Climate Action & Faith Communities
Fields of Action Series #12.2 — Another Way to be Together Enough
In this post we are talking about climate action and faith communities as we continue exploring how we need to be together enough, the sixth characteristic/imperative/goal of the Climate Movement.
Those whose missions are perceived as moral in nature, especially faith communities, can make vital contributions to all three senses of being together enough: shared goals; a constant supply of action events; meeting together regularly.
They can help their members and supporters connect climate action to their beliefs and values, which is particularly helpful in making the Climate Movement both passionate enough and deep enough, the second and third of our characteristics/imperatives/goals.
Faith communities also nurture our Movement Values of love, justice, beauty, freedom, wisdom, non-violence, and sustainability. In contrast to enviro/climate professionals, they regularly say the M-word (moral) and the L-word (love) out loud without a second thought. Many emphasize that stopping bad stuff, setting wrong right, and making things better, the three actions of justice, are part of a life well lived.
Their credibility can help provide moral legitimacy to the goals and actions of the Climate Movement. This offers crucial support to what we do because the two main sources of our power are our size/numbers and that we are a moral movement. Such moral validation also can strengthen our unity around shared goals. Ordained faith leaders and members of religious orders who join action events in their clerical garb are walking symbols of moral affirmation, for both participants and observers alike. And faith communities can encourage and support their flocks to act on their shared values, including by participating in a Climate Action Team. They can provide guidance on how to organize and run a small group — something they have done for millennia. Local houses of worship can provide meeting space and encouragement.
In all these ways and more, faith communities can help us to be dynamic enough, our fourth characteristic/imperative/goal by offering the tried-and-true wisdom of centuries of experience in how to inculcate values and inspire moral behavior and organize individuals into entities with a common purpose. Keeping passionate people united and disciplined in a moral cause is no easy task, nor is utilizing the M-word and the L-word without sounding screechy, preachy, or goopy and turning some people off. All of this requires creativity and a healthy respect for the freedom of each person. Not all local faith communities do this well, and some even do the opposite.
In keeping with our Climate Movement values of wisdom and pragmatism, we must tap into and work with those faith communities that can help us be dynamic enough, and avoid those who can’t.
Faith communities are themselves organized in entities or units that contain millions and span the globe, all the way down to independent house churches with very small numbers, as small as a handfull. These entities include traditions, branches, schools, and denominations.
Here are some examples (with the oldest faith tradition listed first, etc.):
the Hindu traditions of Shaivism, Shaktism, Smartism, and Vaishnavism;
Judaism’s current branches — Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, and Reconstructionist;
the Theravada and Mahayana schools of Buddhism;
Christian denominations such as the Roman Catholic Church, the Anglican Communion, the Assemblies of God, the Nigerian Baptist Convention, The Apostolic Faith Mission of South Africa, the Presbyterian Church of Korea (Tonghap), the Indonesian Bethel Church, and the African-Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church;
Sunni Muslims and the Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi’I and Hanbali schools, and Shia Muslims and the Ja’fari and Zaydi schools;
parachurch organizations, like the Salvation Army, and Islamic Relief;
networks/associations;
faith-based educational institutions, like pre-K schools on up to colleges and universities, and;
local faith communities and houses of worship.
Given their numbers that span every corner of the globe, faith communities can help us to be big and broad and active enough, our first movement characteristic/imperative/goal.
They can engage in a variety of ways, including issuing statements and documents such as Loving the Least of These by the National Association of Evangelicals in the US, or The Islamic Declaration on Global Climate Change, calling for climate action based on their beliefs and values.
The most well-known are from Pope Francis, Laudato Si, published in 2015, and Laudate Deum, published in October 2023.
Such statements can be studied and reflected upon and discussed by Climate Action Teams, helping us be deep enough and keeping us together enough, long enough.
Professional religious staff at all these various levels can devote some or all of their time on climate action, including organizing, educating, and policy advocacy.
Parachurch organizations can focus on climate action. Examples from the US include: the Catholic Climate Covenant, the Evangelical Environmental Network (EEN), Creation Justice Ministries, the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life (COEJL), and Green Muslims. International examples include Climate Stewards, Christian Climate Action in the UK, MOPAWI in Honduras, and Eagles in Malawi.
Just like civil society NGOs and professional associations, faith communities can help make us organic and strategic enough, our fifth characteristic/imperative/goal. They can do so by employing their distinctive moral authority and their broad-based reach to help us influence policymakers, other decision-makers, and Climate Action Supporters no one else has been able to.
Faith communities at each of these levels of organization can be the seedbed for Climate Action Teams.
Finally, faith traditions and communities can provide other sources of hope for their adherents engaged in Climate Action. The wellsprings of hope are the beliefs and values they hold, such as loving others, caring for the poor and vulnerable, and their belief in God or the divine or what is greater than ourselves, trusting that this higher power is with them every step of the way.
And it is not just faith adherents who receive hope from these sources. Others can as well, buoyed by observing the trust, beliefs, and actions of the faithful, and from their own sense of the rightness of certain teachings, such as the call to love others, seek justice for the less fortunate, and care for the rest of nature. In this hope springs from our common ground for creating the common good.
Faith communities can provide tremendous benefits to the Climate Movement and can play key roles in our success.
However, two notes of realism must be sounded.
First, faith communities are made up of flawed people — just like every other human institution. Some lack the courage of their convictions. Others are not our friends, and can even be our adversaries. A few individuals are attracted to moral authority for its power and prestige and can cause significant damage if they are able to wield it. There can be wolves in sheep’s clothing.
Second, it is our cause and our purpose and Major Goal and our Climate Movement Values of love, justice, beauty, freedom, creativity, wisdom, pragmatism, non-violence, sustainability, and success that make us a moral movement — and not validation from faith communities. We are about overcoming climate change by creating a just and prosperous sustainability that enhances wellbeing for everyone and everything. We are about stopping bad stuff, setting wrong right, and making things better, the three demands, desires, and actions of justice, no matter what anyone or any group says. We are a moral movement, and our cause is the greatest of our time — with them or without them.
But we are better with them. I believe the world’s faith traditions when properly understood and put into practice will help us run the race with perseverance, will support our efforts as Climate Artist-Athletes on all of our Olympian Fields of Action.
We help each other become what we are called to be. That is certainly true for me.
If you are new here, check out our Intro Series, as well as other posts in this Olympian Fields of Action Series. If you like this post, please “like,” comment, and share. And thanks for all you’re doing.
“ Faith communities can provide tremendous benefits to the Climate Movement and can play key roles in our success.”