It has been another catastrophic climate year: record-breaking wildfires across Canada scorched an area the size North Dakota, unprecedented rainfall in Libya left thousands dead and displaced, while heat deaths surged in Arizona and severe drought in the Amazon is threatening Indigenous communities and ecosystems.
The science is clear: we must phase out fossil fuels – fast. But time is running out, and as the climate crisis, biodiversity loss and environmental degradation worsen, there is mounting recognition that our political and industry leaders are failing us.
If the science isn’t enough, what role could – or should – faith leaders play in tackling the climate crisis? After all, it is also a spiritual and moral crisis that threatens God’s creation, according to many religious teachings.
Globally, 6 billion people – about 80% of the world’s population – identify with a faith or religion, while half of all schools and 40% of health facilities in some countries are owned or operated by faith groups. In addition, faith-related institutions own almost 8% of the total habitable land surface – and constitute the world’s third largest group of financial investors.
How faith and religious communities resist or respond to the climate crisis is crucial, which means faith leaders and leaders with faith have great potential to educate and mobilize their members towards – or away from – sustainable living and environmental activism, according to Mitota Omolere, a sustainability expert and author at Earth.org.
A 2022 poll found that most American adults, including a large majority of Christians and people who identify with other religions – consider the Earth sacred and believe God gave humans a duty to care for it. But the poll also found that the most religious are the least concerned about the climate crisis – in large part because they’re more likely to align with the Republican party, which has a long history of climate denialism and climate action obstruction.
Globally, political allegiance is a major driver in people’s climate beliefs, yet a growing number of spiritual and religious leaders – including Pope Francis – support collaborating across faiths and with scientists to pressure governments through advocacy.
In the run-up to the recent UN climate talks in Dubai, faith and spiritual leaders representing Anglicans, Bohras, Buddhists, Jains, Jews, Mahikaris, Sikhs, and Sunni and Shia Muslims urged politicians, businesses and financiers to adopt a rapid, just transition away from fossil fuels. “As we stand at the precipice of history, considering the gravity of the challenges we collectively face, we remain mindful of the legacy we will leave for generations to come,” they said.
Rabbi David Rosen, international president of Religions for Peace, added: “As leaders and representatives of world religions, our role gives us a platform and a position to encourage, influence and motivate people, and thereby a responsibility to help guide our communities in how to restore, protect and live in harmony with the natural world.”
At Cop28, Vanessa Nakate, the Ugandan climate justice activist and a born-again Evangelical Christian, said: “I have personally faced a lot of criticism every time I talk about the role of faith in climate activism. Some has come from the religious side, and some has come from the climate movement itself. But when I receive that resistance, I count myself fortunate. It is the heart of Christ that works in me to do the work I do now.”
So what does faith-based climate action look like on the ground in communities already suffering from worsening storms, floods, drought and deadly heat?
In New Orleans, one of America’s most climate vulnerable cities, faith leaders are working across historical racial and religious divides to spearhead sustainable climate action.
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Alicia Costa is mother superior of the Sisters of the Holy Family, one of the earliest religious orders for women of color, founded in 1842. Costa, 72, has long been interested in green issues like reducing plastic waste, but the teachings of her climate hero, Pope Francis, have inspired her to do more. “He teaches us that as stewards of God’s Earth, we have a moral obligation to get off fossil fuels and transition to renewables, to help stop the suffering in our communities. Pope Francis uses science and scripture to make his point – he is just phenomenal.”
Under Costa’s leadership, the Sisters of the Holy Family joined Together New Orleans (TNO), a network of interfaith and non-profit institutions pushing to transform the city’s fossil fuel-dependent electric grid. In September, Costa was among TNO representatives granted an audience with Pope Francis at the Vatican, and she used her 45 seconds to tell him about their efforts to promote solar energy to cut emissions and help low-income residents reduce their utility bills. “He gave us the thumbs up, and encouraged us to keep building solidarity,” said Costa.
Just a few weeks later, Costa helped TNO overturn a five-year-old city council rule which had made subscription community solar economically unviable – a major victory against the fossil fuel-friendly utility. The religious order has 22 acres of land it plans to convert into a community solar farm and a resilience hub, as part of a statewide effort to create solar-powered community lighthouses to help vulnerable residents survive power outages.
Every evening, Costa and her fellow sisters read and discuss a passage from Pope Francis’s latest document on the climate crisis, the 15-page Laudate Deum (Praise God), which is a severe rebuke of those sowing confusion and blocking climate action in pursuit of profits. Costa said: “My crusade is to educate people on the climate crisis, and reduce our carbon footprint so we lead by example.”
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Gregory Manning is a Lutheran pastor at the Broadmoor community church in New Orleans, part of the conservative, predominantly white and Republican-leaning Missouri synod, which now has around 2 million members in the US. Only 70 of the 9,000 clergy are Black. Manning’s congregation is composed of mostly low-income Black residents who are facing multiple interconnected challenges including gun violence, poverty and environmental hazards such as air pollution, extreme heat and power outages. At a recent Sunday service, Manning weaved in rising utility bills, peace in the Middle East and a triple homicide to a sermon on managing “dual citizenship” in two kingdoms, one spiritual and the other earthly. “In seminary, we were taught to only preach Christ and not talk about social issues. But Jesus lived in a context, and we have to present the Bible in the current context where climate change is causing people to suffer.”
Manning has helped communities across the state organize against power plants and petrochemical factories, and Broadmoor was the first community lighthouse in the city. His climate and social justice work has, on occasion, led to friction with some colleagues. “The climate crisis is not on the Lutheran radar – the synod is largely made up of climate deniers uninterested in environmental or social justice. But fossil fuels are killing people, especially Black and Indigenous communities, and we pastors need to be on the frontline. Those who call themselves people of faith and yet do nothing to help is inexcusable.”
In 2019, Manning founded the Greater New Orleans Interfaith Climate Coalition, which includes Muslim, Buddhist, Jewish, Hare Krishna and Christian leaders drawn together, they say, by a reverence for the sacredness of nature and a willingness to put religious differences aside to promote care of the Earth and climate justice. “We might not agree theologically but we agree that the climate crisis is an existential threat,” he said.
In September, they were among 70,000 people at the New York City climate march calling on President Biden to stop fossil fuel expansion and to declare a climate emergency. “The reckless expansion of [liquid natural gas] terminals in Louisiana exemplifies our captured economy, and our reckless greed and selfishness as Americans. It’s our responsibility as God’s stewards of Earth to care and conserve what we have for future generations,” said Manning.
