“Caring for Creation” Gains Speed

The Holy See recently announced that it is proud to be neutral – carbon neutral. Very shortly, in fact, the Vatican will become the fist sovereign state in the world to become entirely carbon neutral. It intends to plant trees in Hungary to offset the emissions used in Vatican City, to begin to convert their facilities’ energy sources to solar power and raise awareness through conferences and teaching about environmental responsibilities.

While the Catholic Church is by far the largest single Christian body in the world, they are by no means the only one concerned over the future of the environment. Concern for the future of our planet has quickly become a religious issue that transcends liberal and conservative labels, cuts across interreligious lines, and takes on theological significance in the sermons of religious leaders.

Catholics, Anglicans, Orthodox, Presbyterians, American Mainline Protestants, Evangelical Protestants, Muslims, Buddhists and Jews have begun to make “earth stewardship” both a political and religious imperative.

The American Jewish Committee has led the charge on energy-saving and environmentally friendly advocacy for almost four decades. We have convened conferences with Catholics, Protestants and Jews to discuss the unique role that religions must play in preserving the environment and we were one of the first religiously affiliated groups to push for comprehensive energy legislation in Washington.

Today, AJC is becoming the first Jewish organization to “go green,” by ensuring its New York headquarters will meet the highest green building standards, powering its offices with renewable electricity, and offering employees cash incentives for purchasing fuel-efficient vehicles. AJC hopes to serve as a dugma ishit, a personal example of no-nonsense concern for energy efficiency and the environment for other religious and secular organizations.

AJC believes in the teaching from the Ethics of Our Fathers (Pirkei Avot), “Who is truly wise? One who can prepare for the future.” We know that in the future few issues will be as important as maintaining a globally secure and healthy planet. Working toward these goals constitutes fulfilling our responsibilities as geopolitical and religious agents of change.

In Leviticus, God explains “the land is Mine; you are merely strangers and settlers with Me.” Our rabbis have taught that if we destroy this world there will be no one else to repair it for us. In the Talmud we are instructed to use fuel efficiently, and that to ignore this is to transgress a prohibition against unnecessary squandering.

Preserving global security through energy security is imperative in acting out our Jewish mission in this world. Defending the State of Israel by making the world less reliant on those who wish her ill is an essential part of our mission to “not stand idly by” while Jewish lives are at risk.

But we are by no means alone in these tasks. The Archbishop of Canterbury, who drives a hybrid, is urging the Church of England to put the environment on its list of priorities. The National Association of Evangelicals in the U.S. is doing the same for its constituency. The Evangelical Environmental Network has pushed creative programs such as “What Would Jesus Drive?” The Evangelical Climate Initiative, a group of more than 100 Evangelical leaders who believe their faith requires them to respond vigorously to global warming, includes Richard Stearns of World Vision U.S., the largest Christian relief and development organization in the world; Rick Warren, author of The Purpose Driven Life; Leith Anderson, president of the National Association of Evangelicals; Todd Bassett, former national commander of the Salvation Army; and Duane Litfin, president of Wheaton College.

For almost a decade, the Orthodox Christian Ecumenical Patriarch, Bartholomew has preached the message that “To commit a crime against the natural world is a sin.” Beyond the theological he has pushed for “legal recourse” against “ecological crimes.” Now the Vatican too sends the same message with its plan.

These are just a few of the largest groups making energy efficiency and the environment part and parcel of what it means to be religious. AJC, along with many other Jewish groups, joins them in this message, and expresses hope that we may together bring to pass the Biblical ideal that “the land shall yield her fruit, and we will eat our fill, and dwell therein in safety.”

Ari Gordon is AJC’s assistant director of Interreligious Affairs.