How would you describe the church's ministry with these miners going forward?
Our church is faced with a long-range pastoral challenge: how to help miners and their families become aware of their situation so that they themselves become instrumental in changing it. Our task as a church is to educate and to accompany, because our members are miners. There is a living spirit of solidarity among our people, a willingness to reach out to each other and help each other out. Our educational task is to help our members place that spirit of solidarity in the larger social and economic context in which we live, so that we can begin to transform our world.
For example?
We are also deeply concerned as a church to see that our government has granted permission to a Canadian company, Barrick Gold, to begin open-pit mining in Pascua Lama on the border with Argentina. This project will demand great quantities of glacial water. We are deeply concerned that this new mining activity in this highly sensitive environment will lead to the destruction of these glaciers. The water from these glaciers forms the rivers that give us life. Our church and many other groups have joined together to oppose this new enterprise.
What have you as a church learned from this experience?
As miners, as citizens, as Christians, we have rediscovered the theology of creation as opposed to a theology of redemption that is concerned only with the salvation of the soul. In our Presbyterian concern for life we have discovered that, really, a theology of creation is far more important, because it takes into account the other person and the permanence of the Earth for future generations. Sometimes we seem to have forgotten that people were the last ones to come to this beautiful creation that God has made.
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