Tending the Earth together

Connie King has been planting native species in her yard for years — watching for butterflies, waiting for birds, noticing what grows and what doesn’t. For a long time, she did it quietly and mostly alone.

That changed about a year ago, when a handful of people from different faith communities in the Quad Cities gathered at St. Paul, after attending an online faith and climate webinar and decided they didn’t want to just watch. They wanted to do something.

Today, that gathering has grown into the Interfaith Creation Care group, a coalition of people from diverse faith traditions who meet monthly at St. Paul to share resources, learn from one another, and make the case that caring for the earth is a deeply spiritual act — no matter what one’s tradition.

In action

The spark was simple: St. Paul member Becky Wiese, who knew about an annual faith and climate webinar, set up St. Paul as a host site. A handful of people showed up. They signed in, swapped emails, and Becky asked if anyone wanted to keep meeting. They did.

Former St. Paul teaching pastor Peter Pettit helped connect the group to other faith organizations in the area. Connie figured out how to put together a newsletter. A logo was developed. By June 2025 — just a couple of months after that first webinar in April — the group sent out its first issue.

Each month, the group, open to anyone in the community, gathers over the lunch hour—intentionally timed so working people can come — to swap information, share what different congregations are doing, and talk about what resources are available. The group is still small, only about half a dozen people show up reliably to every meeting, but its reach is growing.

The monthly newsletter is the group᾽s primary output, and it covers more ground than you might expect. Recent issues have included features on everything from recycling programs and native plant sources to water conservation and well-building in Tanzania. The formula is part reporting, part resource guide, part inspiration.

The group has highlighted the Moline Trinity Lutheran TerraCycle program, collecting cellophane from cereal boxes and other hard-to-recycle materials, and that the local mosque has committed to eliminating plastic bottles. It’s pointed readers toward Wild Ones and the Hauberg Estate for native plantings, and to Wildscaping QC for help transforming yards into wildlife-friendly habitat.

Faith as motivation

For Connie, creation care is not a political cause. It is a theological one.

“This past January, Everett Hamner spoke on the topic Who is your neighbor and that᾽s what this whole thing is all about for me. If we truly want to treat people the way they want to be treated, to be neighbors, we have to take care of this planet,” Connie said. “It affects everyone.”

That framing — creation care as an act of neighbor love — is one reason the group has been able to build bridges across different traditions. Connie believes the impulse to tend the earth is not uniquely Christian, or even uniquely religious.

“You look at every faith, and even non-faith, they have at least one tenet in their tradition that says we take care of each other,” she said. “We are all trying to have a world where there’s enough good water to drink, food to eat, a warm place to sleep. I think we᾽re more alike than we are different.”

Hope

Connie is careful to name what sustains her in work that can easily feel overwhelming. The answer, consistently, is community.

“You don’t do faith alone, you do it in community. That’s where it’s most effective and that’s what we’re trying to do with this group. It’s not like I’m shouting from the mountaintop into the wind,” Connie said. “Climate change is such a huge thing that people throw up their hands and say, ‘I can’t do it.’ But there are small things. To me, that is what Jesus was showing us. A whole community doing small things to help creation would turn out to be a very big thing.”

She thinks about her five great-nieces and nephews, ages 2 to 8, and about what kind of world they will inherit.

“They are going to grow up in a more desperate world than I did. I try to do whatever I can so that they don’t get to the point where people are fighting over drinking water. We still have the ability to create a world that works for everyone,” Connie said. “Even in my little corner of the world, I᾽ve made a difference. If that difference can keep expanding bit by bit then we can make a better future for our children.”

Open Invitation

The group meets on the fourth Tuesday of every month at 12 noon in the dining room at St. Paul, with a Zoom option available for those who can’t be there in person. To connect with the group or subscribe to the monthly newsletter, email interfaithcreationcare@gmail.com.