At last week’s national Interfaith Power & Light conference in Washington, D.C., I did all the usual conference things. There were table-topic lunches, breakout sessions, presentations and workshops (one that I co-led one with colleagues from Georgia IPL and California IPL!). I did a lot of listening and sharing and catching up with colleagues from around the country. And on the last day of the conference, we fanned out across Capitol Hill to lobby Senate and Congressional offices about protecting the Clean Air Act. It was a good conference, even if we did get wet on lobby day. (I think Bee and I had forgotten about this strange phenomenon called “rain!”)
Anyway, coming home and reflecting on the whole of the experience has me thinking about something—and maybe you all can help me think about this, too.
Over the last few years, nearly every major religious tradition and/or denomination here in the U.S. has developed its own environmental program for its congregations and communities. There’s Presbyterians for Earth Care, Lutherans for Restoring Creation, the Catholic Climate Covenant, the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life (COEJL), Hazon, etc. They are all doing good work in their respective communities, and many times TXIPL connects local congregations with their denomination’s programs and resources. In addition, we partner with these groups and share resources whenever possible.
Now, if we were just environmentalists, then we could join a secular environmentalist group. If we were just Presbyterians or Lutherans or Catholics or Jews concerned about the way we are relating to the earth and other people, we could just work with our tradition-specific program. Instead, we are people from all of these traditions and many more, hopefully using our own tradition-specific resources but more than that—we at TXIPL are people who are partnering in an interfaith movement.
Why interfaith? What is the particular value of engaging in work to care for creation in interfaith partnerships? What do we, as a religiously pluralistic environmental movement, bring that is of unique value?
I have some thoughts about this, but I’d love to hear from you. What does the “interfaith” part of our work mean to you? Leave a comment below or send me an e-mail, and let's discuss.
- Read the blog response from Rev. John Paul Roach, Senior Minister of Unity Church of Fort Worth.