LET THERE BE SOLAR: Faith communities are taking action--both personal, like installing solar panels on church rooftops, and political--as the moral implications of climate change become more apparent.
Image: iStockPhoto
Give us all a reverence for the Earth as your own creation, that we may use its resources rightly in the service of others and to your honor and glory.
The prayer was recited regularly by a young Sally Bingham growing up in San Francisco.
Only years later, as an ordained Episcopal Church priest, did Bingham realize something was amiss with the childhood supplication.
"There was this terrible hypocrisy," she said. "This disconnect between what we said we believed in and how we behaved."
This bothered her for years until 1998 when, in her 50s, she finally took action.
Bingham founded what today is Interfaith Power and Light, a national campaign promoting "a religious response to global warming" that works with 10,000 congregations in 38 states.
"Climate change is one of the most challenging moral issues of our time," she said in an Earth Day sermon at San Francisco's Grace Cathedral where she is now Reverend Canon for the Environment.
Faith communities around the world are taking action - both personal and political - as the moral implications of climate change become more apparent.
While politics is split on climate change and governments worldwide have failed to pass meaningful climate legislation, faith communities are becoming a powerful force in the transition to green energy. By focusing on values rather than politics, they are transcending partisan pigeonholes and taking care of what they see as God's creation, and the people - particularly the poor - who depend on it.
"If you are called to love your neighbor, you don't pollute your neighbor's air," Bingham said.
More than 300 evangelical leaders have signed the Evangelical Environmental Network's climate call to action, including mega-church leaders like Rick Warren and Bill Hybels. A 2007 poll commissioned by the group found that 84 percent of evangelicals support legislation to reduce carbon emissions.
While mainline Protestants, Roman Catholics and Reformed Jews may have a stronger environmental presence, according to religious political scholar John C. Green, evangelicals - 26 percent of the U.S. population - are the most influential religious environmental faction.
"As evangelicals become more vocal on climate change, they have the potential to alter the position of the Republican party," said Green, director of the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics for Religious Studies at the University of Akron and senior fellow at Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.
But it's not there yet.
Religious political sway wasn't enough to push climate legislation through Congress this year. And a Pew Research Center Poll of 3,000 respondents found that most religious environmentalists do not derive their green leanings from their faith. Solid majorities of all major religious traditions favor strong environmental laws and regulations, according to the poll, and just under half of those who attend worship services regularly say their clergy speaks out on the topic. Yet the poll found that only six percent said their environmental views were primarily influenced by religion. Education and the media were more influential.
The poll, conducted over the summer, had a margin of error of 2.5 percent.
Still, Dan Lashof, Climate Center director for the National Resources Defense Council, sees results from political action in faith communities.
"It has a significant impact," said Lashof. "Faith communities put a high priority on ensuring that the United States makes a fair contribution to global efforts to address the impacts of climate change in developing countries."
President Obama's 2011 budget reflects the religious influence, Lashof said, with $1.9 billion requested for international climate adaptation. The U.S. Senate this summer released 2011 budget recommendations for over $1.2 billion in "fast start" investments for developing countries to address the impacts of climate change, speed a shift to clean energy and reduce tropical deforestation - part of the U.S. commitment to the Copenhagen Accord.
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21 Comments
Add Comment@"And a Pew Research Center Poll of 3,000 respondents found that most religious environmentalists do not derive their green leanings from their faith." the religious support of the republican party is proof that religious ideology and behaviour having nothing to do with one another. If there was such a person as Christ and he lived today he would through the republicans out of the temple. The party of hate, greed and intolerance is as far from Christ's teachings as you can get. But, if you are hateful, greedy and intolerant, going to church every week might just ease your conscience a bit.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think that Schmidty is spot-on regarding the hypocritical politics of the faith-based, "family values" mega-church crowd.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBloated "god n' guns" hyper-religous Americans are the ultimate consumers and despoilers... and to make matters even worse, could care less cuz they're "rapture ready". It bodes poorly for conservation when the majority of thIS society not only have an imaginary pal (jeebus) and profess belief in a sky-god lacking any evidence... but believe the "end times" are neigh as well.
