Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to University of Cambridge Professors Tobias Müller and Esra Özyürek, religious groups can help combat climate change, but they need to renounce our “profit oriented economy”.
Religious communities can make the difference in winning the fight against climate change
December 2, 2021 3.59am AEDT
Tobias MüllerLecturer in Politics and International Studies, University of Cambridge
Esra ÖzyürekProfessor of Abrahamic Faiths and Shared Values, University of Cambridge
The threat of climate change signals a “code red for humanity”, and we are running out of time to transition away from carbon and prevent catastrophic planetary warming. Our best chance is to convince existing organisations with financial, political and social power to pioneer drastic change. Faith communities – to which 4 billion people worldwide belong, with an economic value of over £900 billion (£676 billion) in the US alone – might be the force we need.
When US President John Biden met Pope Francis on October 29, climate change was a focus of their discussion. Later that day, the pope spoke on BBC Radio 4’s Thought for the Day strand on the Today programme to demand “radical decisions” from world leaders on climate. He warned that the interlinking crises of the pandemic and climate change have created “a perfect storm” about to cause havoc to human civilisation.
Before the COP26 UN climate conference took place in Glasgow, 40 religious leaders also met in the Vatican to make an unprecedented plea for addressing the climate crisis.
“If one nation sinks, we all sink”, said Rajwant Singh, a Sikh leader from Washington D.C. And the Grand Imam Sheikh Ahmed Al-Tayeb of the Al-Azhar Mosque in Cairo, Egypt, an institution usually not known for its progressive politics, called on young Muslims “to be ready to fight against any action that damages the environment”.
…
But these steps alone are not enough. As the pope suggested to BBC listeners, religious groups must acknowledge that our profit-oriented economy is making our planet uninhabitable.
Faith communities across the world together make up an industry that is bigger than most national economies. Through speaking the truth about the state of the planet and exercising uncompromising financial, social and political pressure on governments and corporations, they can shift the balance towards averting the devastation of all we hold sacred on Earth. These communities have the resources and the resilience, but above all the moral responsibility, to do that.
In light of the many times they have failed to stand up for justice and human dignity, religions could win back their place at the forefront of a struggle that will define the future of humanity. To rephrase a famous slogan, there are no religions on a dead planet.
Read more: https://theconversation.com/religious-communities-can-make-the-difference-in-winning-the-fight-against-climate-change-172192
The problem with renouncing our profit oriented economy, with renouncing excess, is as Venezuela discovered, it is way too easy to undershoot, and tip large numbers of people into want and hunger.
Capitalism works because it is very responsive to need. People seeking a profit go out of their way to try to anticipate needs, which usually results in at least a mild excess of essentials – nobody has to go hungry.
Other systems not so much.
There is nothing sinful about allowing people to make a profit, thereby ensuring everyone has enough to eat, even if this means food is wasted.
Religious leaders should be ashamed of themselves for suggesting otherwise, for backing failed ideas which always lead to guaranteed large scale want and hunger.
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Our minister went woke and had been spouting occasional anti-capitalist statements. I agree. I agree so much, I’ve cut way back on donations, lest my evil, capitalism-derived money taint his building fund.
Jorge, why not talk with other members about the corruption within the church?
Nikita Khrushchev: ‘We will take America without firing a shot’ . He also predicted to infiltrate every aspect of American life and you will raise our flag for us.
We now see the attempt, not with the truth but with the best weapon of the communists, fraud, force and lies.
Look up “And Not a Shot is Fired” if you want more insight into that comment and its application.
Caring for, and being good stewards of, our planet — our environment taken as a whole — is an important part of the teachings of all major religions.
Political systems, economic systems and policies are not — and for the most part have little place in religious teaching when governments are not in direct opposition of religious beliefs.
The world’s religions call for people to act according to their consciences based on their religious moral values.
Opposing bad actors for whom raw greed is the prime motivating factor, when it is harmful to society, is a proper thing to do — religion or not.
I know of no major religion for whom “fighting Capitalism” could be considered a valid part of their teaching.
