Webinar Participants
Art Courtesy of Covering Climate Now
May 22, 2025
Nearly 90 percent of people in the world now accept that human-caused climate change is intensifying weather-related crises, yet only about half of them hear the moral imperatives for environmental activism from their religious leaders.
That word came May 20 in a webinar, “Exploring Faith-Based Climate Action” sponsored by the National Catholic Reporter newspaper and Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration among 600 news outlets dedicated to enhanced reporting on “the primary crisis of our generation,” according to host David Dickerson. United Methodist Insight is a partner in the five-year-old journalism initiative.
The United Methodist Church outlines its stances on climate change and creation care in the first section of its Social Principles, a set of guidelines for Christian living contained in the Book of Discipline, the collection of church doctrine, laws and policies. The first section, “Community of All Creation,” begins by describing the world as "Creation in Peril" because of "unsustainable human activities" leading to "degradation and wholesale destruction of the natural environment. The section cites ecosystems' destruction, global warming and climate change, and fossil-fuel dependence as the primary threats to life on Earth.
United Methodists are more aware of climate actions than they once were, thanks to the General Board of Global Ministries' Environmental Sustainability focus and its EarthKeepers program, which has trained hundreds of laypeople and clergy as "environmental stewards." In addition, the UM Creation Justice Movement promotes climate change action through education, legislative action and connections in local churches and annual conferences.
What's often missing from United Methodist and other faith-based efforts is regular emphasis on creation justice from pastors, rabbis, imams and other spiritual leaders, said the panelists,
Featured panelists on the webinar were Reba Elliott, senior director for strategy, planning, and special projects for the Roman Catholic Church’s Laudato Si' movement, and Dr. Iyad Abumoghli, director of the Faith for Earth Coalition at the UN Environment Program. Brian Roewe, environmental correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter, moderated the webinar.
Roewe introduced the topic by noting that 88.5 percent of the world’s population belong to a faith community, with Christians and Muslims representing the largest groups. What’s more, Roewe said, faith-based organizations represent the third largest investment cohort in the world.
Those two statistics highlight the major role faith communities can play at all levels of the climate change movement, from influencing national, regional and local public policies to teaching faith community members about sustainability practices and the often-misunderstood support for increased climate action, Roewe said.
In addition to the high participation of the world’s population in some form of religion, 89 percent overall of the world’s people want more action on climate change, said Dickerson.
Roewe and Elliott noted that May 24 marks the 10th anniversary of Laudato Si’, the groundbreaking encyclical by the late Pope Francis on climate change and creation care. Francis’ support for creation care has galvanized many faith-based activities, Elliott said. A weeklong celebration is planned, with resources available for faith groups to use in the observance.
In addition, Abumoghli said, the Faith for Earth Coalition was formed in 2017, two years after world leaders adopted a document called “Agenda 2030,” with the theme “healthy people on a healthy planet.”
“It’s about partnership, about a whole society approach to poverty, education and life underwater and above ground,” he said. “When it started, we rarely found faith-based organizations involved.”
Since then, faith-based organizations have become actively involved in climate crisis action, using what Abumoghli described as “three powers:”
- The power of convincing,
- The power of convening, and
- Economic power.
“Most religions have teachings on caring for nature that are centuries old; that’s convincing,” said Abumoghli. “Most religions meet at least once a week; that’s convening.
“And faith-based organizations own 8 percent of the world’s habitable land, and invest trillions every year; that’s economic power,” he said.
Elliott cited Laudato Si’s anniversary May 24 as the first opportunity for new Pope Leo XIV to demonstrate his support.
Abumoghli added: “When a faith leader speaks, people say ‘amen’ and they listen. Faith leaders speak of tradition and knowledge.”
The UN program director said that Pope Francis’ sponsorship of an interfaith conference on Laudato Si’ resulted in “more than two dozen” faith representatives agreeing on the creation care commonalities in their respective religions. He lamented that “economic priorities” have overtaken some of that mutual understanding and called for greater education and emphasis on religious institutions’ promoting living “in harmony with nature.”
“When a faith leader speaks, people say ‘amen’ and they listen. Faith leaders speak of tradition and knowledge.”
– Dr. Iyad Abumoghli, director, UN "Faith for Earth"
Elliott said that climate change response has been especially strong in the Philippines, which has been ravaged by a succession of intense typhoons. She recalled how Pope Francis, wearing a yellow poncho, led worship in driving rain during a papal visit. That image made climate action “more urgent,” she said.
That urgency has spread to today’s Catholic leaders in the Philippines, where one bishop traveled to France to speak with bank executives on how their funding of fossil fuel projects is hurting the country, Elliott said.
Abumoghli also decried what he called “religious illiteracy concerning the environment.”
“Local effects need to be explained in concrete terms, not abstract science,” he said. “We’re talking about agriculture, water resources, and practices that will impact livelihoods. National legislation needs to be translated, mainstreamed into local sustainability.
To get more believes involved, Elliott encouraged Catholics and other Christians to participate in events for Laudato Si’s 10th anniversary. Abumoghli suggested believers plan to participate in World Environment Day on June 5, with its theme of “Beating Pollution.”
“Six million children die from pollution each year,” he said. “Education and knowledge are key to solving this crisis; they must be captured and practiced.”
Cynthia B. Astle
Photo by Taylor Walters Denyer
Cynthia B. Astle serves as Editor of United Methodist Insight, an online journal she founded in 2011 as a media channel of news and views for and about marginalized and under-served United Methodists. Insight is a member of Covering Climate now, a collaboration of 600 news outlets worldwide committed to enhanced reporting on the climate crisis with emphasis on solutions for meeting its challenges.