We must unite to safeguard God's creation: Column

As Christian leaders of four major religious denominations in Canada, the United States, and beyond, our ministries involve us in the challenges facing our world. Our traditions drive us to address the interrelated problems of climate change, environmental degradation, hunger and poverty. United with our neighboring nations, we stand at a crossroads, facing choices that have the potential to reverse the course of our changing climate and bring forth abundant and life-giving communities. Though we represent different religious institutions, we share a common goal, and recognize that time is short to achieve it. We all know that to protect the poorest we must protect the climate.

Daily we see and hear the evidence of a rapidly changing climate. We witness in too many instances the Earth’s natural beauty, a sign of God’s wonderful creativity, being defiled by pollutants and waste. With this reality, we question humanity's willingness to answer God’s call to care for the well-being of God’s good creation. With our faith at the forefront, we must do what is necessary to protect and care for creation.

This week Pope Francis visits the United States to meet with President Obama, speak to a joint session of Congress and address the General Assembly of the United Nations as it adopts new global sustainable development goals. During his visit to the U.S., the Pope is expected to explain how the Christian faith demands we confront the issues impacting communities across the globe, including income inequality, environmental degradation and climate change. These issues were the focus of a papal encyclical that was released this past summer, which provides the scientific and religious underpinnings of Pope Francis's ecological concerns.

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The encyclical and this papal visit to the U.S. are part of a continuing movement of religious community members mobilizing for action on climate change. During the last decade, a growing number of people in our churches have begun reducing energy use and adopting renewable energy technologies in their congregations and homes. In September of 2014, thousands of people of faith took to the streets of New York City for the People’s Climate March. Last summer, people of faith responded en masse to the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed rules to reduce carbon pollution from power plants by testifying and sending in thousands of comments supporting strong action to reduce emissions. Just last month, Muslim theologians came together to issue a statement calling for action on climate change. Right now, faith communities around the world are coming together in energetic ways to call on world leaders to address the impacts of climate change on our most vulnerable brothers and sisters, and to protect God’s creation as part of a new global agreement on climate change.

Last fall, we jointly issued a message calling on the members of our churches to respond to the challenge of climate change and to acknowledge the role that each of us plays in contributing to the problem, as consumers, as investors and as citizens. While the challenges our world faces are daunting, we see abundant opportunities for all to act imaginatively and courageously in our individual callings.

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World leaders must embrace this shared responsibility as work continues toward a global agreement on climate change.  We urge them to support an ambitious agreement at the UN climate change conference in Paris this December that reduces greenhouse gas emissions, encourages development of low carbon technologies and assists populations most vulnerable to the effects of a changing climate. We must protect those living in poverty by protecting the climate.

The growing ecological crisis and its impact on both the human and non-human parts of God’s creation led Pope Francis to call for a global day of prayer for Creation on September 1, which we embraced and supported. In his encyclical, Pope Francis calls on all of us, not just Roman Catholics, to concern ourselves with the fate of our common home, and to “cooperate as instruments of God for the care of creation, each according to his or her own culture, experience, involvements and talents.”

The stakes are high, but the opportunities for cooperation among individuals, churches and governments are significant. Over the past century, we have burned fossil fuels with little concern for their impacts. This moment is a critical one so we must act together in solidarity with God’s good creation and in hope for our shared future.

The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori is the presiding bishop and primate of The Episcopal Church. Bishop Elizabeth Eaton is presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The Most Rev. Fred Hiltz is primate of the Anglican Church of Canada. Bishop Susan Johnson is national bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada.

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