Jänschwalde open cast lignite mine, close to Atterwasch, Germany. Credit: Christian Huschga

By Melanie Mattauch
LUSATIA, Germany, Aug 20 2014 (IPS)

Johannes Kapelle has been playing the organ in the Protestant church of Proschim since he was 14. The 78-year-old is actively involved in his community, produces his own solar power and has raised three children with his wife on their farm in Proschim, a small village of 360 inhabitants in Lusatia, Germany.

Now the church, his farm, the forest he loves dearly and his entire village is threatened with demolition to leave space for expansion of Swedish energy giant Vattenfall’s lignite (also known as brown coal) operations to feed its power plants. Nearly all of the fuel carbon (99 percent) in lignite is converted to CO₂ – a major greenhouse gas – during the combustion process.“What we’re seeing today is the result of putting economic thinking at the forefront. Our mantra is to just continue doing things as long as they generate profit. We need to counteract this trend with ethical thinking. We need to do what’s right!” – Protestant pastor Mathias Berndt

For Kapelle, this is inconceivable: “In Proschim, we’ve managed effortlessly to supply our community with clean energy by setting up a wind park and a biogas plant. Nowadays, it is just irresponsible to expand lignite mining.”

The desolate landscape the giant diggers leave behind stretches as far as the eye can see from just a few hundred metres outside Proschim.

“It’s only going to take about a quarter of a year to burn the entire coal underneath Proschim. But the land is going to be destroyed forever. You won’t even be able to enter vast areas of land anymore because it will be prone to erosion. You won’t be able to grow anything on that soil anymore either. No potatoes, no tomatoes, nothing,” says Kappelle.

Some 70 km northeast of Proschim, Protestant pastor Mathias Berndt also sees his community under threat. His church in Atterwasch has been around for 700 years and even survived the Thirty Years’ War in the 17th century. Now it is supposed to make way for Vattenfall’s Jänschwalde Nord open cast lignite mine.

The 64-year-old has been Atterwasch’s pastor since 1977 and refuses to accept that his community will be destroyed: “As Christians, we have a responsibility to cultivate and protect God’s creation. That’s what it says in the Bible. We’re pretty good at cultivating but protection is lacking. That’s why I’ve been trying to stop the destruction of nature since the days of the German Democratic Republic.”

“Vattenfall’s plans to expand its mines have given this fight a new dimension,” Berndt adds. “This is now also about preventing our forced displacement.”

Berndt is currently involved in organising a huge protest on August 23 – a human chain connecting a German and Polish village threatened by coal mining in the region. He has also been pushing his church to step up its efforts to curb climate change.

As a result, his regional synod has positioned itself against new coal mines, lignite power plants and the demolition of further villages. It is also offering churches advice on energy savings and deploying renewable energy. The parsonage in Atterwasch, for example, has been equipped with solar panels.

Parsonage in Atterwasch with solar panels. Credit: Christian Huschga

Despite Germany’s ambitions for an energy transition, its so-called Energiewende, the country’s CO₂ emissions have been rising again for the past two years, for the first time since the country’s reunification. This is primarily due to Germany’s coal-fired power plants, and brown coal power stations in particular.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has recently confirmed that it is still possible to limit global warming below 2° C. But there is only a limited CO₂ budget left to meet this goal and avert runaway climate change.

The IPCC estimates that investments in fossil fuels would need to fall by 30 billion dollars a year, while investments in low-carbon electricity supply would have to increase by 147 billion dollars a year.

As a result, more and more faith leaders are calling for divestment from fossil fuels. One of the most powerful advocates has been Nobel Peace Prize laureate and former South African Anglican Archbishop, Desmond Tutu, who recently called for an “anti-apartheid style boycott of the fossil fuel industry”.

Tutu’s call to action has been echoed by U.N. climate chief Christiana Figueres, who has urged religious leaders to pull their investments out of fossil fuel companies.

Protestant pastor Mathias Berndt. Credit: Christian Huschga

Many churches have taken this step already. Last month, the World Council of Churches, a fellowship of over 300 churches representing some 590 million people in 150 countries, decided to phase out its holdings in fossil fuels and encouraged its members to do the same.

The Quakers in the United Kingdom, the Anglican Church of Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia, the United Church of Christ in the United States, and many more regional and local churches have also joined the divestment movement.

The Church of Sweden was among the first to rid itself of oil and coal investments. It increased investments in energy-efficient and low-carbon projects instead, which also improved its portfolio’s financial performance.

Gunnela Hahn, head of ethical investments at the Church of Sweden’s central office explains: “We realised that many of our largest holdings were within the fossil industry. That catalysed the idea of more closely aligning investments with the ambitious work going on in the rest of the church on climate change. ”

Meanwhile, from the frontline, pastor Berndt calls for putting ethics first: “What we’re seeing today is the result of putting economic thinking at the forefront. Our mantra is to just continue doing things as long as they generate profit. We need to counteract this trend with ethical thinking. We need to do what’s right!”

