosophers had talked about, dealt with the kingdom of God, or the reign of God, where God's love is the ultimate law where God's love breaks out where there is that genuine harmony, community, between God other and creation. And so, care for creation is not an insularity thing. It is engagement with God's vision for the creation for all of us from the beginning. I …you know, I love that passage in John 3:16, I've always heard that God so loved the world that He gave His only Son to the end that all that believe in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. Well, I've always read that as having to do with God so loved the world that, you know, he sent his son Jesus to save us. Well, that is true. I mean, to show us the way of salvation and liberation and redemption, He that's what he came to do. But it wasn't just about us. The word God so loved the world. He didn't say God so loved just human beings. No, no, no, God so loved the world, the word there is Cosmos, in the Greek, which means everything, everything, God, you know, everything is the Nicene Creed says things visible and things invisible, God, so love world that He gave His only begotten Son, the early Christians really believed. And…and I'm just kind of wrestling with this, that the vocation of the Christian is to learn to follow Jesus so as to learn how to love as God loves. God so loved the world. So, loving this creation, and redeeming it and saving it and healing it as the Jewish tradition says, that is a Christian, a religious vocation, not just a secular occupation.

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Speaker 1

7:03

You're right. And what you said may…may sound a little bit foreign or different. When we think about certainly the salvation of Jesus Christ, I think about John 3:16. I imagine when I see that sign at football games, they're holding it up. That… that's some pastors discretionary account. I am doing evangelism by being at the Buffalo Bills game holding up that sign, but we typically think about it in terms of human salvation, but you're right the cosmos and the idea that the creation, the universe, the cosmos, human beings, the divine, all have to be in good relationship. And I think that… that creation part has… has really been neglected, particularly around his idea of domination, we have to dominate and subdue creation instead of being good neighbors and good partners with our… with the creation.

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Speaker 2

7:53

Exactly. It's… it's… it's really common sense. If …if…if we care and love God, then… then we're to care and love those that God loves. Which means each other, and ourselves. And it also means this world that we are blessed to be able to inhabit. Why is that hard? Why is that difficult to understand that that's, that's almost I almost want to say, with Thomas Paine from the Revolutionary period. This is just common sense. But since it's just common sense, if we exploit and let me put it this way, don't mess with Mother Nature. Don't mess with Mother Nature. We do care for this world. Because we've three throw the system, the ecosystem out of balance. When it's out of balance, crazy stuff starts to happen. That's what's going on with climate change. Don't think that the create two changes in weather patterns are just weather patterns. This is climatic change. It's happening don't think that those fires out in the west are just happenstance and excellent. This is part of climate… the climate is it has already changed. The question is can we salvage it and prevent it from getting dramatically worse? And… and we in the United States have a great responsibility for that as… as do other industrialized nations, and we have a great responsibility for making sure that nations that have been impacted.  May I say it this way… by our wanton selfishness, and I include myself in that I'm not… I'm not preaching from all high, but our unwillingness to engage this issue, other people have suffered because of our decisions, and therefore we have a responsibility to make good with them to help them out to mitigate the impacts of climate change. The COP (26th Conference of the Parties) conference that just happened was wrestling with some of that, to some degree and our Anglican Communion and our Episcopal Church, we will present both virtually and There were some representatives, very few from the Anglican Communion who are already in England. So, they just went up to Scotland and were able to be there. But we were able to be there because we represent the Anglican Episcopal Church. We're a small church of 2 million. We're part of the Anglican Communion that is 85 million people. Right? It is the third largest Christian denomination in the world, behind the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox and then come the Anglicans. So, it is substantial, our… our folk are impacted by this dramatically, both here in the US but around the world.

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Speaker 1

10:34

You're absolutely right, Presiding Bishop. I'm wondering how did you get involved with environmental advocacy, environmental justice?

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Speaker 2

10:43

You know, it's been… it's been honestly, it's been a slow journey for me. Because it wasn't, you know, like you, I mean, I cut my teeth as, as the priest of inner city, historically, African American congregations are both in North Carolina, then later in southern Ohio, and then in Baltimore, in Baltimore, Maryland. So, I was dealing with urban inner city issues. It didn't occur to me, however, until I was in Baltimore, and that would have been from ‘88 to 2000. When I was elected in North Carolina, it didn't occur to me that wait a minute, something's going on until we were dealing with lead pipe issues, and the toxic poisoning of children, and the impact on that and trying to get legislation and fortunately, Maryland, and Baltimore did do some good work there. I mean, some good work was done. We were organized with BUILD, which was an IAF (Industrial Areas Foundation) affiliate that organized the churches and community and we engaged that we engaged living wage, this is 20 years ago, living wage there and involved with those kinds of things. But it didn't occur to me that the…that this had something to do with environmental justice, right? The Eco justice, I said, “Wait a minute, why are the pipes bad just in our neighborhood? Well, you know what I mean, I didn't make the connection at first, it was involved - more than I started to realize. And then when I came to North Carolina, there were a number of people who were advocating for the environment, many of whom are in Saint Ambrose right now was in the lead on this. And we got involved in interfaith power in faith power, and had churches doing energy audits and that kind of thing. And then trying to advocate both on the state and with other Episcopal Dioceses. So that  I grew in this. I was a slow learner. I was…I was late to the party. Although, and here's the funny thing. I was in high school when the first Earth Day happened.  I was in… I think I was a junior or senior. I can't remember. But that was in high school. And I remember the only thing I mean, you know, I mean, that was a high school kid. So, one thing? Oh, you mean, we don't have to go to class today. Right. So, what are we gonna do? Oh, we got to clean up the neighborhood. You know, I mean, we didn't know what it was all about, and didn't realize that something significant more significant than just picking the trash up in the neighborhood. Although that was important. That was it. Because what it was doing was sowing the seeds of a consciousness and awareness of pay attention to this world. We can't just defile this world and expect everything to be okay. And that conscious that seed was sown then, even though you know, high school, junior kid is not thinking about all of that complexity. So, my journey actually began with that Earth Day to be very honest. But the seed didn't begin to germinate, if you will, until I was really in involved in Baltimore. And then… and then in North Carolina.  Now as Presiding Bishop, I live with a lot of this stuff.

