Like this post? Subscribe to our RSS feed and stay up to date.
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.
By Chad Crawford •
April 24, 2008
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.”
By Chad Crawford •
April 17, 2008
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.
By Chad Crawford •
April 10, 2008
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 […]
By Chad Crawford •
March 24, 2008
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.
