WAVE FLOWS INTO WAVE
BY REV. AC CHURCHILL
In 1988, two bunker oil tankers were traveling from Cherry Point in Northeast Washington toward Aberdeen when the towline between the vessels broke. The tankers drifted toward land, spilling over 230,000 gallons of heavy fuel oil that covered over 110 miles of Washington’s coastal beaches. The spill harmed the shores of the Quinault Indian Nation and the Nuu-Chah-Nulth Nation in Canada as well as Olympic National Park and multiple wildlife refuges.
Teams of volunteers flocked to the shorelines to try and rescue birds trapped in the tar that had washed ashore. The founders of Earth Ministry/Washington Interfaith Power and Light, Rev. Carla Pryne and Ruth and Jim Mulligan, joined the efforts to wash waste from the birds’ wings. As they worked, they wondered: “Where are all the other people of faith? Why are they not here?”
What started off as one simple question has become more than 31 years of faith-rooted, conscience-led communities of curiosity, care, and action that come together to prevent and mitigate the harm of environmental injustice on both the planet and people who call Washington home. Today, Earth Ministry/WA IPL is a multifaith environmental justice organization working with sacred communities across Washington State. We work with over 400 sacred communities throughout Washington to educate, mobilize, and connect people who put their faith into action for the well-being of their communities and the environment.
Our work is done in collaboration with other environmental organizations and includes groups working toward Indigenous rights, disability rights, health care rights, labor rights, racial justice, housing rights, and queer rights. We know that, at its core, environmental justice is connected to every other movement for wholeness. And we believe our sacred traditions call us to participate in work that acknowledges the fullness of our community and expands our understandings of who our neighbors are.
It is from this background and these values that we engage in river recovery and salmon restoration work. Our organization believes that it is critical to follow the lead of Northwest Native Nations in campaigning and advocating for a just transition toward free-flowing rivers. For more than a decade, we have worked with sacred communities to support Indigenousled campaigns protecting treaty rights, fishing areas, and sacred sites. Following their leadership, we have mobilized people of faith and conscience to successfully oppose climate-damaging fossil fuel projects and support tribal efforts to recover salmon
and orca populations through river restoration and prevention of further pollution in the Salish Sea.
GROUNDED IN FAITH
We are part of the natural world, and it is part of us. When Earth Ministry/WA IPL began in the early 1990s, much of our work centered around validating care for creation as part of the work of the church. Our founders and early staff met with sacred communities to help them reconnect with these justice priorities, which have always been part of people of faith’s commitments.
Abrahamic scriptural traditions start with the story of how the Divine formed and fashioned the beauty of celestial beings, the natural world, and all who call this planet home. In the Genesis 2 creation story, the author writes that God pulled dust and dirt up from the Earth to shape humankind. We are quite literally earthlings, earth creatures, made of dust. To dust we will return. Yet, for many reasons, our white Western versions of Christianity have spent generations disconnected from the very creation that forms us. This disconnect has led to patterns that not only devalue the non-human world, but also justify practices such as greed, colonialization, extractivism, and subjugation.
If we hope to be part of the healing process and members of communities that embody God’s love for all creation beyond
“ YOUR LIFE AND MY LIFE FLOW INTO EACH OTHER AS WAVE FLOWS INTO WAVE, AND UNLESS THERE IS PEACE AND JOY AND FREEDOM FOR YOU, THERE CAN BE NO REAL PEACE OR JOY OR FREEDOM FOR ME.”
— MINISTER FREDERICk BUECHNER
sanctuaries and sacred spaces, then we must acknowledge the ways our spiritual traditions have been used to harm what God has called good. Healing and wholeness do not happen in isolation. The healing that our environment needs—that biodiverse ecosystems need and that the frontline communities first impacted by the disastrous toll of climate change need—requires us as people of faith and conscience to reconnect with the land and water and with the creaturely world who lives alongside us.
THE WEB OF INTERCONNECTED LIFE
We were first introduced to the importance of sacred communities’ support for tribal solidarity when the Lummi Nation approached us in the early 2010s to lend our support toward efforts to halt a proposed coal export terminal on Cherry Point (Xwe’chi’eXen), Lummi sacred land. Needing support from coalitions across the state, Lummi leaders approached what was then Earth Ministry to honor faith leaders’ commitments in a 1997 letter of apology titled “A Public Declaration to the Tribal Councils and Traditional Spiritual Leaders of the Indian and Eskimo Peoples of the Northwest.”
The Lummi Nation tasked us, alongside other ecumenical and multifaith communities, to show up. The call was clear and urgent; it was time to take our apologies from the page and put them into action. As a result of relentless determination from the Lummi Nation and statewide support, the project was cancelled and new relationships began to form.