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Speaker 1

13:40

Right. I always appreciate how Earth… Earth Day’s proximity to Easter. And I always think that Christians could do more with that, you know, season of resurrection, new life, Earth Day, that it really just makes sense, you know, from a theological standpoint. Yeah, to make that connection. And I think that that's a growing edge for many churches just not Episcopal congregations, but other congregations to make that explicit connection.

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Speaker 2

14:11

Very much so. Yeah, you know, and I, one of the… a real transformative moment, if you will, as a Bishop was when I was Bishop in North Carolina and went to the Lambeth conference in 2008. And, and this was Lambeth conference, Archbishop of Canterbury, convened it and brings Anglican bishops from around the world and there may have been 800 of us or something like that, in England, at Canterbury Cathedral, for I think it was three weeks back then I think it's gonna be two weeks now. But, um, and each day was dedicated to some topic usually like the bishop and social justice, the bishop and evangelism, the bishop in Scripture. I mean, you know, each day kind of had a thematic focus, our Bible studies, the presentations and all that, and it was one day in particular was the bishop and the environment and you know, we did Bible studies in small groups of maybe eight, and then you move to what they call Indaba groups, which were several Bible studies brought together. So, you had small groups of eight, and maybe you took five of them. So, you had 40 people, in an Indaba group, which, as you know, in Southern African traditional community of wisdom, and… and that day on the environment when we were talking about that, I remembered the… the leader or facilitator asked us. What has been the impact of climate change on your environment, your diocese, and your community? And, and those of us from America, the US and from the northern hemisphere, were slow to answer. Because there weren't obvious impacts of climate change we're talking about now. Right? But… But when, when the…the Archbishop of Tanzania, talked about being a little child and remembering what Mount Kilimanjaro looked like, when you were a child looking up at it, and the peaks were covered with snow and…and now seeing the peaks barely with any snow on them.  When the Bishop from Zimbabwe, talked about the changes in the growing season, and the shortening, and while there are famines because of this, that they're seeing, and on… and I'll never forget the Bishop, the Bishop from the Solomon Islands, whose name I can't remember, but it was a little guy, he stood up, and he looked at those of us who were Americans. And he said, “My people have been your friends.  We were your friends.  During the Second World War. My people were the people who saved your President John Kennedy, in his PT 109. When he… we saved him and his companions and protected them. We were your friends. America, we need you to be our friends now. Because our islands are sinking” My brother that was like, Oh, dear God…Oh, dear God, what have we done? Mm hmm. What have we allowed to happen? But despair is not an option to be serious, despair is a feeling you have to deal with it, then you got to do something.  You must act… act to change it. And so that was a rally. I mean, of all the things I learned at that conference, that was one… that we must engage this seriously. And so, when I became Presiding Bishop, I made it one of the three pillars. Priority pillars, evangelism, racial reconciliation and injustice and care for God's creation as three priorities now emphasize as the Jesus Movement for the time that I serve as Presiding Bishop.

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Speaker 1

17:50

That's right. Beautiful…beautiful. I know you're born in Chicago, grew up in Buffalo, son of an Episcopal priest and your grandmother was from eastern North Carolina, a more rural area. I'm wondering if time spent there, because I know you spent significant amount of time with your grandma…if time spent in rural North Carolina also had some formation on care for the creation, love for the environment, love for nature?

