Ecospirit: Religions and Philosophies for the Earth

Religion and the Earth on the Ground: The Experience of GreenFaith in New Jersey

 Religion and the Earth on the Ground: The Experience of GreenFaith in New Jersey F L E T C H E R H A R P E R INTRODUCTION Since the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the grassroots religious-environmental movement in the United States has grown noticeably . More houses of worship engage ecological issues than ever before . A small but growing number of religiously oriented organizations address the link between faith and the earth. While this rate of growth has not, in my opinion, matched the growth in the number of ecotheologians , or the prominence of ecotheology in seminaries or religion departments , it has moved from being a rarity to being part of the local religious landscape, even if a majority of congregations have still not taken on this work regularly. Thankfully, it is accurate to say that grassroots religious environmentalism has begun to earn a place on the agenda of local religious communities. Four years ago, I became executive director of GreenFaith, a New Jersey–based interfaith environmental group (founded in 1992, at which time it was called Partners for Environmental Quality [PEQ]), a position I still hold. Since that time in 2002, and for years before, GreenFaith has engaged questions about the form that grassroots religious-environmental action should take. In this chapter I will explore GreenFaith’s, and my own, experience over the past four years, looking at the most pressing questions, the most meaningful advances, and the most challenging dif- ficulties we have faced. My goal will be to describe what has worked for GreenFaith in advancing our own version of religious environmentalism f l et c h er h a rp e r 兩 505 and what have been the most important moments of self-definition we have faced. STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT I can identify four stages of growth GreenFaith has undergone during my time with the organization, stages which I will refer to as follows: Stage 1: Discovering Core Values and Finding a Voice Stage 2: Hearing Responses Stage 3: Experimenting with Actions Stage 4: Establishing a Foundation By listing the stages in this order, I do mean to indicate that there has been a developmental progression in our work. We needed to clarify our values and voice before experimenting with various programs. Similarly we needed to be able to compare the efficacy of these programs before we could consider how to establish foundations for our work over the long term. But it is clearly also true to state that the work of these stages has been overlapping and interconnected. For instance, once we clarified our voice and values, we were freed to experiment programmatically, but our experiences with diverse programs caused us to revisit our understanding of our identity and core values. As is often the case, growth and development do not bring consideration of certain questions to a conclusion insofar as they provide opportunities to view those questions from new vantage points. Stage : Discovering Core Values and Finding a Voice One of the first challenges GreenFaith faced in 2002 was the need to identify and communicate our core values. As I began this work I assumed that most of the congregations and people of faith with whom we would work would be engaging environmental concerns for the first time. I anticipated that their eco-awareness would mirror the generally low eco-awareness of the greater U.S. population. I assumed as well that they had never heard a sermon or taken part in religious education focused directly on the link between religion and the earth. And I further assumed that I needed to develop a clearly theological basis for our message , connecting these two worlds with clarity and depth. 506 兩 e c os p i ri t As a former parish priest accustomed to leading through preaching, I worked for several months to develop a message, a sermon that introduced this topic effectively. I identified several stories that resonated well in a wide range of congregations—a story about my son and the wonder of a wilderness experience, a story about environmental racism in a postindustrial New Jersey community of color, a story about a teenage African girl transforming the perspective of an audience of thousands by reminding them of the impact of consumption choices on future generations . These stories represented themes that were genuinely religious and environmental. Together they presented perspectives that...