The National Religious Coalition on Creation Care, a Blessed Tomorrow partner, has produced a powerful new interfaith statement on climate change. The statement demonstrates how people of faith from many different traditions have united around climate change as a moral responsibility. In addition to laying how the world is changing because of climate, it calls for our political leaders and people of faith to have the courage to lead for the sake of creation, our children, and the most vulnerable.
Coming to Terms with our Moral Responsibility on Climate Change
Our civilization now faces an unavoidable option: Will we choose the difficult path that leads to hope? Or will we cater to wistful, hear-no-evil dreams from which we’ll awaken into a bleak dystopia? The difficult but rewarding path brings us to a richer vision of ourselves, our Creator, and creation. We’ll either re-forge the bonds between morality and policy or our dreams for the future will abandon us on the rubble of a modern-day Tower of Babel.
Such a choice compels the National Religious Coalition on Creation Care to call upon U.S. policymakers to heed God’s instruction in the Book of Joshua: “Be strong and very courageous” (Joshua 1:7). Possess the courage to walk the path of hope. Be guided by the truth and formulate policies on that basis. Make the -right choices. Denying human-induced climate change may be easy in the short term, but it is profoundly immoral.
We also urge courage upon America’s sleeping giant – the 80 percent of citizens claiming religious affiliation – to awaken to their own religious teachings on climate change and their responsibilities as citizens and demand that political leaders act on a scale that is consonant with the evidence revealed by the scientific community.