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Speaker 2

18:17

You know, it actually did…no one's ever asked me this before. But you know, it actually did in a funny kind of way. Grandma, and Aunt Lillian, they had their house in Winton. And so it wasn't in a city, but it wasn't completely in the country. It wasn't a farm house. But it was in small town.  And farms were around there. And in those days or more tobacco farms, than anything else but… but farming around it. But clearly people…everybody was people in the land. I mean, the sausage, I have never had sausage, like, oh, man, forgive me, but I know some poor pig had to bite the dust, but nonetheless…I mean, it was fresh meat. I mean, yeah, it was fresh. The food we ate were for the most part fresh foods.  You know, I mean, anyway, it was locally, you know, we talked about locally sourced…well, it was locally sourced because they didn't bring anything in from anywhere else. It was…you know when I think about it we were in an environment where the creation…we were closer to the creation and there was a sense of harmony now you had to be careful. You know, they tell us don't get near the creek you know, which is course as kids that's the first place you go but anyway, you know, that kind of stuff and you have to be careful wild animal.  Not a lot of wild animals but every once in a while, a possum loses its mind and goes crazy and goes after folk.  You know, I mean, that kind of stuff would happen. But that or a chicken would chase you in the yard, that kind of thing. But there was a sense of this feels like the way the world supposed to be right. I didn't put that together again until later. When I started looking back, I said something's wrong. Something's actually gone wrong. The further we've gone from the land, the more disconnected we are from the various soil in which we live. It is like being separated from your very roots. And… and I remember when I was Bishop of North Carolina, I think was the first trip we took the Botswana, when we started the companion link relationship, I remember talking to the Minister of Health at the time. And…and he was talking about… we were talking about mental health. And he said, one of the things that they've been aware of is that the… the people who have moved into the cities away from the village, the incidence of mental illness is higher. He said, what they've discovered is part of the reason is they've been disconnected from roots, from family, from the land, their identity, and their lives were tied to family in the land, I heard our indigenous leaders in the Episcopal Church, Native Americans, and there are a number a significant number of Native Americans who are in Episcopal Church today, I was with some of them. I heard some of them say the exact same thing. When we were separated from our land, our theology is tied up to a spirituality of the sacredness of the creation. And we were ripped from our land by colonialists, who ripped us from our land, ripped us from our identity, separated us and in many cases killed us. And as a result, the levels of mental illness and trauma consistently continue with it. That is all tied, we were made to be part of the land, we are a part of the creation, we are not to dominate it, and to destroy it. We are meant to be caretakers of it, partners with God in caring and tending for God's creation, the same way God tends and cares. God so loved the world. If God loved the world, how dare we not?

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Speaker 1

22:16

Absolutely. You know, the… the epiphany moment, when you talked about being in eastern North Carolina years later reflecting on that's the way it should be. We've been working with the professor at NC State and the majority of literature states that black people, folk of African descent do not like being in nature, which to us is just crazy, because we are agrarian folk historically in this country folk who were enslaved. But when you look at the survey, it asks, “Do you enjoy backpacking in Yosemite? When was the last time you climbed a mountain?”  And these are metrics used to gauge how well people like the environment? But as you said, that good sausage? Oh, yeah, that the good food…being …being outside. When you talk about recycling, you know, every good cook I know, to the left or right of the stove has a little bowl for the bacon… for the bacon grease. That's recycled redundant days.

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Speaker 2

22:23

And it tastes better!

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Speaker 1

23:26

So, the fact that we have to, we have to expand our imagination from a data analysis standpoint to include different experiences. Just because somebody has not hiked Yosemite does not mean that person does not like being in the environment; caring for your plants in the backyard.  It’s being in the environment. Well, Presiding Bishop, my final question to you and I always close …is what gives you hope?

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Speaker 2

23:55

You know, I mean, ultimately, you know, there is this old gospel song, “This is My Father's World”, ultimately, this remains God's world. And while there are consequences to environmental degradation, and the impacts of climate change, and we must do our part, we are not in this alone. We are partners with God in saving…like an old hymn said… saving God's lost creation, and… and because of that, and because of folk like you…like Saint Ambrose, because of a movement that's going on, I'm seeing that is alive in our Episcopal churches, because of a movement that's alive. I think in our culture. I'm finding hope, the struggle will be long. It's not going to be easy. We're not going to win every battle. There are losses that are going to happen. But there are signs of hope the American government to a great extent has made great progress and was a real serious participant in the COP (26th Conference of the Parties) council of parties, on negotiations around climate change. We didn't do everything we're supposed… everything wasn't solved. But at least we were at the table this time. We were there. So, we're…we're participating in being not just simply those who caused the problem, but those who work for solutions. That gives me hope. And ultimately, I have hope, because as old folk use to say, “God is still on the throne”, and we are not.

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Speaker 1

25:32

Amen to that. Amen to that. Presiding Bishop Curry, it has been an honor, thank you for sharing your wisdom, enthusiasm, spirituality and insight with us.

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Speaker 2

25:46

Well thank you for what you're doing. And you all keep on keeping on and everybody who hears this. We got work to do. So, let's go on and do it in the name of Jesus.

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Speaker 1

25:55

Amen to that. 

The Wading Deep podcast comes to you from a place we affectionately call The Brose, Saint Ambrose Episcopal Church, Raleigh, North Carolina. Follow us on Facebook, YouTube, The BroseNC on Twitter and TheBrose1868 on Instagram. 

I am your host, the Reverend Jemonde Taylor. God is going to trouble the water of environmental racism, resurrecting a river of life clear as crystal. 

Shalom, Salaam, Peace