Church leaders gather in northern Alberta to debate the theological implications of the oil sands
Next week, Church leaders will head to northern Alberta for a multi-denominational fact-finding mission looking at the Athabasca oil sands. The goal—to put the oil sands in a theological context. It’s just one more setback for an energy sector that now finds itself facing a Job-worthy array of difficulties, from economic malaise to poor public relations to a government that doesn’t seem to care. Could the Quakers, Anglicans and Catholics really find something good to say about the oil sands? One is reminded of the first book of John Milton’s Paradise Lost, which says of fallen angel Mammon after he landed on earth that he “Ransack’d the Center, and with impious hands / Rifl’d the bowels of thir mother Earth For Treasures better hid. Soon had his crew / Op’nd into the Hill a spacious wound / And dig’d out ribs of Gold.”