As the author of this piece correctly observed: there is a huge disconnect (chasm) between so-called christian beliefs and behavior. However, as the astute iconoclast Robert Green Ingersoll wryly observed, hypocrisy is a hallmark of the faith-based pew-lemmings.
IF... and that's a big one... the deluded church-goers actually seriously viewed planet earth as their sky-god's property worthy of our best stewardship, then we would be "green" and on our way to sustainabilty within a generation. Maybe a return visit from jeebus, the holy ghost, or the blessed virgin sans grilled cheese sandwich, would do the trick, eh?
CHEERS!
I must admit, Evangelicals in my area tend to be more about hate/fear/get out of jail free cards than productive members of a community like they aparently are in San Fransisco. So when I see things like this happen, it is a relief, but I fear so much what this means for our country.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Green agrees. Religious leaders, he said, "can cast environmental issues in religious language... rather than couching it in scientific language which appeals to scientists but might not necessarily appeal to religious people.""
There is a BIG problem with this statement. Science has been cast out as something that people can pick and choose, they made it something they can believe, or have faith in. They are sullying science. Just the fact that science doesn't "appeal" to people is a huge injustice to how far science has brought humanity.
You know, I grew up on Scientific American. My parents bought me a subscription and an article I read 12 years ago put me on the educational path that I am on now.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat said, what became of it? When did science take a backseat to this climate change propaganda? 2/3 of the articles in the RSS feed are about climate change nonsense - what would you write about if this wasn't consuming so much of Scientific American's resources? How many future scientists are lost, as the major discoveries are being brushed aside as this religion gets first billing?
It saddens me to see so much lost in this false faith and I wish this magazine would get back to its roots.
The issues of potential climate change are ones based around science and economics not political parties or religion. Scientific American (IMO) is trying to create a religious like following around the issue, but does not do so from a scientific basis. If you wish to read more about the science check out
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=can-faith-slow-climate-change
I faith can turn the creation of the universe into an event that's only 5000 years old instead of 15 billion years, then why can't it cure climate change? Seems perfectly reasonable. Unless, of course, God has a reason for climate change in which case nothing we do is going to change anything, let alone the climate.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPar for the course. Religious folks supporting science, and science fan fundies throw the baby out with the bath water. I don't like religious fanatics any more than you athiests do, but I'm not stupid enough to bash them when they take my side...and these folks don't sound like fanatics, anyway.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm not saying YOU are stupid, but your attitude is the epitome of hate based ignorance. Yeah, tell them how stupid and horrid they are, that'll win 'em over.
It does not hurt when they take your side, but it does hurt science in general when they set up these ways of dealing with it, of illegitimizing it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisApparently you're unable to see the zillion articles about everything else scientific. If you think scientists are just shills for politicians (and what, the New World Order Socialist Muslims) you need to subscribe to Cognitive Science Weekly.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere's no religion of climate change. There's a howling pack of frightened scientists who are just now waking up to how badly political brainwashing has damaged the scientific literacy of the public, like you.
Full Quiver movement, large Muslim families, African resistance to disease remedies, vaccinations, condoms encouraged by the Vatican. How do you think a burgeoning population helps C02?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe're over the edge. We don't need God, because Mother Nature is acting: hurricanes, cholera, polio (pretty direct punishment for stupidity).
Climate change is a done deal. Compensating for it is probably beyond peaceful and humane solutions, since the foot-dragging of the comfortable consumers of the West has guaranteed CO2 will rise to levels that will cause at least a 6 degree centigrade rise (about ten Fahrenheit).
Food supplies, already cruelly mis-distributed, will run short, as nations jockey for position. With its weaponry, the USA will starve last, although not without turmoil that will force a 1984 security state.
Enjoy, O religious, and those who can't think because faith, and the techniques to protect it, were taught them by religious educators.
Religious education is child abuse, leading to fanatic behavior.
Religion poisons everything, and our society is stunted as a result.
