Sung-ok Lee is the Assistant General Secretary of the Section of Christian Social Action, Women's Division of the United Methodist Women.

For many in government and industry circles, the discussion around the topic of climate change crisis focuses on energy efficiency, cap and trades and adjusting environmental policy to meet financial and economic ends.  For people all over the world, it's a very real crisis, the effects of which they are already witnessing.  But for many people of faith, including me, climate change is a primary moral challenge of our time, and the upcoming United Nations Summit on Climate Change gives us a unique opportunity to call attention to the need to reverse this dangerous trend.

As believers, we see the need to tackle climate change as a matter of social justice. Yes, it's true that we cherish and want to preserve Creation, but we are also keenly aware that while the poorest 1 billion people on the planet are responsible for only 3 percent of total emissions, they disproportionately bear the brunt of the devastating effects of climate change as their homelands suffer exacerbated droughts and floods, unpredictable rain patterns and crop failures. By contrast, the U.S. and other wealthy nations have benefited greatly from growth and prosperity fueled by carbon-based economies. Although our nation comprises only about 4-5% of the world's population, we are responsible for about 25% of historical emissions. 

I am also concerned about the effects of climate change on women and girls the world over.  This week, the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) released a report called State of World Population 2009.  What it reveals in terms of the impact of global warming on women and girls around the world is startling.  The report points out that the female half of the world's population is indeed disproportionately more affected by the effects of climate change. 

While it's true that all around the planet people are feeling the effects of global warming, women in developing countries are among the most vulnerable because they tend to make up a larger share of the agricultural workforce and typically don't have access to income-generating opportunities.  Because they are in charge of households and family care, women are limited in their mobility, so that when tragedy strikes in the form of weather-related natural disasters, they are highly susceptible to the loss of livelihood, home, loved ones or event their own lives.

UNFPA's report highlights how girls often drop out of school to help their mothers secure food, water and energy.  As climate affects their livelihoods, women often bear the increased financial burden by taking on extra jobs to support their families.  Of greater consequence is that while stuck in this cycle of deprivation, poverty and inequality, these women and girls are unable to build the necessary social capital - like education, political power, and influence in their communities - to effectively take on climate change.

As global leaders gather in Copenhagen next month for the UN Summit on Climate Change, a four-person delegation of United Methodist Women committed to social justice will travel to Denmark to lend their voices to the women and the many others who are not able to attend and speak for themselves.  The team hopes to meet fellow advocates and learn what other organizations and governments the world over are doing to combat climate change.  The delegation will not only to press for strong, binding and fair greenhouse gas emissions targets, but will also demand that the U.S. join other nations to provide adaptation aid to the most vulnerable communities.

It is crucial that the governments of the U.S. and other industrialized nations responsible for greenhouse gas emissions implement effective and comprehensive, science-based approaches to reversing global warming.  As women of faith and advocates for social justice, we see it as our duty to hold global leaders accountable and ask that they assist developing nations to adapt to climate change, address energy poverty, and grow in ways that reduce poverty while protecting the environment.

In her new book Sarah Palin writes that one summer at Bible Camp she "put my life in my creator's hands and trust Him as I sought my life's path." For Palin, this grand divine plan was "a natural progression." She writes. And later, "I don't believe in coincidences."

Which leads me to ask:

What does she believe is God's plan for her? Does she have any free will or is everything preordained. Can she see something coming and change her mind despite God's plans for her?

Did God plan for her to become Governor of Alaska. If so, did God plan for her to step down. Did God plan for her to run for Vice President? If so why did she and McCain lose?

Did God plan for her to have a child with Down's Syndrome? If so why did she consider an abortion? Did God plan for her to have a huge wardrobe? Then why did she apologize for it?

Did God plan for her to do the Katie Couric and Charlie Gibson interviews and be humiliated by them. Did God plan for her to allow herself to be forced, against her will to do those interviews? If so then why complain?
Did God plan for her daughter Bristol to get pregnant while she was a teenager? Why was she then not thrilled. Did God plan for Bristol to get engaged and then break up, only to be left a single mother, dropping out of school?

Did God plan for Levi Johnson to be the father of her grandchild? Did God plan for Levi Johnson, who she now calls Ricky Hollywood, to pose nude for Playgirl and go into "porn" as she told Oprah. If so, why does she find it heartbreaking?

I find it all very confusing. 

Certainly Palin could say that God planned for her to publish a book that would be a huge, bestseller, go on Oprah, and make an enormous amount of money. Why would God choose her? Why would God look at the suffering around the world of so many millions and say, Sarah, I'm going to give you all of this. 

Perhaps God wants more out of Sarah Palin.
You would think that God would ask of her to live her life as an example to others of a compassionate loving, caring person. One of the most powerful examples of God's love in the Bible is that of forgiveness. Turning the other cheek. 