*  Melanie Mattauch is 350.org Europe Communications Coordinator

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Midiam Lobaina, a member of an ecumenical network of Christian women. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Ivet González
HAVANA, Dec 3 2012 (IPS)

Midiam Lobaina describes herself as a “Christian militant” who takes a feminist reading of the Bible to workshops and religious services around Cuba, to discuss gender equality and a culture of peace.

Participants learn about gender violence, its prevention and ways to break free, among other issues.

“All churches know that the abuse of women is also a family and community problem,” says Lobaina, who is coordinator of the Women and Gender Programme of the Cuban Council of Churches (CIC).

Lobaina, who is also coordinator of the “Débora” Christian Women’s Network, founded in 2009, spoke with IPS about her work preventing violence against women.

Q: What is the reaction to these issues in Christian communities?

A: Sometimes there is a great deal of apprehension or expectations about what we are going to say. But when we address the issues of gender-based violence and discrimination through biblical texts, we are met mostly with acceptance.

The Bible has many liberating stories and others where women’s exclusion is denounced.

We have also encountered rejection. The gender issue can be disturbing because it addresses very difficult realities, and not everybody wants to know about them.

We have made progress compared to more than 20 years ago, when women’s problems had just begun to be discussed in Cuban churches. Now there is a greater openness to talking about gender inequality and many congregations ask us to hold workshops.

Q: What does this “alternative” reading of the Bible consist of? How are sexist passages addressed?

A: It is true that the Bible contains texts that are discriminatory toward women — in some communities they were expressly forbidden from speaking — but it also contains liberating ones.

For example, many say that for God there are no differences of sex or race. We cannot forget that some passages were a result of very patriarchal eras and contexts, in which women were not taken into consideration.

Q: Who tends to come to the workshops?

A: They are open to everyone, but it is mainly women who come. Nevertheless, the number of men taking part in the workshops has grown across the country, through the CIC programme.

The question of masculinity is also addressed using biblical passages, although this focus is new. People tend to confuse questions of masculinity with sexual diversity, an issue that many people are still reluctant to discuss.

Q: What special characteristics does the prevention of gender-based violence have in Christian communities?

A: Many women are abused in their homes and even in their churches, and they don’t tell anyone. They keep their problem a secret out of shame and the idea that “family matters” are not talked about in public. Some underestimate the seriousness of their situation, others don’t realise that they are in danger, and others reveal their secret only very confidentially.

That is why it is essential to train and raise the awareness of congregation leaders. That way they can assist women who ask for help or talk about their problem. Sometimes the solution is not within reach, but sometimes it is.

People who are abused generally lack the tools and resources to get out of the situation they find themselves in.

In Cuba not all of the structures exist, either, for victims to break that vicious cycle. I know of Christian congregations that support abused women, especially in the most extreme cases. On the other hand, people need to identify other, more subtle forms of violence.

Q: What are these other faces of abuses?

A: When women are made invisible, silenced, ignored and not allowed to participate, and their contributions are not recognised, they are very much abused.

Psychological violence, in all of its magnitude, is the most widespread. Women are centrally involved in pastoral work with children, caring for the sick and evangelical work, roles that they have always embraced.

I was the adviser to a student from Havana’s Instituto Superior de Estudios Bíblicos y Teológicos (Higher Institute of Biblical and Theological Studies), who conducted a study on gender-based violence among 28 women from a community in the Cuban capital.

When we processed the data, we found that six of them were in a dangerous situation. Unfortunately, one of them was murdered by her spouse that week, and he subsequently committed suicide. It was a tragedy…we were unable to save her. But we alerted the other five to the danger they were in.

Q: How much has women’s participation in Protestant churches changed?

A: I come from a Baptist denomination that does not ordain women. I later joined another Baptist group that does.

The history of women who have wanted to be pastors has been hard. For example, women missionaries studied in seminaries just like men, but when they graduated, they did not have the right to be pastors. In fact, if they married, they couldn’t even be missionaries.

That is why at a young age I joined a Christian group that stood up for the role of women in the church, and that asked for more equality and justice for them.

A gender-based approach has become much more influential in pastoral and ecclesiastical work and at Christian research institutes since the Decade of Women, from 1985 to 1995. This year we are celebrating the 20th anniversary of the ordainment of the first three women in the Fraternity of Baptist Churches in Cuba.

Q: How much can religious communities contribute to the struggle against gender-based violence?

A: Congregations that work for gender equality are fortresses in their communities. In some, their work goes beyond the neighbourhood. When a woman is abused at home, the whole family is abused, and the whole community is affected.

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