Faith-Based Climate Advocacy as a Path to Power
By Lawrence MacDonald, TA Virginia Co-facilitator and TA Faith member
The Third Act Faith website eloquently describes why people of faith are often inspired to work for climate justice and democracy: “Rooted in the ethics of justice, compassion, and the sacredness of the world around us our religious beliefs motivate us to take action to preserve a liveable planet and a free and fair democracy.”
In my book, Am I Too Old to Save the Planet? A Boomer’s Guide to Climate Action, I explore the value of faith-based advocacy as a tool for achieving the rapid, systemic change humanity needs to avert a climate catastrophe.
In the chapter “What’s Faith Got to Do With It?”, I note that all religious traditions require that we protect the planet and care for the poor. Top faith leaders are urging action. Faith-based advocacy can be a source of power: when religious groups demand action, politicians listen. This is especially the case when people from differing faith backgrounds join together.
I illustrate this with a brief story: a priest, a rabbi and an imam walk into a bar. Bartender says: “What is this, a joke?” Seriously, as old jokes like this suggest, when leaders from different faiths act together, people pay attention. If a priest, a rabbi, and an imam, or other representatives of multiple faiths, walk into a Congressional office to talk about climate change, or jointly sign a resolution, or march together in a climate protest, political leaders and others pay attention.
Why? Because, unlike nearly everybody else trying to shape public policy, faith-based groups, including interfaith groups, are understood to be acting out of moral conviction grounded in religious teaching. As a Congressional staffer once told a friend of mine leading a faith-based climate lobbying effort on Capitol Hill: “People of faith come in through a different door.”
Unleashing the power of faith-based advocacy
Third Actors can unleash the power of faith-based advocacy in two ways, as I explain in my book. The first is outward-facing: we can show up as people of faith. By utilizing sacred texts, songs, and prayers drawn from our traditions and by displaying religious symbols and wearing religious garb when appropriate, we make it clear that people of faith care deeply about the climate emergency.
The second is inward-facing: we can encourage the faith communities we participate in–and our local religious leaders–to become much more active in the fight for a livable climate.
Many congregations focus on reducing the environmental footprint through things like recycling and rooftop solar. While these “greening” activities are not a bad place to start, too often congregations stop there, failing to mobilize their members to join together to demand rapid systemic change.
This failure creates opportunities for older people like us who care passionately about climate change, a group I call “climate boomers.” We elders are often the majority of active participants in religious organizations, providing the bulk of the financial support. Clergy and other local religious leaders pick their priorities based on the guidance they receive from senior leadership and the expressed needs of their members or followers. Many are already deeply concerned about climate change and are waiting to be nudged to do more.
If you belong to a faith community, you can be the nudge. Call a meeting to find others in the congregation who share your concern. Form a group that can ask your clergy and lay leaders to go beyond “greening” initiatives and join in faith-based advocacy for a livable planet.
Learning from Indigenous teachings
Indigenous people have been prominent in the fight to protect the Earth, often invoking their sacred teachings. In the United States, Indigenous women elders have led efforts to block fossil fuel pipelines such as Keystone XL, Dakota Access Pipeline, Line 3, and others. Their work has helped to inspire, educate, and mobilize thousands of Native and non-Native people.
Native American religious beliefs differ widely, and European settlers and the U.S. government banned and violently suppressed Indigenous religious practices for centuries. Nevertheless, core concepts have persisted and some have made their way into the majority culture. One is the belief that the entire universe is alive and therefore sacred. Another, based on an ancient Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) philosophy, requires humans to consider the impact of our decisions on people seven generations into the future.
In fighting for their lands and sovereignty, Indigenous peoples are fighting to save the planet. Although they comprise less than 5 percent of the world population, Indigenous peoples protect 80 percent of the Earth’s biodiversity in the forests, deserts, grasslands, and marine environments in which they have lived for centuries.
One well-known Indigenous elder is Winona LaDuke, a rural development economist, environmentalist, writer, and activist who has authored and co-authored more than a dozen books. An Anishinaabekwe (Ojibwe) enrolled member of the Mississippi Band Anishinaabeg, she is the co-executive director of Honor the Earth, which she founded in 1993 to increase awareness and raise money for Native-led environmental groups.
