Evangelistic Outreach in Poulsbo

With global warming and the western drought dominating many public discussions these days, Saint Elizabeth Orthodox Church in Poulsbo, Washington recently decided to host a talk entitled “Faith and Ecology in the Shadow of Climate Change.” The visiting speaker invited to deliver this presentation was Fr. Kaleeg John Hainsworth from the OCA Archdiocese of Canada, who recently published a book entitled Altar in the Wilderness on a variety of important environmental issues from an Orthodox Christian point of view. Father Kaleeg was asked to speak about his insights into what he calls “spiritual ecology” for the gathering, which specifically targeted non-Orthodox and even non-Christian members of the Puget Sound public.

The talk, made possible by a donation from a parishioner, was designed as an act of evangelical outreach in light of the perennial interest the topic of ecology has among the largely unchurched population of the surrounding region. Significantly, a recent decision to use the port of Seattle as a way station for ships on their way to oil drilling operations in Alaska provided an auspicious opportunity to engage the surrounding culture with the teaching of the Orthodox Church. To increase impact on this section of the public, the talk was intentionally located off site from the church at one of the most symbolic public venues in the town of Poulsbo, the Sons of Norway building on Liberty Bay. Against the breathtaking backdrop of this Puget Sound inlet and the forested mountains beyond, Father Kaleeg challenged visitors to consider the specifically Christian revelation about man’s relationship to the created cosmos and the ways in which it illuminates contemporary ecological debate.

About half of those in attendance were non-parishioners, many of whom had learned of the talk from posters that had been placed by parishioners in local shopfronts and on the Puget Sound ferries. Saint Elizabeth Church looks forward to hosting other visiting Orthodox speakers on matters of public interest in the future.