Presbyterian pastor Henry G. Brinton believes the secular environmental movement must reach out to religious groups if the planet is to be saved:
But is the marriage of the secular environmental movement and the faith-based one even necessary? Actually, it’s essential. The international community has settled on the dangers of global warming and has decided to act to literally change the world. We’ve reached a critical point at which unity is required if this movement is to succeed. Just as in any successful political campaign, you need a good ground game. There is no better ground game in the USA than the thousands of churches, synagogues and mosques that dot our landscape from coast to coast. But are religious people ready to walk down this aisle?
Lyndsay Moseley of the Sierra Club believes so. She has been working for several years to develop partnerships with people who have faith-based, moral or spiritual reasons for protecting the planet. Raised in a deeply religious and politically conservative home in eastern Tennessee, Moseley encountered a low-income community outside Knoxville where the water supply had been contaminated by the illegal dumping of lead, arsenic, diesel fuel and PCBs. She joined a coalition that demanded clean water for the neighborhood, and in the course of that successful effort, Moseley “began to understand that God’s call to care for creation is the same as God’s call to love our neighbors.”
Read his entire commentary here. And read Roger Gottlieb’s recent post at The Immanent Frame, “The case of religious environmentalism.”