California Bishop Marc Andrus, a national leader in the Episcopal Church in combating climate change, says growing up in Roane County, hiking in the Smokies and attending the University of Tennessee put him on his career path for caring about the spiritual and material aspects of our planet.
His advocacy work has taken him to public areas in Paris and other countries and Dakota Access Pipeline demonstrations in Standing Rock, North Dakota.
At a recent Lambeth Conference of the Anglican communities in England, he helped launch a Communion Forest on the grounds of London Palace, the official home of the Archbishop of Canterbury. The initiative was planned by a small team from the Anglican Communion Environmental Network and the Anglican Alliance, of which he was a member.
The simple act of planting trees until they become groves contributes to taking greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere, Andrus said.
UN climate change conference
In November in Sharp El-Sheikh, Egypt, he will lead the Episcopal Church’s delegation representing Presiding Bishop Michael Curry to the 2022 United Nations climate change conference. It is officially called the 27th session of the Conference of Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, or COP27.
“COP27 gives us the opportunity to work in partnership with interfaith representatives from around the world – learning from each other and amplifying the faith voices on climate change and environmental degradation,” he said in a statement released by the Episcopal News Services.
He said in an interview later with this columnist that everyone holds the earth as sacred. “It will take many actions – millions – to heal the planet. It seems Episcopalians should be (at conventions on climate change) along with scientists and policymakers.”
The Rt. Rev. Marc Handley Andrus of the Episcopal Diocese of California talked about his views on climate change and his life in East Tennessee in an interview conducted by Zoom on Aug. 25 in San Francisco and in some email exchanges. “Growing up in East Tennessee (offered) so much beauty,” he said.
The 61-year-old bishop was born in Oak Ridge and grew up in Kingston. His father, Francis “Andy” Andrus, worked for Union Carbide on the business side, and his mother, Frances, was a school teacher. A sister, Barbara Foster, lives in Farragut.
Swimming in toxic mercury discharge
His memories of the area include swimming in the Clinch River, where today it is known that tons of mercury, a heavy toxic material, were discharged. His father died of cancer when he was 14, and Andrus says it was from problems associated with radiation exposure.
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“Looking at that beautiful water, we were swimming in that river with all that mercury,” he said.
And that type of situation happens all over the world, with decisions on environmental issues influencing outcomes that affect race, poverty, economics and nations, he said.
Andrus went to UT to study soil science and plant nutrition in agriculture and minored in religious studies. “They both were great departments,” he said. He also met his wife there. She is Dr. Sheila Moore Andrus, a native of Maryville, who has had a career as an environmental scientist, including with the U.S. Forest Service, where she directed the agency’s research on insects. The two frequently appear on programs together on the environment.
After receiving his B.S. degree from UT in 1979, Marc Andrus received a master’s in social sciences from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Virginia, and a master of divinity degree from Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria. He’s been a regional planner as well as serving several Episcopal institutions as a priest or rector. He was Bishop Suffragan for the Episcopal Diocese in Alabama before going to San Francisco as bishop in 2006. He has announced he will retire in 2024 and eventually move to Staunton, Virginia.
Andrus enjoys talking about his activist role in his work for ecojustice.
In Paris in 2015, where nations gathered at COP21 at the Parc des Expositions and reached an agreement to set voluntary goals for reducing global warming, Andrus was part of an inter-religious group that advocated for the policy.
What he described as a “pop-up” worship service, complete with umbrellas, featured “musical offerings, time for reflection, meditation and sharing in the public square – a beautiful beginning for the Episcopal Church at COP.”
Former President Donald Trump withdrew from the Paris agreement in 2020, but President Joe Biden has returned to it.
Similar support for climate change initiatives were held at UN Climate Conferences in Morocco, Germany and Poland in subsequent years. In Katowice, Poland, many residents are transitioning away from coal mining as an occupation and need help finding new jobs while older miners need pensions, he said.
Supporting the miners’ efforts showed how bringing about clean energy also promotes new opportunities, he said.
The importance of simply planting trees
The simple act of planting trees is really like planting a new community, he said. Once the trees are planted and remain there, the environment is cooler. In developed areas, this allows for fewer cars and less parking, which helps reduce carbon emissions.
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“In Knoxville when it’s over 100 degrees, the majority of Knoxvillians in low-income areas are hotter than those in higher-incomes areas. The reason is all those trees,” he said.
At the recent Lambeth Conference, the Communion Forest was launched in palace gardens that had been gardened or farmed for over 1,000 years, but the grass was now brown and withered due to the heat and drought, Andrus wrote in a message to his Diocese.
“Not only was the Communion Forest initiative well received by the bishops and spouses, I also was able to witness that everywhere across the Communion, bishops and spouses recognize the climate emergency as one of their central concerns. At last, I believe the Anglican Communion and the Episcopal Church, while the actions on climate will be highly diverse, I believe we will continue to emphasize ecojustice, the ways that environmental degradation and climate change disproportionately weigh on already vulnerable populations,” he said.
Georgiana Vines is retired News Sentinel associate editor. She may be reached at gvpolitics@hotmail.com.
This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Vines: Episcopal bishop credits upbringing for environmental interest
