By Shireen Korkzan

Episcopal News Service

On the final day of the It’s All About Love festival, House of Deputies President Julia Ayala Harris described the July 9-12 gathering as an opportunity to reflect on stories – both personal and churchwide – and to begin to reframe what those stories tell Episcopalians about the fight for climate justice, racial reconciliation and evangelism.

The festival, she noted, followed on the heels of last week’s Episcopal Youth Event, which also took place in Maryland. EYE is an event for teenagers, who, she said, didn’t need any explanation when invited to take part in a healing service, because of the trauma so many experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“They watched racial and social injustice on their screens on their social media,” Ayala Harris said on July 12. “They watched the decline of democracy before their eyes. They saw their friends be victims of transphobia and racism. They’ve witnessed the climate crisis and war.”

Hundreds of Episcopalians from the church’s nine provinces came together for learning, fellowship and worship at It’s All About Love: A Festival for the Jesus Movement, held at the Baltimore Convention Center and Hilton Hotel. The festival featured more than 90 unique presentations, workshops and plenaries organized around evangelism, racial reconciliation and creation care.

On July 11, participants learned about a new story-driven tool to help Episcopalians learn about creation care. Authors and developers described the Episcopal Church’s upcoming Love God, Love God’s World film-based creation care curriculum, which is scheduled to launch around Oct. 4, the feast day of St. Francis, the patron saint of ecology.

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