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Religious
institutions around the world are going green and providing a push
to the environmental movement, says a new report from the Worldwatch
Institute, a Washington, DC-based research organization. Invoking
the Spirit: Religion and Spirituality in the Quest for a Sustainable
World documents how these unconventional alliances are growing in
frequency and significance to address issues from deforestation
in Thailand to green investing by stockholders in New York.
“This collaboration could change the world,” says author
Gary Gardner, Worldwatch research director. “These groups have
different, but complementary strengths. Environmentalists have a
strong grounding in science. Religious institutions enjoy moral
authority and a grassroots presence that shapes the worldviews and
lifestyles of billions of people. It’s a powerful combination
that until recently remained virtually unexplored.”
Gardner says that in learning to work together, the two groups must
overcome mutual misperceptions and divergent worldviews, which have
historically kept them apart. He writes that secular environmentalists
worry about the checkered history of religious involvement in societal
affairs. Religious institutions, on the other hand, may have perspectives
on the role of women, the nature of truth and the moral place of
human beings in the natural order that sometimes diverge from those
of environmentalists.
However, partnerships are successfully happening, and Invoking the
Spirit provides examples from around the world where religions are
using their influence to promote sustainability. For instance, in
the 1990s, “environmentalist monks” in Thailand opposed
shrimp farming and dam and pipeline construction and protected mangroves
and bird populations. They even preserved trees by “ordaining”
them within sacred community forests.
Since 1996, the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the symbolic leader
of the 250 million-member Orthodox Church, has used the prestige
of his office to gather prominent scientists, journalists and religious
leaders for four week-long, shipboard symposia focusing on water-related
environmental issues.
And in Sri Lanka, the Sarvodaya Shramadana movement, the largest
NGO in the country, covering roughly half of the country’s
villages, is active in promoting a Buddhist-inspired vision of development
that stresses moderate consumption.
Religions are also tapping their extensive grassroots presence and
economic resources to engage issues of sustainability. In the United
States, 3,500 Lutheran, Presbyterian, Unitarian and Quaker congregations
have committed to purchasing fairly-traded, shade-grown, often organic
coffee. Just five years old, the Interfaith Coffee Program now supplies
about one percent of the country’s congregations and is the
fastest-growing source of revenue for the Equal Exchange Coffee
Co., the program’s sponsor.
Meanwhile, Episcopal Power & Light offers its U.S. customers
the opportunity to purchase electricity generated from solar, wind,
geothermal and other renewable energy sources, and helps congregations
to “green” their houses of worship.
Environmental organizations have also shown greater openness to
working with religious groups. In Pakistan, the World Conservation
Union (IUCN), working with the government of the country’s
North West Province, turned to Islamic clerics to help carry out
the province’s environmental action plan. Aware that the region
had one mosque for every 70 Pakistanis, IUCN and the government
saw the mosques as potentially more effective centers of education
than even local schools. In addition, the Worldwide Fund for Nature
sponsored the first major interfaith conference on environmental
issues, in 1986, and Sierra Club president Carl Pope has called
for greater attention to churches as allies in the environmental
movement.
For more information about the Invoking the Spirit report, contact
Worldwatch Institute at 1776 Massachusetts Ave. N.W., Ste. 800,
Washington, DC 20036; 202-452-1999; e-mail: worldwatch@worldwatch.org;
or visit www.worldwatch.org.
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