If you don't really understand a problem and there is probably nothing you can do about it anyway, attacking it with imaginary forces might be a better idea than wasting real resources on it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHaving taught a class on the Bible and the Environment (lecture notes are available from my website www.environmental-law.net), my experience has been that one of the big problems is that many people of faith have great distrust of the environmental community because they tend to occupy opposite ends of the political spectrum. Focusing on the Bibical passages that support climate change action can help somewhat but there is a tendency to believe that the interpretation is flawed by leftist agenda.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisImaginary problem- imaginary cure.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou forgot your link to the Rush Limbaugh site.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe whole concept of global warming fits perfectly into a religious viewpoint. First off, there is the concept that this world was created by a deity for a specific purpose and created much as it still is today. This is opposed to the viewpoint of geology and evolution where the world is the product of random forces and is subject to constant change i.e. , there is no static state to preserve- it just supposed to do what it does- including us. The world, including our climate was and always will be changing as geology and paleontology reveal. This carries us to my next point. From a religious point of view man is a steward of this world- responsible for the upkeep as it were, but from the standpoint of evolution biology we are just another out growth of this world- and what we do it just as natural as anything else that goes on. From here we go to the philosopher Zizek- Slavoj Žižek is a Slovenian continental philosopher and critical theorist who has often categorized environmentalism as a new religion, a kind of faith for the faithless where we worship some kind of an idealized mother earth, where we attempt to preserve species on a planet where most of the species that ever existed were extinct before we ever arrived, we preserve rivers and land that have always been changing, and try to maintain a steady-state climate on a planet that has recently experienced two recent ice ages. If you think about it, the environmentalist perspective is kind of twisting of science to the purpose of a new religion. I don't agree with it, but I can understand why it would be very appealing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf God is "the rules" and the rules say >CO2=climate change, then prayer ain't gonna help, unless maybe God will give us five more empty earths...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Religion poisons everything, and our society is stunted as a result.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI like that, has a slogan-like ring. Sounds like something Jefferson would have said.
@letxequalx, the fact that you come here and spew tired B.S. that was refuted long ago shows that not only are you ignorant of climate science, and science in general but you aren't even up to date with your own denialist propaganda. I would have thought the Heritage Foundation would have done a better job at educating you shills but then again, if you could be educated you wouldn't be boring us with your stupid comments. One tip, don't bring a knife to a gun fight. You could at least bring some evidence to back up your point. This is a science site after all. Mindlessly accepting what some idiot says is the hallmark of religion and we wouldn't want to be accused of that.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is an important topic, and a more rigorous approach is merited. The article touches on some polls but without analytic detail, and instead spends more ink on personal anecdote. Links and/or references to support statistics should be provided.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTwo of several examples of unreferenced statements are:
"And a Pew Research Center Poll of 3,000 respondents found that most religious environmentalists do not derive their green leanings from their faith."
"A 2007 poll commissioned by the group found that 84 percent of evangelicals support legislation to reduce carbon emissions."
I thought I could expect Scientific American to provide the public with summaries, commentary and reviews of peer-reviewed investigations. The title of this article led me to expect analysis of carefully conducted social-science research on beliefs and behavior.
I felt anxious as soon as the introductory paragraph was biographical, and downright indignant by the time I got to what is likely to be a false-precision, "10,000 congregations."
Sorry to double post, but it can be useful to separate topics.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTheology does not seem to be a divider among the religious organizations mentioned, when it comes to the ethical value of human responsibility for the environment.
What is missing here is social science research on the hierarchy of the values.
In many historic instances, governments over-rode environmental conservation issues to achieve other goals like national defense or economic recovery.
When religious organizations say facing environmental issues is important, how important is that?
Yes. Let's turn AGW into a secular religion. It resonates very well with religious dogma. Biblical catastrophism to befall those who do not heed God's word. Al Gore is the Pope. IPCC is the Vatican. CO2 is the devil. God said turn away from the devil (CO2) or else it's the end of the world (global warming). It sounds very religious. It will get a lot of religious support.
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