But Palin's book is a screed against everyone who ever done her wrong.
She is angry at the campaign staffer for "forcing her to do things she didn't want to do", she is angry at the media for asking her questions she couldn't answer. She is angry at the father of her grandson for being a foolish teenager. She has used this book and all of her Christian charity to do nothing but settle scores. She names names and calls 'em like she see 'em. And she doesn't see 'em the way God might. They are all of his children.

During the last few days, Psalm 109:8, a Bible verse in the form of a "prayer for Obama," has topped the Google trends chart:  "May his days be few; may another take his office."  Evidently, a bumper sticker emblazoned with this verse has popped up in various parts of the country.  It is a sort of right-wing Christian equivalent to the old "01.20.09" stickers looking forward to the end of the Bush era.

It was, most likely, intended as a joke.  But it isn't really very funny.  Especially since the next verse reads, "May his children be orphans, and his wife a widow."  The passage goes on the same way--asking God to pulverize this poor fellow--that he lose all his worldly goods, that his orphans be abandoned, that his father be remembered as a sinner, and finally, that "his memory be cut off from the earth."

Thus, the "Prayer for Obama," does more than anticipate that he leaves office; it entreats God to destroy the president.

Psalm 109 belongs to a special category of the psalms known as "imprecatory" prayers--it is a lament in the form of petition to destroy one's enemies.  It is the personal prayer of an individual, someone who has been dealt an injustice by another--and usually more powerful--person.  The words of Psalm 109 are those of deep agony, the longings of a victim for retribution and justice.  This psalm is considered one of the most difficult of all the psalms--full of violent images of vengeance and death.   Many a biblical critic has struggled with its words--and not a few--including Roman Catholic and mainline Protestant theologians--recommend that it not be used in public worship, much less as a bumper-sticker political slogan.

In his marvelous book, Reflections on the Psalms, C.S. Lewis observed:

In some of the Psalms the spirit of hatred which strikes us in the face is like the heat from a furnace mouth.  In others the same spirit ceases to be frightful only by becoming (to a modern mind) almost comic in its naivety.  Examples can be found all over the Psalter, but perhaps the worst is in 109 (p. 20).

Lewis suspects that it may be best to leave such psalms alone.  But then he says that we must face "facts squarely." 

The hatred is there--festering, gloating, undisguised--and also we should be wicked if we in any way condoned or approved it, or (worse still) used it to justify similar passions in ourselves (p. 22).

Lewis refers to these psalms as horrible, devilish, cruel, hateful, and evil.  He believes that Psalm 109--and the poetry of its kind in the psalter--should point us back to the evil we carry within and teach us each how to behave with goodness, humility, and love. 

According then, to the venerable C.S. Lewis, a "Prayer for Obama" is really a prayer for ourselves to go beyond "festering, gloating, undisguised" hatred.  "If the Divine does not call to make us better, it will make us very much worse," he reminded his readers,  "Of all bad men, religious bad men are the worst."

Obama's Council on Faith Based Partnerships has fallen off the map - and we need them back.   Nothing exemplifies the sad lack of contribution of this much hailed diverse group of religious leaders than the current impasse on Health Care with the Stupak Abortion amendment. 

Even before President Obama took office he was assembling a team of religious leaders from a wide range of backgrounds to advise him as he proposed to tackle difficult issues such as poverty reduction, health care, war and other moral questions of governance.  Many of us were excited about the prospect of Obama's Faith Council which included such theologically and politically diverse names as Father Snyder of Catholic Charities, Rabbi Saperstein of the Reform Action Committee, Dr. Frank Page former President of the Southern Baptist Convention, and Dr. Sharon Watkins, General Minister of the Disciples of Christ. 

Unlike in the past, Obama's Faith Council was allotted no money to dispense so it was relieved of the political nightmare of accusations of favoritism and could focus on policy questions.  The promise of this group lay in its diversity.  The idea being that if this group could come to some consensus on the important moral issues of the day that it would help inform President Obama's administration to enact policy that reflected, by proxy, the religious wisdom of the vast majority of the American population.

Unfortunately, after a much-publicized announcement and launch, the group has basically been silent.   Apparently the Council is working on a "report" to give to the President sometime next year on the various areas they have been assigned to investigate.  This seems like a classic blow off - "Yes, faith leaders, why don't you go write a report.  I look forward to glancing at it." 

The issues that need moral guidance are on the table now!  By its silence, the President's Council on Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships is acquiescing to its own irrelevancy.    Most Americans and policy makers have assuredly forgotten the council exists - but not those of us who really believed in the possibilities of the group.

The 'Urgency of Now' includes finding a way to a health care bill, address questions of unemployment and foreclosures, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, torture and even balancing gay marriage with freedom of religion.   The time will never be more urgent for the Council's moral voice on these questions.