“The Earth is not a hotel. It’s our home.”
That’s the message one of the world's leading Christian theologians sent to B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell and 125 members of diverse religions at a recent Vancouver gathering.

It was the latest effort by Canadian-American theologian Sallie McFague, author of A New Climate for Theology: God, the World and Global Warming, to counter centuries in which Christian leaders taught that humans should exploit the Earth for their own ends.

Vancouver’s “Faith and the Environment” conference occurred the same week the 700,000-member United Church of Canada, the country’s largest Protestant denomination, released a how-to guide on ways congregations could waste less energy; including by using LED lights, weather-stripping, reducing the use of lawn mowers, pesticides and exchanging old stoves and refrigerators for more efficient ones.