Rev. Chad Crawford works with The Regeneration Project, an interfaith organization focusing on the connection between ecology and faith. The organization's national campaign is called Interfaith Power & Light, with programs in 29 states working to mobilize a religious response to global warming. Chad is also a speaker focusing on the spiritual benefits of living simply.
Hey, you know that old conflict between religion and science? Remember the Scopes monkey trial in 1925 or the 1960 film about the case? How about the legislative battles of the last few years in Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Kansas over the mandatory inclusion of intelligent design alongside evolution in public schools?
Waiting for worldviews to change to accommodate new science is like watching the emergence of multicellularity. Keep in mind that Darwin’s On the Origin of Species is only 150 years old. Copernicus’s On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres was published in 1543. That book wasn’t completely dropped from the Vatican’s list of banned books for another 300 years. (I wonder if foundation-shattering books would fly under heresy radars if the titles didn’t start with “On the…”)
Chuck, on the other hand, just got fast-tracked! On Darwin’s 200th birthday, the Vatican is officially on board with evolution! Also, more than 800 pastors and rabbis are celebrating “Evolution Weekend” following Darwin’s 200th birthday February 12.
Representing 5,000 congregations, Interfaith Power & Light is challenging faith communities to get serious about climate change. The organization recently launched a carbon footprint calculator designed specifically for congregations.
In order to encourage faith communities to lower their footprints, $5000 will go to the group with the lowest greenhouse gas emissions per person. Another $5000 will go to the congregation that has shrunk its carbon footprint the most (as a percentage) after one year. To be eligible, participating groups have until December 31, 2008 to measure their footprints.
Let me be clear. You don’t need a new eco-friendly Bible to be a green Christian. Keeping that old tattered Bible you got when you were baptized or confirmed is still greener than purchasing one made with recycled paper. If your childhood Bible has completely fallen apart, there are millions of barely opened Bibles that end up lining the shelves of your local used bookstore. Another option, in an era when literature is available on iPods and mobile devices, is to download the Bible. I’m much more likely these days to use free online search engines to find a passage of scripture than to thumb through pages.
As a minister who is concerned that Christianity has become much too comfortable with consumerism, which is incompatible with the way of Jesus, I don’t advocate purchasing all the religious stuff that’s out there for gifts. Sadly, Bibles too are given makeovers everyday and marketed like everything else. The message from the industry is the same as the message about your toaster. “It’s outdated. You need a new one.” I have been given all kinds of Bibles over the years, dozens of them, and I’ve given them all away except a few. The only time I’ve ever bought one was for a college course. So, I found it a little ironic when I was asked to review a company’s latest attempt to push the most published book in history.
That said, I will definitely be purchasing The Green Bible, published by HarperOne, coming this October ($29.95).
Wait, wasn’t there supposed to be a rabbi in there somewhere?
Tonight was the Time 100 Gala, where Time Magazine celebrates 100 of the most influential people in the world today. This year, three religious leaders are included.
What Richard Cizik, Patriarch Bartholomew I, and the Dalai Lama have in common is that they’ve all made headlines from leading green movements within their respective faith traditions.
Richard Cizik Cizik, an ordained Evangelical Presbyterian miniser and head of the Office of Governmental Affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals fights global warming by quoting the Bible and calling on congregations to practice “creation care.” Cizik challenges conservative evangelicals to recognize climate change as a serious threat to the health of the planet.
Cizik also makes friends with scientists such as Nobel Peace Prize winner Eric Chivian, ignoring a once perceived barrier between the religious and scientific communities.
Spiritual practices often make use of powerful symbols to stir people into action.
Earth Day fell during Passover this year causing Jews to reflect on how an important tradition offers some wisdom about environmental challenges. Rabbi Jeff Sultar, director of The Green Menorah Program at the Shalom Center, took the three necessary elements of the Passover Seder and used them to symbolize the struggle with personal, economic, or political “pharaohs” putting limitations on a healthy planet.
He advocates holding “street seders” this year during Passover. These seders are part religious observance, part political demonstration. Possible locations include regional E.P.A. offices to demand they allow states to raise emissions standards above federal standards, ExxonMobil offices around the country, and congressional offices to urge politicians to pass “America’s Climate Security Act.”
Faith has always been a factor for voters. We all know the usual issues that religious leaders bring up every election year, but this time around climate change has been added to the list. The appeal for green values was at the forefront of the Compassion Forum that aired last Sunday on CNN.
Rev. Richard Cizik, vice president of the National Association of Evangelicals, has been leading a compaign to instill “creation care” as a religious imperative. He attended the forum and this was his exchange with Barack Obama:
REV. CIZIK: How do you relate your faith to science generally and science policy, and let’s take an issue like climate and flesh that out, or take stem cells, something like that. Just give us a little more indication of how you think.
OBAMA: Well, first of all…
CIZIK: Is that fair enough?
OBAMA: It is fair enough. And you guys have done some terrific work on this. So I want to congratulate you on that.
OBAMA: And should it be part of God’s plan to have me in the White House, I look forward to our collaboration. (LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE)
OBAMA: So, look, the — one of the things I draw from the Genesis story is the importance of us being good stewards of the land, of this incredible gift. And I think there have been times where we haven’t been and this is one of those times where we’ve got to take the warning seriously.
As Jews prepare for Passover, there are a number of resources available to combine the traditional seder with concern for the environment. The Jew and the Carrot, a website that focuses on “Jews, food, and contemporary issues,” has a guide to a green seder. Suggestions include using organic cleaners for the ritual cleaning before Passover, local apples and fairly-traded pecans for the charoset, growing your own greens, free range [...]
If a book contains the word “Bible” in its title, the author is often claiming a measure of authority over the subject. It’s a little pretentious, and really annoying, when a book comes out called The Car Buyer’s and Leaser’s Negotiating Bible or The Screenwriter’s Bible.
So when a book came out touting itself as “the Bible” of green living, I was a little put off. But when I read more about The Self-Sufficientish Bible, I noticed that this one was different. By adding “ish,” the authors are making the statement that self-sufficiency is not something easily accomplished with a few simple rules.
Andy and Dave, Britain’s green twins, advocate a fun and positive approach to environmentalism, and understand that the thought of adjusting every aspect of our lives is overwhelming and possibly offputting. Hence self-sufficientish. If you don’t have the space or time to be totally self-reliant, but crave creative ideas for recycling, growing organic vegetables and establishing an environmentally friendly home office, this is the book for you.
Candlelit services are nothing new for religious organizations. So when businesses, governments, and individuals turn off their lights Saturday at 8 p.m. local time, churches, synagogues, and mosques will be holding special gatherings. This global event is the second annual Earth Hour, the creation of the World Wildlife Fund to inspire people to take action on climate change.
In Toronto, The Church of the Holy Trinity in conjunction [...]
David Loy, a Buddhism scholar, presented a lecture at Vanderbilt University recently describing a spiritual perspective on the challenge of consumerism.
There is a video available that is worth watching if you have a free hour and, like me, are into this kind of stuff! Otherwise, I will give an overly simplistic summary below.
The basic spiritual crisis we face as individuals is our failure to recognize that the sense of self is a construct. The construct creates a feeling of alienation. This causes us to try to find meaning in accumulating wealth and things to verify our existence, creating further anxiety and sense of lack. The solution to the problem is to realize that the sense of self is indeed a delusion. This results in a caring attitude toward everyone else because of the recognition that we are not separate but part of a whole.
