WHEN HEAVEN MEETS EARTH:
Faith and the Environment in the Chesapeake Bay

Farmers and watermen of the Chesapeake Bay watershed share a common struggle to live off the Bay’s resources and to maintain their cultural identities. Both communities felt they were losing their cultural and economic way of life and that the environmentalists of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation were responsible for their problems. When Heaven Meets Earth chronicles Susan Drake Emmerich’s faith-based stewardship approach to resolving the conflict between environmentalists, farmers and watermen, and the dramatic transformation of the faith and resource-dependent communities of Tangier Island, VA and Sideling Hill Creek, PA toward greater stewardship of land, water, fish and local economy based on their biblical faith. .

The watermen made a covenant to change their ways from taking illegally sized crabs and illegal amounts of crabs as well as polluting the Bay to maintaining the fishery laws and cleaning-up the Bay. Kara Unger Ball of the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, Susan Emmerich and the leaders of the Tangier Watermen’s Stewardship for the Chesapeake (TaSC) met with farmers in Maryland and Pennsylvania to share their story which included the biblical stewardship message and their covenant. Badly managed farms can dump manure, pesticides and silt into rivers and streams. These streams end up in the Chesapeake Bay where run-off kills sea grass beds, crabs and oysters and other wildlife. Farmers were invited to Tangier Island to witness the watermen and their struggles. Later, those same farmers pledged their own stewardship covenant and a series of land-use commitments to better steward their farms and adjacent waterways in order to care for their neighbors down the Bay, thus implementing the biblical principle of loving your neighbor as yourself.

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To purchase a DVD, or to arrange for broadcast rights, call:
1-608-445-2005 or
1-866-SKUNKFILMS

For information on Tangier Island and the Stewardship Initiative,
Contact Susan Drake Emmerich at: sdemmerich@yahoo.com