The church basement was filled with displays from a number of national and local ecological concerns such as Sustain Dane, Community Supported Agriculture, EnAct, the Environmental Action Teams, and the Sierra Club as well as more faith based or faith oriented groups such as Care of Creation * and Bread for the World. And then some organizations that were in between, such as SHARE, the Self Help and Resource Exchange, and the Trust for Natural Legacies, which is working to develop a Conservation Cemetery in the Madison area. "A conservation cemetery provides a sustainable and spiritually-fulfilling solution for people seeking to leave a legacy of care and respect for the planet and its inhabitants," their brochure says.

Food was the main focus, as it is for many church events, especially those held in church basements. But this time the focus was "The Grace of Good Eating," the title of the featured remarks by Norman Wirzba, professor of Philosophy at Georgetown College in Georgetown, KY. Wirzba is the author of a number of books, including The Paradise of God: Renewing Religion in an Ecological Age.

Wirzba is a follower of Wendell Berry, and a supporter of sustainable agriculture, which includes use of appropriate technologies and the support of healthy rural communities. Noting that a little over a half dozen years ago the majority of the earth’s population had now become urbanized for the first time in history, Wirzba worried about biological amnesia, which he called forgetting our attachment to living things.

"People don’t know where food comes from or how it reaches us," he said. He suggested that the major food companies would like to keep it that way, since it’s easier for them to advertise and sell their product and make their profits by making people dependent upon the processed food industry. But that’s not the healthiest practice, even though many people would rather not know how their food gets to them. "The way food is produced in this country is a true horror story," he said. A few large companies now control almost all of the facets of food production. "Farmers have become serfs on their own land."

"In our culture food has been transformed into a commodity, a product," he said. He doesn’t think that’s good or healthy. "Eating food is the most intimate, practical way we participate in God’s grace," he suggested. "When we eat properly we become stewards of God’s creation.

Farmers as a group are now statistically irrelevant, Wirzba claimed. "We have more people in jail in this country than we have farmers," he said. The agriculture industry is not about farmers any more, it’s about the major food companies and their lobbyists in Washington. "We have to be aware of these pressures taking place in Washington, D.C.," he said.

Over the past 50 years food productivity has increased by 350%, he said. Americans now spend only about ten percent of their income on food, much less than people in other parts of the world. "But cheap food is not really cheap," Wirzba continued. "There are too many costs associated with it, including degraded land and water quality as well as destroyed rural communities." Farmers get only 8-10 cents of the food dollar, farmers are earning less for their food crops than they did 50 years ago.

Wirzba had some suggestions for those who believe God cares about the food that they eat.

• Learn about food systems; what’s going on behind a loaf of bread.
• Dispense with obsessions over cheap food.
• Get to know your local food culture. Develop relationships with the people who grow food.
• Buy close to home, and grow some of your own food. Support community-supported agriculture.

"Our eating habits need to be rescued from big business," he concluded.

Some Madison churches are already actively involved in conservation measures. Jeff Wild, a pastor at Advent Lutheran Church which is in partnership with Community of Hope UCC Church to form Madison Christian Community, said that they took steps two years ago which reduced their energy usage by 40%. They have a community garden ministry which includes an outreach to the nearby Wexford Ridge community. Twenty children from that community are invited to help with the garden each year. They learn good gardening practices and take the bounty home for their families.

Wild also brought along to the Earth Day celebration the church’s diesel garden tractor, which has been converted to run on vegetable oil as it tills the garden and mows the grass.

Dick Blomker, pastor of the host congregation at Lake Edge Lutheran Church, reported that the congregation started a green remodeling process of their building about three years ago with the aim of reducing their energy usage by 40-60%.

The planning committee for the Earth Day celebration consisted of:

• Rev. Peter Bakken, Wisconsin Council of Churches
• Rev. Dick Blomker, Lake Edge Lutheran Church
• Rev. Winton Boyd, Orchard Ridge United Church of Christ
• Rev. David Carlson, Bethany Evangelical Free Church
• Rev. Phil Haslanger, Lake Edge United Church of Christ
• Brian Joiner, Sustain Dane, First Unitarian Society
• Rev. Steve Minnema, Covenant Presbyterian Church
• Rev. Doug Pierce, The Crossing Campus Christian Ministry
• Jody Skog, Sustain Dane, Prairie Unitarian Universalist Society
• Rev. David Steffenson, Wisconsin Interfaith Climate and Energy Campaign
• Rev. Vern Visick, New College Madison
• Rev. Jeff Wild, Madison Christian Community
• Rev. Mike Winnowski, Geneva Campus Church

* Picture in the Care of Creation booth photo, left to right, are Jason Gooden, Katrina Boyd, and Ed Brown.