The Green Vibrancy of Today’s World Religions: Enriching our Eco-Conscious Efforts Center Stage

Pope Benedict XVI, Head of the Catholic Church is doing it.  Mormon elders, Buddhist Monks and Muslim Clerics are doing it and Hindu priests, Jewish rabbis, and indigenous tribes all across the globe are advocating it along with various Christian denominations here in the USA.   So exactly what is “it”?

“It” is the promotion of eco-friendly spirituality and environmental stewardship and it has been lifted up to a new level of eco-consciousness both on the world’s center stage and within the grass-roots efforts of local religious congregations.   Indeed, members of today’s world religions are celebrating faith and environmental well-being not only with their worship services and newsletters, workshops, recycling programs, and fund-raisers- but with their own eco-conscious energy efficient meeting houses and grounds such as the solar-powered LDS Chapel in Mesa, Arizona and the “Florida Avenue Baptist Church” in Washington, D.C., the First African-American church in the District of Columbia to power a church with solar energy – and the Tirumala Temple in southern India, (reportedly the richest and most visited house of worship in the world), which houses the world’s largest solar cooking technology on its roof to feed its thousands of daily visitors.  Then there is the small but progressive “Libertyville United Methodist Church” in Illinois with its own ‘Go Green Team’ and new bicycle rack meant to promote biking to church events and the “Prince of Peace Lutheran Church” in Gaithersburg, Maryland with its new church vegetable garden, communal compost bin, and rain barrel installation.  Perhaps one of the most dramatic examples of eco-friendly architecture is the Buddhist temple built by monks in northeast Thailand which consists of 1.5 million recycled beer bottles for its walls and roof.

Other changes meant to inspire its religious adherents to an ‘ecological spiritual journey’ of faith and nurture are the guidelines and green tips set forth by the “Episcopal Ecological Network” whose mission is to further the greening of its churches, camps, and conference centers across the USA and the ‘Earth Care Committee’ at the First Congregational Church in Sonoma, California and the ‘Environmental Task Force’ at the Edgewood United Church in East Lansing, Michigan whose support for a sustainable society includes the endorsement of local farmer’s markets, ‘eat local potlucks’, eco-responsible companies and labels and the fair trade purchases of coffee, cocoa, tea, nuts, cranberries, and chocolate bars.

To facilitate ‘caring for God’s earth’, Presbyterian churches across America have now established an ‘Earth Care Pledge’ along with worksheets, resources, and instructions for becoming an ‘Earth Care Congregation’ and most recently the Integrated Islamic School Shah Alam (ISSA) has launched a ‘Go Green Muslim Campaign’.  And to secure environmental justice, protect public health, and preserve biodiversity, the “Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life” (COEJL) has launched a ‘Four-Part Climate Change Campaign’ and a  ‘Jewish Energy Covenant Campaign Pledge’ mobilizing the Jewish community nationwide to “conserve energy, increase sustainability, and advocate for policies that increase energy efficiency and security”.

But some creative faith-based eco-initiatives can be found right within the worship service itself.  In Quebec, Canada, twenty-five Montreal-area churches – Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox – have agreed to replace their Californian-grown communion wine with a new locally produced Quebec wine.  And in the United States, 3556 congregations composed of Lutherans, Presbyterians, Methodists, Episcopalians, and Roman Catholics have gone the way of using “eco-palms” for their Palm Sunday services – palm stems that are harvested in a more environmentally friendly way.  Working together with eco-palm cooperatives in southern Mexico and northern Guatemala, this six year-old eco-palm program ensures that rainforest cuttings are not wasted by traditional methods and that villagers’ incomes are increased fairly and the habitats of birds and other species are environmentally protected.

And of course there are the eco-encyclicals and highly visible public statements of the Vatican’s chief administrator – Pope Benedict XVI – dubbed the “Green Pope”.   To date the Vatican has installed solar panels on the roof of its main auditorium, a solar cooling unit for its main cafeteria, and arranged a reforestation project in Hungary aimed at offsetting its CO2 emissions.  As for the hushed eco-whisperings of the indigenous tribes of South America, Africa, and Asia, and the Aborigines of Australia, and our own Native American Indians, they have now become mainstream – their spiritual relationship with the land that their ancestors once used and created – now continues in our time-honored religions of today.