This summer, researchers from LSE Religion and Global Society hosted a workshop in Cairo, with Muslim, Coptic, and Anglican leaders, to discuss the disconnect between religious worldviews and the global discourse on climate change. In this article, Revd Canon Prof James Walters and Dr Hanane Benadi tell us more about the workshop

Benadi, Hanane

Walters, James

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LSE Research Online

Can faith groups drive action on climatechange?This summer, researchers from LSE Religion and Global Society hosted a workshop inCairo, with Muslim, Coptic, and Anglican leaders, to discuss the disconnectbetween religious worldviews and the global discourse on climate change. In this article,Revd Canon Prof James Walters and Dr Hanane Benadi tell us more about theworkshop. This story first appeared in the November 2023issue of The Environment magazine. Read morehere.Back in July, in 42°C heat, a group of young imams from Al-Azhar Mosque and clericsPage 1 of 7Permalink: undefinedDate originally posted: undefinedDate PDF generated: 01/11/2023from the Coptic and Anglican churches gathered in Cairo. They came together to explorehow to preach and teach about climate change within and across Egypt’s Muslim andChristian communities.Egypt hosted COP27 last year. The event raised awareness of climate issues in thecountry and the recurrent power cuts that turned off the air conditioning while we werethere illustrated to everyone the daily challenges of living in rising temperatures.But as ordinary Egyptians struggle with the rising cost of living, climate change stillseems a low priority. It’s often viewed as a western problem that people can do littleabout and authoritarian countries create the suspicion that talk of a “climate emergency”is just another way for the government to limit their freedoms.Some workshop participants shared this scepticism. Are we only talking about thisbecause people in the west want us to? Is the situation really as bad as they say? And isit possible to care about climate change under conditions of authoritarianism andextreme poverty?But for the most part, this was a new generation of religious leaders aware that this issuedefines our times – and that its own moral leadership is imperative. The question theywanted to confront – one facing other religious leaders throughout the world – is how tospeak meaningfully about climate change in a way that will motivate their congregationsto act.Faith-climate consensusFaith communities are an untapped resource in the climate movement. Politicians knowwhat they ought to be doing, but cutting our carbon emissions requires changes inhuman society on a scale that we struggle to imagine.We need new stories to live by – stories that aren’t centred on ever-accelerating growthand consumption. We need new forms of moderation and constraint, new values thatelevate non-material goods over material affluence. It’s these kinds of stories that faithcommunities tell. And their vast networks of believers offer unique potential for the kindof behavioural change we need.Despite dramatic secularisation in the west, globally, more than 80 per cent of peoplePage 2 of 7Permalink: undefinedDate originally posted: undefinedDate PDF generated: 01/11/2023identify with one of the main world-faith traditions. And the parts of the world mostaffected by climate change – including Egypt – are almost invariably the most religious.But as our Egyptian friends found, the global discourses about climate change don’tspeak to religious worldviews.Recently, Jonathan Freedland wrote in The Guardian about how the terminology that“the climate cognoscenti” use has failed to connect with the broader public, even in thewest. “Net zero, decarbonisation, 1.5°C – when tested, they meet blank faces. Peopleeither don’t know what they mean or find them confusing.”Our research in Egypt and Jordan showed that this secular, biophysical language iseven more alien to people whose daily lives are shaped by religious ways of thinking andbeing.One of our Coptic Christian interviewees told us:“We have attended many workshops where western scholars come to teach us aboutclimate change and caring for the environment. We find their teaching to be superficialbecause for them, caring about the environment and climate change is about expandingour worldly existence as if we live in this world indefinitely. But for us, caring aboutenvironment and responding to climate change is about our relationship with God.”Page 3 of 7Permalink: undefinedDate originally posted: undefinedDate PDF generated: 01/11/2023Religious leaders have sought to bridge these divides. Pope Francis’s encyclicalLaudato Si of 2015 critiques the “technocratic paradigm” and “modern anthropocentrism”that have brought us to this point from the morally holistic perspective of Catholic SocialTeaching.The Pope concluded that “the present ecological crisis is one small sign of the ethical,cultural and spiritual crisis of modernity” that we can’t presume to address “withouthealing all fundamental human relationships”. He described the “ecological conversion”that all believers need to undergo to bring about lasting change.An editorial in Nature noted that the Pope’s moral authority among and beyond theworld’s 1.2 billion Roman Catholics gives that message far greater impact than theIntergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). IPCC “tomes tend to brim withjargon and are read by relatively few people”, the editorial noted. “And unlike the IPCC,which sometimes struggles with public outreach, the Catholic Church has a superbmeans of spreading the word every Sunday.”Page 4 of 7Permalink: undefinedDate originally posted: undefinedDate PDF generated: 01/11/2023Faith-climate challengeIn the Middle East, the