Actions and Campaigns

Living for the Earth: Choosing Creation over Empire

At the 2006 General Council the report Living Faithfully in the Midst of Empire, created as one of the United Church's responses to globalization and increasing levels of global militarization, was accepted.

Further resources are now available to provide a variety of opportunities to learn more about the concept of empire, to see how it impacts our lives, explore our complicity, and to develop ways to both challenge it and create more just and joyful alternatives. Visit the Globalization page for in-depth information and further reading on empire.

Every two years, the United Church begins a new mission theme as a focus for study, prayer, and action, using diverse resources including the May editions of Mandate magazine. The United Church's mission theme from September 2007 to 2009 is "Challenging Empire: A Call to Community," inspired by the Empire Report.

The logo designed for "Challenging Empire" by Joyce Cosby represents this using the image of people working together to pull at a net that represents unjust systems that oppress people and creation. These include globalization, militarization, consumerism, environmental destruction, racism, and sexism. With this work, all of creation begins to burst free.

What Can I Do?

Focus on Empire in Worship

• Plan your Advent and Christmas services with Worshipping Faithfully in the Midst of Empire, available from UCRD.
• Use the intergenerational outline in the May 2009 mission theme Mandate for an intergenerational ecotheological worship service.
• Use worship services from the Challenging Empire mission theme Mandates that introduce empire (May 2007)  [PDF: 3 pp/107 KB] or focus on empire and racial power (May 2008).

Learn Together

• Try the intergenerational "Reconnecting with Creation" workshop with a small group or learn more about the 100-mile Diet, both in the 2009 mission theme Mandate.
• Learn more about empire and engage with others in events that are taking place across the country. Let us know if you are planning an event of your own!
• Order the study kit Challenging Empire: Justice Seeking in Your Faith Community, available from UCRD. Two supplementary study sessions are available online that give additional options for adult groups using Challenging Empire: Stories and Activities to Transform Your Community.
• Use the Covenanting for Justice Online Curriculum's* five downloadable study group outlines with Bible passages, questions, prayers, background information, and a facilitator's guide. Each session also has an engaging online video. Look at climate change, farming, mining, sweatshop industries, and the church's response to empire through the Accra Confession. This resource is produced by the Caribbean and North American Area Council of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, of which the United Church is a member.
• Use diverse worship and study materials in the Challenging Empire mission theme Mandates that introduce empire (May 2007) or focus on empire and racial power (May 2008).
• Check out the Journey from Empire [PDF: 4 pp/358 KB] board game for children ages 8–12, or order Seeds and Sowers, 2007.
• Use this brief guide to using the empire materials [PDF: 2 pp/81 KB] to find out which resources work best with different types of groups.

Take Action

Check out our Take Action page, and look at how you can speak out against globalization, ecological destruction, militarization, racism, and other kinds of oppression.

Policy

The report Living Faithfully in the Midst of Empire, presented to the United Church's 39th General Council in 2006; the Accra Confession*,a powerful statement of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches; and To Seek Justice and Resist Evil, a United Church report focusing on global economic injustice based on stories from global partners; all give a more in-depth perspective on empire. More information about these documents can be found on the Globalization page.