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.

My young daughter is a dedicated fan of the TLC program Jon and Kate Plus Eight, a reality show of a wholesome family with a set of twins and a set of sextuplets.  Over the weekend, TLC ran a marathon of four seasons of the show leading up to the beginning of its fifth season on Monday night.  I confess--I spent a good number of hours watching the reruns with her. 

Rather unbelievably, the fourth season ended with parents Jon and Kate Gosselin renewing their wedding vows and--within just a few weeks--a tabloid explosion of scandalous rumors of the couple's marriage failing apart amid allegations of affairs.  In the world of reality TV, news doesn't get much bigger than this.  For months, fans, bloggers, and the tabloid press have been speculating:  How would season five open?  Would Jon and Kate stay together?  Would they get divorced? 

The scandal is exacerbated by the fact that Jon and Kate are evangelical Christians.  The Gosselins are folk heroes in the evangelical community--their sextuplets were the result of infertility treatments during which they refused selective abortion and carried all six babies to term.  TLC downplays the religious aspects of the show, but legions of conservative church-going fans delighted in Kate's stern discipline, cheered Jon wearing T-shirts emblazoned with Bible verses, and devoured the couple's Christian parenting books.  The show is something strangely compelling--the cute little kids and the endlessly cranky parents trying hard to make a good Christian family. 

The new season's opening episode recorded a familial train wreck.  Indeed, Jon barely participated in his sextuplet's fifth birthday while an emotionally drained Kate struggled alone to pull of the party.   In individual interviews, the couple talked about how hard their relationship is--how they've become "different" people--and how divorce was a distinct possibility.

As I watched, I recalled another show--An American Family--the original family reality show that PBS aired in 1973.  Conceived as a video diary of a liberal middle-class American family, the Louds of Santa Barbara, the program quickly devolved into the chronicle of crisis--complete with boundary-pushing teens and the wife confronting her philandering husband and demanding a divorce.  The Louds made big news--including the cover of Newsweek on the breakdown of the American family.

Which, of course, brings us back to Jon and Kate.  If the Loud saga depicted the crisis of the liberal 1970s family, what does Jon and Kate's tale reveal about the state of the evangelical family?  Is this where their politics of "family values" have taken conservative evangelicals?  Are the Gosselins the Louds of the Christian right?  

In Jon and Kate's case, evangelical gender expectations seem to be the root of their troubles: they reversed the parental roles.  After a couple of seasons, Jon decided to stay at home and Kate went on the road to promote the show and their books.  The choice made Jon increasingly sullen and Kate happier and began to wear at their relationship.   For evangelicals, this is an unusual arrangement that leaves the husband open to charges of "feminization" and the wife of being difficult.  The Gosselin's tensions demonstrate how unsuccessfully conservative religious groups have been dealing with gender--and how when a woman like Kate Gosselin breaks with tradition in order to pursue what she loves--even when her business is family and motherhood--she gets both blamed and punished for problems in her relationships. 

Kate kept saying, "it is so complex; it is so difficult," unable to stop her tears.  In a way, she embodies many evangelical women who struggle between the role of homemaker that their churches assign them and of finding interesting and creative work in the world.   Kate, despite all her pretentions to tradition, is actually a very contemporary woman with feminist inclinations--one who is figuring out that her theology is at odds with the way life works out.  She often violates the mores of a nice evangelical mom (which I think is part of the appeal; she is, in many ways, an evangelical fantasy mother).  She clearly likes travel, Oprah interviews, and book signings.  Staying at home with eight kids can be a drag, so she left her husband with them only to find out that there may have been a girlfriend, too.  Success, good children, happy marriage--are they all possible within her theological framework?  "I have a lot of anger," she said on Monday's program.  I bet. 

How dreary it is to watch a relationship implode on national television.  In some measure, the failure is theirs.  But the conservative evangelical community shares some of that failure, too.  The religious world to which Jon and Kate belong never successfully navigated the gender changes of the last three decades, insisting that happiness can still be found in hierarchical roles of male superiority and female submission.  Having rejected feminist theology, evangelicals can't really navigate contemporary marriage issues like those facing Jon and Kate.  They made celebrities of the Gosselins for being traditionalists, yet that success eroded the very basis of the traditionalism on which their family was based.  Now, the woman is criticized for that same success by an increasingly cruel media and tabloid press.   I just wonder if all those church people will turn on you next.   

You are right, Kate.  It is complex and difficult.  It makes me angry for you.

I am a feminist because of my mother.   Marylu DeWatteville Raushenbush showed me that a woman is capable of doing anything, and that she should have every right to do what she wants, in every society, everywhere - period.  

My mother was making more money than my father when they first got married but it was decided that my father would pursue his law career while my mother was charged with the more burdensome task of raising four rowdy, opinionated and sometimes reckless children.   I remember the first time hearing of the decision to put my father's career over my mother's and wondering what kind of life she would have had if my mother had stayed with her career and advanced in the field of advertising as she surely would have.  It is pure conjecture to think that it might have given a supplemental pride to the raising of her children - a task for which our appreciation at the time was muted - but she has never said that.

Instead my mother immediately involved herself in our local community of Madison Wisconsin.  So visible were her efforts that she was appointed to the Mayoral commission on Human Rights in the late 60's - a distinction of which I was unaware of for the first 43 years of my life (I'm 44 now).  Marylu was part of the NAACP and fought for fair housing; and she organized the first Planned Parenthood chapter in Wisconsin seeking the right to purchase contraceptives which were illegal at that time.   While my admiring gaze was focused on the work of my father in his office of the Wisconsin Law School, my mother was in the streets and lobbying the capitol making Madison a better place for its citizens.      

I am a religious person because of my mother.  Marylu was a Presbyterian and she made sure that all of us went to church for the first 16 years of our lives.  If we chose not to be confirmed then we were allowed to stop going at that juncture, but because of her we would know what religion was and what a religious community could mean - a lesson for which I am eternally grateful.  My mother also taught me that religious formation is dynamic and never finished.  In her forties and fifties she began an exploration of other traditions and adventured into spiritual terrain that I have yet to travel.  Her life long passion for seeking and loving wisdom and inspiration fuels my own and informs my own work today.

What's more Marylu Raushenbush was an artist.  She was a potter, then a metal worker, and finally hit her stride as a photographer.  One of her national shows was called Women of Consequence - USA-USSR.  It featured women from the United States and the then Soviet Union, including photographs of Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and actress Julie Harris, as well as influential counterparts in the Soviet Union.   Her aesthetic eye formed my own as she took us to museums and to cultural events in order to civilize us and show us that a full life consisted of understanding and appreciating art. 

If you can't tell, I feel so much love and indebtedness to my mother - Marylu DeWatteville Raushenbush. I appreciate you reading this post.  Everyone has their own stories about their mother or those people, male or female, who mothered them.  While we should send them a card and flowers (I did!), we should also remember that motherhood, and women's roles are still a crucial issue around the world.  Women should be able to choose what kind of life they want to build for themselves.  Everyone celebrating mother's day should be a feminist.  Until mothers have every right that fathers do, it won't be a fully happy mother's day.