Upper Keys Earth Day festival unites faith and science communities

Coral Isles Church in Tavernier turned its grounds into a rare common space for pastors, scientists and environmental advocates Saturday, as the third Upper Keys Earth Day Festival linked stewardship talk to the daily realities of erosion, flooding and water quality in Monroe County.

The event was co-hosted by Burton Memorial United Methodist Church and Coral Isles Church of Christ and ran from noon to 4 p.m. at 90001 Overseas Highway. Its theme, Environmental Awareness: Educating and Empowering Our Community, fit a county where U.S. 1, canals and shoreline neighborhoods are directly exposed to wave energy, storm surge, flooding and sea-level-rise impacts.

Pastor David Charlton said holding the celebration on church grounds was itself a message. “By holding the Earth Day celebration on church grounds, we are making the statement that faith and environmentalism do go together,” he said. Charlton also said faith and science belong in the same conversation, explaining that faith gives people the responsibility to care for the Earth while science shows them how to do it.

That approach matters in the Upper Keys because Monroe County’s own resiliency planning identifies six revetment areas along U.S. 1 as vulnerable to erosion and wave energy. The county’s sustainability work also includes a comprehensive canal restoration project aimed at improving water quality, along with roads-adaptation planning and oversight of solid waste and recycling. In a place where storm recovery and environmental management overlap, those are not abstract policy lines. They shape how families drive, how neighborhoods drain and how quickly water can move through the islands after a storm.

Barbara Overton, chair of the Coral Isles Mission Committee, helped organize the festival as part of a broader effort to put faith communities, scientists and environmental groups in the same room instead of on opposite sides of a debate. The festival built on a similar Upper Keys Earth Day collaboration in 2024, when Charlton, Bruce Havens and marine biologist Jodie Cerra joined forces with sermons and afternoon Earth Day festivities at Coral Isles Church.

In the Upper Keys, where environmental choices show up in flooded roads, stressed canals and the health of Florida Bay, the festival offered a familiar local lesson: protection of the islands is not just a government task or a science project. It is a community practice, and this year’s Earth Day made that case from the church lawn in Tavernier.