How are faith-based institutions transforming the fight for environmental justice?

Can the religion and ecology movement actually reverse climate change damage?

Discover how the “religion and ecology” movement unites spirituality with environmental activism. Learn why scholars and leaders like Karenna Gore believe interfaith cooperation is the missing link to solving the climate crisis. Join the movement to bridge the gap between faith and science—read on to see how your spiritual community can become a pivotal player in saving the planet.

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Human-caused climate change spurs extreme weather events – which keep getting worse. Such crises disproportionately affect poor, vulnerable people. Karenna Gore – founder of the Center for Earth Ethics at the Union Theological Center in New York and daughter of former US Vice President Al Gore, an international leader on the environment – calls for advocates to tackle climate emergencies the way they fought in the civil rights movement, on an interfaith basis where people united in a common cause. This emerging “religion and ecology” movement seeks to link faith traditions with environmentalism to focus people on being Earth’s stewards.

Take-Aways

• The climate crisis demands a response that combines spirituality, politics, and environmentalism.
• As the effects of climate change worsen, faith-based institutions are becoming crucial actors.
• Progress on climate change demands an active commitment to all life on Earth.
• Religious leaders can address the climate crisis in three modes: “Prophetic, pastoral, and practical.”

Summary

The climate crisis demands a response that combines spirituality, politics and environmentalism.

Experts agree that the increasing number of catastrophic weather events is a consequence of human practices. Speaking in New York at an interfaith conference on how to prepare for climate change, lawyer and activist Karenna Gore noted that disasters like hurricanes (and as she spoke in 2022, Hurricane Ian was aiming at Florida) are typically most ruinous for poor people – those least involved in causing them.

“[Karenna Gore] equated climate action with social justice and summoned the civil rights movement, which inspired people of all religions to transcend their differences and answer a call of conscience.”

Gore insists that responding to climate change requires an interfaith approach. With this in mind, in 2015 she founded the Center for Earth Ethics at New York’s Union Theological Seminary, which is affiliated with Columbia University. The Center’s purpose is to bring the world’s great “faith and wisdom traditions” to bear on addressing climate change. Indeed, Gore and the Center helped give rise to an increasingly influential academic movement called “religion and ecology” that seeks to help people feel more connected with the Earth and more inclined to revere and preserve its life systems.

As the effects of climate change worsen, faith-based institutions are becoming crucial actors.

The connection between religion and the natural world is hardly new. Since ancient times, people have understood their relationship to the basic forces of “water, wind, fire, and land” as being mediated by some form of divinity. In some sense, humans are the natural world – and they need that natural world in order to stay alive. Though climate change is a moral issue, it is also an existential one.

“As climate-linked weather events intensify and carbon emissions continue to rise globally, faith-based communities and institutions are emerging as pivotal players in the bid for environmental salvation.”

In 2021, President Joe Biden acknowledged that legacy Indigenous teachings about the environment are a crucial component of the political response to climate change. More surprisingly, in 2022 the National Association of Evangelicals produced a document arguing for biblical justification for environmental protection. And around the world, governments have legally acknowledged the status of natural sites – such as rivers – that local Indigenous people regard as sacred.

Progress on climate change demands an active commitment to all life on Earth.

According to Yale historian of religion Mary Evelyn Tucker, the movement to address climate change must harness the moral and spiritual depth of all the world’s religions. Today, 85% of Earth’s population say they are associated with a religion. Of the world’s eight billion people, 2.3 billion are Christians, 1.8 billion are Muslims, more than a billion are Hindus, another billion are Confucians, 500 million are Buddhists, 14 million are Jews, 400 million observe regional religions, and millions more follow other spiritual or religious traditions, such as Sikhism, Bahaism, and Jainism.

Tucker fostered the religion and environment movement, but not alone. She led the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology with her husband and co-author John Grim. She collaborated with Catholic monk Thomas Berry, who wrote compellingly of “human-Earth relations,” and with Asian religions professor Theodore de Bary, who pioneered Asian studies in the West.

“Tucker notes that all the world’s religions have ecological components, from Hindu principles of asceticism and loving devotion toward nature to Buddhist concepts of interconnection and compassion…[and] all religions are broadening their teachings and practices in order to meet the ecological challenge.”

Attorney Martin S. Kaplan, a 25-year crusader for Berry’s embrace of all Earth’s life systems, steered Tucker to seek funding that enabled her to increase the number of her environment and religion conferences at Harvard Divinity School from three a year to ten, effectively launching this movement.

Just engaging with scientists or government policy wonks is not enough when you’re addressing climate change and its cascading crises. People need to make an authentic investment in human life and the rest of Earth’s ecosystems. In order for religious leaders to speak to their congregations wisely and frequently about climate change, the issues and informed research about them must be easily accessible.

Religious leaders can address the climate crisis in three modes: “Prophetic, pastoral and practical.”

Climate change is a psychological, emotional, moral, economic, and environmental issue. According to polls, climate justice is politically important to religious Americans, and society is seeing “new expressions of eco-spirituality.” Young people especially grasp that human activities led to climate change, and this knowledge generates anxiety and despair. They demand “eco-justice,” with special attention to vulnerable and marginalized communities.

“The reenchantment with the Earth as a living reality is the condition for our rescue of the Earth.” (Thomas Berry)

Religious leaders can engage with the issues around climate change from prophetic, pastoral, and practical perspectives. The prophetic approach means talking about climate change in terms of real value, not economic value. The pastoral path requires addressing its emotional impact. The practical channel involves taking specific actions, like advocating for a reduction in fossil fuel use. Religious institutions are seeking ways to be spiritually resonant and ecologically relevant. Perhaps spiritual teachings about climate change can be the bridge that reconnects people with the natural world.

About the Author

Paul Hond is an associate editor at Columbia Magazine, as well as the author of two novels, The Baker and Mothers and Sons.