I heard her speak at the interfaith camp of the Treaty People’s Gathering in northern Minnesota in June 2021. It was an alarmingly hot day. We sat beneath pines beside a lake on rough-hewn benches in a campfire-style circle. A middle boomer with a commanding, charismatic presence, LaDuke held our group of about 100 mostly non-Native climate activists spellbound.
In one of her earliest books, Recovering the Sacred: The Power of Naming and Claiming (2005), LaDuke writes that because religious freedom is a fundamental part of the U.S. Bill of Rights, one would think that religious freedom for Native people is protected. “That is so, as long as your religious practice does not involve access to a sacred site coveted by others,” she explains. The book recounts scores of instances where Native people’s rights to sacred lands have been blocked or otherwise violated.
She ends with a plea for action: “The fossil fuel century has been incredibly destructive to the ecological structures—the air, earth, water, and plant and animal life—that keep planet Earth habitable for humans,” she wrote. “Whether human populations will continue to flourish 100 years from now will depend on the choices we make today.” Fifteen years after that book was published, her plea is truer—and more urgent—than ever.
The outsize influence of Quakers
Another group that has been influential in the climate movement beyond what their numbers would suggest is the Quakers, formally known as the Religious Society of Friends, who have been early movers in the fossil fuel divestiture movement.
The Friends Committee on National Legislation, a non-partisan Quaker group that lobbies Congress, has actively supported the Civil Rights Movement and Native American rights, and opposed nuclear weapons and the Vietnam War. Today the group also lobbies for climate action. The Quakers’ outsized influence is a valuable reminder of the potential power of bringing faith into the struggle for climate justice.
You can hear about Quaker activism at Third Act Faith’s September 24 General Meeting, when our speaker will be George Lakey, a longtime activist for peace and justice, and co-founder of Earth Quaker Action Team (EQAT).
Faith-based climate action builds community
Faith-based action offers other benefits besides a path to power. As we shift into retirement, many of us lose ties with our workplaces and former colleagues. We find ourselves searching
for community. For some of us this can mean reconnecting with the religious teachings, rituals, and communities of our childhoods. For others it may entail a spiritual search that leads to a new community and set of traditions.
Elders who relocate during retirement often find that joining a church, mosque, synagogue, or other religious organization provides ready entry to a welcoming community. Choosing a community that is already working for climate justice can align your values with your spiritual or religious practice or quest.
As an elder, you can tap into this force whether you are already an active participant in a religious community, only loosely affiliated with a faith-based tradition, or perhaps just beginning a Third Act spiritual quest.
Third Act Faith, the only faith-based climate and democracy advocacy network focused specifically on experienced Americans, is uniquely positioned to bring together the power of faith voices and the power of elders. For example, members of the working group bring faith voices to Third Act campaigns. They can also help to advance Third Act campaigns–such as the push to divest from fossil fuels–within their local faith community.
Not currently connected to a local community? Joelle Novey, director of the DC, Maryland, and Northern Virginia hub of Interfaith Power and Light, suggests two paths. First, “seek out a local group that meets regularly and will call you to action.” Second, “seek out the language and theology that is authentic to your faith tradition and use that to ask your faith leaders to do more.”
If you do this, you will have plenty of company. A 2021 Climate Change in the American Mind survey found that most religious voters favored legislation to eliminate fossil fuel emissions by 2050, often by overwhelming majorities. This included 88 percent of Black Protestants, 76 percent of non-Christian religious groups, 61 percent of white Catholics, 53 percent of white ecumenical Protestants, and 50 percent of white evangelical Protestants.
In a follow-up article for Third Act Faith, I will offer an overview of how six U.S. faith groups are responding to the climate emergency: Catholics, Evangelicals, Ecumenical Protestants, Black Churches, Muslims, and Jews. I end that article with a discussion of the interfaith climate movement of which Third Act Faith is an increasingly important part.
About Lawrence MacDonald
Lawrence MacDonald is a co-facilitator of the Third Act Virginia Working Group and helps to lead the Dayenu Circle at Temple Rodef Shalom, Virginia’s largest Jewish congregation. He stepped down from his job as vice president of communications at the World Resources Institute to write Am I Too Old to Save the Planet? A Boomer’s Guide to Climate Action, and works full-time as a volunteer climate activist. Watch for Part 2 of this article this fall.