Muslim hierarchy has shown similar leadership.Addressing the Third International Scientific Conference on Environment andSustainable Development, Al- Azhar’s Grand Imam, Ahmed Al- Tayyeb, describedclimate change as a biophysical phenomenon that’s also the latest manifestation ofcenturies of moral decay and domination of nature that comes with the technologicaladvances that fuelled western progress.Contrary to the dominant understanding of climate change as a sudden and unexpectedrupture, he framed the current moment as a religious ordeal that requires each one of usto respond to God rather than to nature.That said, religious communities aren’t as top-down as they used to be. Authority ischallenged. Social media gives a platform to a range of religious voices, including thosewho see climate change as a hoax or a distraction from core religious teaching.For millions of Evangelical Christians, for example, rising temperatures and extremeweather events herald the biblical End Times in ways that should make us concentrateon the world to come.Last year, the Pew Research Center found that 34 per cent of US evangelicals considerclimate change a very serious problem, against half of US Christians acrossdenominations and 88 percent of atheists. In the Islamic world, suspicion of western-influenced leaders still creates scepticism that climate action supports an authenticallyreligious agenda. Which is why we need the kinds of conversations among grassrootsclergy that we hosted in Cairo as part of our Global Religious Pluralities programme.We want to nurture religious discourses about climate change that connect with ordinarybelievers in the Global South and draw those discourses into dialogue with one anotherto strengthen interfaith solidarity. This will become ever more important, as scarcerresources threaten to open new faultlines of conflict, including religious ones.Climate moral codesIn our workshop, we noted two recurring suspicions and two constructive themes. ThePage 5 of 7Permalink: undefinedDate originally posted: undefinedDate PDF generated: 01/11/2023suspicions were ones that divide these religious communities in their concerns aboutclimate change from some dominant western voices – the dual western tendencies todeify nature and entirely decentre the human.The former manifests in the move towards the philosophy of Gaia, becomingcommonplace to speak of respect for “Mother Earth” as she “speaks” and “responds” tohuman activity. Muslims, in particular, see potential for idolatry in such language,transferring divine agency to material things.This played out in social-media responses to a short report by Sky News Arabia on thefloods that hit Europe in July 2021. Across the Middle East, hundreds of people criticisedhow the report attributed God’s anger to nature, arguing that nature doesn’t act on itsown accord. Rather, nature responds to God’s command; it is part of God’s creation notan independent agent.This reflects the secular activist’s second tendency – to decentre the human. It’s anunderstandable response to the Anthropocene to recover a sense of the world beyondhuman objectification and exploitation. Many believe we must enter a posthuman era, orat least grant the natural world equal status to human beings.This sits uneasily with the belief that Christianity and Islam share: that God has specialpurposes in creation for the human; that humanity is the “crown of creation”. How can wereject exploitation and unsustainability, asked our participants, while still retaining abelief that the world is God’s gift to humanity?The first constructive theme the Muslim and Christian participants shared addresses this– our relationship to the natural world is one of moral responsibility. It isn’t just “stuff” forus to use.We can’t simply think about its management and sustainability technocratically. We havea moral relationship with nature because it, like us, is part of creation. It’s endowed, likeus, with purposes by the creator. That view frames the climate emergency as a moralcrisis – a distortion of God’s purposes and commandments in the ordering of our lives.Faith, hope and climateThe second theme to emerge from the workshop was one of endurance and hope.Page 6 of 7Permalink: undefinedDate originally posted: undefinedDate PDF generated: 01/11/2023People felt bewildered by and concerned about western eco-anxiety and antinatalism.Even those who accept the existential nature of the crisis felt strongly that despair isn’t areligious option.We’ve seen how the climate movement struggles with the apparent futility of ourpersonal choices. Given the scale of the challenge, what difference does it make to takeone more flight or for one less person to eat meat?The faith-based take on this is that doing the right thing is always the right thing to do.The climate crisis is a judgement on the whole of humanity, but the religious personbelieves that each of us still has a moral responsibility and a calling within the purposesof God for the future of the world, however bleak that future may feel.These are the qualities that religion can bring to the climate movement. Religions arevast global networks with leaders who wield moral authority over millions. But religionbrings us a moral imagination – the ability to rethink our relationship with the naturalworld – giving us hope and resilience to see us through challenging times ahead.Page 7 of 7Permalink: undefinedDate originally posted: undefinedDate PDF generated: 01/11/2023

Can faith groups drive action on climate change?

http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/120623/1/religionglobalsociety_2023_10_30_can_faith_groups_drive_action_on_climate_change.pdf

Can faith groups drive action on climate change?

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