Working with Faith-Based Groups to Save the World

During our Warming Watersheds; Water & Energy track at this year’s Winter Training, we invited Beth Stewart from Cahaba River Society and Eleanor DelBene from Interfaith Environmental Initiative of Alabama to come out and talk to us about the success environmental and faith-based groups have had working together. Their inspiring presentations reminded me of an essay I wrote a few years back and have reposted below called What Would Jesus, Buddha, Vishnu or Muhammad Do? How Religious Communities Can Help Save the World from Environmental Disaster.

For more information on Beth and Eleanor’s wonderful presentations about the interfaith working groups they have been coordinating in Alabama and their success educating the public about climate change and the water-energy nexus, check out their presentations from the Warming Watersheds; Water & Energy track at this year’s Winter Training.

I have long been interested in the intersections between religion and the environment. Despite the generally conservative political and social worldviews espoused by many people of faith, I believe that every major religion contains lessons and messages of environmental stewardship. I even wrote my senior thesis at Occidental College about the potential for environmental groups to align with the Religious Right on the issue of climate change.

The essay below was written in June 2007 - about 6 months before I began working for River Network. I wrote the paper as part of a climate change conference I attended at the United Nations in New York. While I still think the general thrust of my reasoning is sound, the essay is laced with simplifications and wide-eyed optimism, and I can see that I’ve learned an awful lot over these last few years! So please take it with a grain of salt.

Although the issue of global climate change is finally gaining the recognition it deserves—as the media coverage of the fourth IPCC report exemplifies—creativity is nonetheless required if we wish to mobilize the public to effectively mitigate the crisis. Every possible strategy needs to be considered and all potential allies must be welcomed into the debate. One problem in the framing of the climate change debate is that many people see the issue politically rather than morally. In order to build the necessary political capital behind averting the climate crisis, we should also aggressively engage the world’s various religious communities to ensure that theologically based moral arguments can reach people who are otherwise uninterested in the issue. As Carl Pope, the Executive Director of The Sierra Club, admitted during a speech he presented at the Symposium on Religion, Science and the Environment, “I would like to close by acknowledging error. Environmentalists must engage with the churches and with faith. We have not.”

Ten years have passed since Carl Pope declared this mistake and now the time for environmentalists to engage the religious communities of the world has never been better—or more pertinent. With the majority of the world’s population ascribing to some form of religion, it is clear that the political views, personal actions, and respective sense of morality for literally billions of people are shaped almost entirely by their respective religions. Working with each of the world’s major religions to articulate specific moral arguments for environmental stewardship could mobilize the public across national lines by conveying the moral urgency of addressing climate change and converting to clean energy. From conservative Christians in the United States to Muslim fisherman in Zanzibar, environmentalists have shown that directly engaging religious communities can make a significant difference in environmental debates.

When the coral reefs surrounding Zanzibar became threatened by ecologically destructive fishing methods, environmentalists struggled to convey the importance of protecting the reefs to the local fishermen. In an area where 99% of the population is Muslim, the environmental organization Care International decided to fuse Islamic teachings and texts with the concept of environmental stewardship. By linking Islam with environmental stewardship, the local fishermen realized the moral imperative of protecting their environment and began adapting their fishing methods accordingly (Dickinson). Because Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world, combining the need to address climate change with Islamic morality can help garner support for climate change mitigation within numerous developing countries. Since many citizens in the developing world have not reached the degree of material wealth typically associated with post-material values (of which environmental stewardship is generally included), “eco-Islam” could prompt citizens and policy makers in these countries to embrace the urgent need for sustainable development.

In the United States, the politically powerful Christian Right has long hindered progress on addressing global climate change and its anthropogenic causes. By relentlessly supporting the environmentally hostile Republican Party, many of the Christian Right’s leaders have used scientifically erroneous and Biblically superficial arguments to obstruct the efforts of environmentalists. From Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe to President George W. Bush, the Christian Right has consistently thrown its support behind politicians who have openly resented the environmental movement and its efforts to reduce carbon emissions. Over the past year, however, a dialogue has opened up between conservative Christians and scientists. Some of the Christian Right’s most powerful leaders are creating a moral mandate around climate change by calling on their fellow Christians to reconsider their wasteful habits and demand immediate governmental action.

In February 2006, eighty-six Evangelical Christian leaders—most of whom are self-identified Republicans and social conservatives—established the Evangelical Climate Initiative (ECI) and signed “Climate Change: An Evangelical Call to Action.” Claiming that, “Christian moral convictions demand our response to climate change problems,” the socially conservative signatories of the “Call to Action” based their progressive environmental principles on a Biblically supported moral foundation. For the first time in such a public display, prominent conservative evangelicals were calling on their fellow Christians to take up the fight against global climate change—an issue many conservative Christians long associated with secular liberals (Saunders). Consequently, the ECI immediately sent shockwaves through Washington since, “this was the first major issue on which important evangelical leaders had broken with the Republican right” (McKibben).

This break with the Republican Right has not gone unnoticed and there are numerous signs that the involvement of conservative Christians in the climate change debate has been beneficial. A poll conducted by the ECI surveyed 1,000 evangelicals and found that seven out of ten “believe climate change will pose a serious threat to future generations,” while two-thirds believe global warming is already taking place (Mieszkowski). Even Pat Robertson, a televangelist who initially called for a retraction of the ECI, announced on August 2, 2006 during an episode of The 700 Club that, “I have not been one who believed in the global warming. But I tell you, they are making a convert out of me…we really need to address the burning of fossils fuels.”

Perhaps sensing this change from his political base of conservative Christians, President Bush recently acknowledged the existence of global warming—a drastic departure from his previous policy of outright denial. Furthermore, after staying officially neutral on climate change for years, the largest organization of evangelical Christians in the United States, the National Association of Evangelicals, took a cue from the ECI and recently “announced a joint effort with scientific groups to urge stronger efforts by the government to protect the global environment” (Gonzalez).

History has shown that religions are among the most powerful institutions in society, continuously and profoundly shaping the trajectory of world history. By scouring religious texts and engaging an assortment of religious leaders, moral arguments for environmental stewardship—specifically the need to address climate change—could be convincingly articulated in order to mobilize religious believers. Although scientists might contest the efficacy of spiritual beliefs to avert this crisis, there is no denying the political power that religious institutions possess when they are focused on a moral issue. Besides, with a problem as daunting as global warming, the world needs every prayer it can get.

Gonzales, Maria. "Evangelical, Scientific Leaders Launch Effort to Protect Environment." NAE.Net. 17 Jan. 2007. National Association of Evangelicals. 13 Apr. 2007 <http://www.nae.net/index.cfm?FUSEACTION=editor.page&page ID=413&idCategory=1>.

McKibben, Bill. "Hot and Bothered." The Christian Century 123.14 (2007): 28-31. ProQuest. Occidental College Library, Los Angeles. 15 Jan. 2007.

Mieszkowski, Katharine. "Christians' Burning Issue." Salon 9 Feb. 2006. 15 Apr. 2007 http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/02/09/evangelicals/.

Pope, Carl. "Religion and the Environment." Symposium on Religion, Science and the Environment. Santa Barbara. 6 Nov. 1999. 25 Mar. 2007 http://www.christianecology.org/CarlPope.html.

Saunders, Bill. "Evangelicals Should Not Be Fooled by Global Warming Hysterics." Human Events 62.38 (2006). 12 Feb. 2007 <http://www.humanevents.com/ article.php?print=yes&id=17864>.