Since then, Earth Ministry/WA IPL’s work connecting the well-being of human and natural systems within a moral framework that compels action has continued. We see our involvement with Indigenous-led climate and creation justice campaigns as a moral issue connected to our shared values of stewardship, responsibility, legacy, and justice. Additionally, given Christian communities’ explicit participation in violence, subjugation, and attempts to eradicate Indigenous culture, spiritual practices, and traditions, we believe it is part of our mission to work for healing by acknowledging the harm our faith ancestors caused and to work toward healthier, more equitable relationships going forward.
Today, we work closely with the intertribal organization Se’Si’Le to educate and mobilize people from a variety of sacred traditions to advocate for the restoration of free-flowing rivers across the Pacific Northwest. We follow the lead of Northwest Native Nations when it comes to best practices for healing the land and caring for the life-sources that call these rivers, streams, and creeks home.
AN INTERFAITH EFFORT
Oftentimes in coalition spaces, we are the only faith-rooted group, and so we often bring messages of morals, values, and heart, which is not the focus of other organizations. Partner organizations often focus on the science, the data, and the logistics, which is why it’s important for us to be in relationship. We are there to say: “We have all of this amazing research and data to show why these changes need to happen or what we could do. We know how to talk to people’s hearts and minds. Let’s weave our efforts together.” Data are important; yet, for most people, it is stories and relationships that change minds.
Because we are grounded in sacred traditions, we can go into spaces where many environmental organizations struggle. We’re able to say that restoring rivers to a free-flowing state is not just an environmental issue or a climate change concern: It is a moral and sacred issue, because the Divine created rivers to run free and swimming things to swim freely. Our work gives an opportunity for individuals to learn more about environmental issues that might impact them and for coalitions to see the richness of humanity and break down assumptions about who is “other.” We find that folks across Washington have shared values, especially when it comes to a deep appreciation and love for the land. While our partners do not always agree on land usage, sustainability practices, or solutions for the climate crises, we believe there are opportunities to work together, especially when we do not vilify one side or another.
When we see our work as interconnected, regardless of the issue, we can shift the conversation from which issue is most pressing—i.e., whether we should focus on homelessness,
food insecurity, racial justice, queer liberation, or the environment— to how we can work together to create systemic change. This shift allows us to build stronger networks of collaboration, mutual aid, and support. It also allows us to coordinate our efforts instead of arguing about which need is most important.
Interwoven into the fabric of the diverse sacred traditions that Earth Ministry/WAIPL represents is a call to help end suffering, care for our neighbors, and be good caregivers to the life-sources abundant in our natural world—mandates present in such diverse religious texts as Leviticus 19:18, the Greatest Commandment, the Golden Rule, The Qur’an 28:77, The Four Noble Truths, and shared Unitarian Universalist values of interdependence. Our different sacred traditions approach caring for creation and community differently; not everyone will connect with every approach. When we redirect our energy toward what we share and the values we have in common, we begin building bridges and doing the essential repair work. And when we come together, united by our shared values, we can create momentum for a sustained movement for justice, healing, and transformation.
The world we are trying to cocreate with one another is one where people and planet, creatures and ec0systems, thrive. That world is going to take time to build. We have a lot to unlearn, cycles of harm to break, and new cycles of healing to create. This world will take consistent commitment from all who seek to do good, honor the land, and love their neighbors. It takes people from all sacred traditions as well as people not connected to any organized tradition to bring it to life. ******
For as long as I can remember, the words of Presbyterian minister Frederick Buechner have been etched onto my heart. If you ever receive an email from me, you will witness them there as well in my signature line. In 1966, Buechner wrote, “Your life and my life flow into each other as wave flows into wave, and unless there is peace and joy and freedom for you, there can be no real peace or joy or freedom for me.”
In 2025, those words still bring me to tears, remind me of the importance of collaboration, community, and intentional intersectional justice. Beloved Ones, may we work together for peace, joy, and freedom. May we work together for the beauty of our earth and to honor those who have been in these places since time immemorial. May we learn from and with one another and cocreate a just and sustainable world for all.
Rev. AC Churchill (they/them) has been with Earth Ministry/WA IPL as the executive director since 2022. They are an ordained minister within the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) tradition and see environmental justice as intrinsically connected to anti-racism and pro-reconciliation work. AC has a masters of divinity degree from Brite Divinity School and dual bachelor’s degrees in criminal justice and psychology from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. They have over 15 years of experience working with sacred communities as a faith-rooted organizer.