How Faith Communities Are Changing the Climate Conversation
Climate change isn’t just about melting ice caps and stranded polar bears – it’s also an issue that will profoundly affect people. But climate change won’t impact all people equally – research indicates that it will likely hit the world’s most vulnerable communities the hardest. Moreover, those who will be hardest hit are often the ones who have contributed the least to the problem. Calls to action on climate are increasingly reflecting this moral dimension, with faith-based communities leading the charge.
In this Huffington Post article, Baha'i leader Peter Adriance highlights faith communities’ recent efforts to move climate action from an environmental to a moral sphere, with a special focus on the work of Interfaith Power & Light, a national leader in guiding faith communities’ response to climate change and a Blessed Tomorrow partner. Adriance ends his piece with a call for Americans to draw on their religious principles when formulating their responses to climate change. As Adriance writes, “Climate change is less an environmental problem than it is a matter of justice, fairness and equity. Our faith traditions hold these values high and specialize in fostering them… [They are] what will empower us to find the solutions we seek as stewards of creation.”
By Peter Adriance, Contributor to The Huffington Post & Representative for Sustainable Development, U.S. Baha’i Office of Public Affairs
Through sermons, discussion groups, prayer gatherings, dramatic readings, video screenings and postcard-writing sessions to their U.S. Senators, people of diverse faiths across the country recently arose to proclaim the urgent need to address climate change. Interfaith Power and Light’s annual preach-In campaign over Valentine’s Day weekend prompted some 1,700 congregations to action on this topic.
If you’ve read my other Huffington Post pieces, this angle is one that you’re familiar with: people of faith proclaim the moral dimensions of climate change. So why am I writing about the faith-climate connection again?
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