[Personal note: I majored in Religious Studies at UCSB ]
Yes Stewardship and Mercy not a grand historic dialectic of the evolving anthesis between the haves and have nots…. finally finding a synthesis in something that sounds like heaven…. a place of no possession. This is what happens with the intellectual trajectory of the human mind when it settles that the mind itself… human reason itself….. is the principium of all truth and knowledge. In this way, the evil of unbelief becomes validated, normalized, systematized and invisible until it breaks bad as an angel of light.. Human reason beginning with itself, reasons a priori building a matrix of false presuppositions that God is unknowable, has not spoken, is not relevant or simply does not exist because god is a evolutionary artifact of lower order beings. The philosophy since Kant has turned the intellectual order on it’s head. Now people themselves, not the Word of God are ultimate and god is to be discerned like any other created thing in the natural realm. Why would anyone settle on this error of old philosophy? The human mind is of the created realm it is an expression of nature…it cannot escape nature. The human mind cannot know what it does not know apart from nature. There is no great magic… the human mind and it’s machines will never ascend to be the true starting point of all truth and knowledge……. it can only descend into error. This is the reason that God creator spoke and speaks now in scripture because He is the creator and not the created.. He spoke so that He could be known and His will to redeem a people could be known in nature. Prior to Kant, evil was a product of people failing to to do the will of God, breaking the law of God, sinful, .faithless, mindless, puffed up, greedy, megalomaniacal.. which the Church has always ultimately condemned even when it was seemingly over taken for a time by evil. But now, we have evil systematized and normalized as the greater good as we have seen with Marxism and many of the other philosophies of modernity. The ends justifies the means…. the drama of the Grand Historical Synthesis….. and the martyrs and builder’s along the way ‘revolution’. It is nothing more than the epitome of a false faith …false church, false epistemology, false God. Marxism is an angel of darkness masquerading as an angel of light because god is dialectic of human reason, not the creator.
Unless the religion is Marxism, these anti-capitalist religious groups are helping make the rope they’ll be hung with.
That’s hilarious … the most profit-conscious people in the world have always been the religious organizations, the richest organizations on the planet who could afford to build massive cathedrals, temples, pyramids, churches, synagogue, and build their own armies, etc. etc. etc. with funds extracted mostly from the poor and middle class.
It really is sad when people who know nothing about the church, or history, proceed to denounce those that scare them.
I know facts and I cited fact. The Catholic Church, the Mormon Church, the Church of England, the TV preachers, and various and sundry other industrialized religions get rich off the pool and middle class. Apparently you’ve never set foot in in a European cathedral, most of which put kings palaces to shame, even when built in some of the smallest communities.
Look into the history of how those Churches were built.
Duane isn’t interested in reality.
To him, the fact that a few TV preachers proved to be corrupt proves that all preachers are corrupt.
He’s not interested in knowing the truth, he’s only interested in finding support for what he already believes.
You cite opinion, not facts.
You use bias and hatred instead of logic.
You use any example of corruption to paint the entire edifice. That’s like saying that North Americans are senile because Biden is senile.
As to the size of many cathedrals, so what? Do you believe that building grand building is proof of corruption?
Oh by the way, thanks for opening the door to a religious discussion and allowing it to happen. Kant, Hegel and Marx are old hat but the air we breath. The philosophies emerged in the 19 century as an a modern alternative to supernatural religion presupposing there is nothing knowable outside of nature. Everything else is fairy tales. Human reason… that is science would one day discover the farthest outreaches of nature and solve all of man’s problems. Unfortunately, their philosophy is the root of many millions dead in the 20th century, (communism, Socialistic nationalism (Nazism) Maoism, eugenics, Modern Christian Theology which weakened the Churches’ ability to stand in the face of great evil, etc).. So much for human reason and grand dialectics. How quickly we forget!
“weakened the Churches’ ability to stand in the face of great evil”
hahaha!
You are kidding!
That catholic crap has been creating the evil for centuries, the inquisition, the massacre of the hugenots, the carping to fascism, and now the child molesters by their 100s protected from prosecution by the same heretical sect permeating the lives of millions direct from ROME.
If you had any sense of history you would see that “church” with some rare exceptions has done nothing but increase conflict and suffering ever since that “bishop of Rome” became the infallible, virgin mary and purgatory propmoting crapshoot it became, before plunging all into the “dark ages of the mind” and making a pagan festival (winter solstice), the centre of the great superstition.
Go to Florence go to the museums of Medici to see it all LIVE, with centuries of “the divine right of me to rule and enslave”, if you still have no sense of history.
The only superstition which has become even worse is the Russian orthodox church, but hey you know where that is leading…
I’ll apologize for the current pope. He was not elected for his intellectual prowess, his widespread knowledge of Catholicism, his scientific knowedge and understanding, his deep understanding of human nature.
He was elected because they could agree to no one else, due to the fairly wide fissures on all those topics. He is a good man who doesn’t know how to handle his very large responsibilities. He’s also had some very “climate change” advice from political dummies under the guise of science.
I certainly don’t wish he’d die but I certainly hope he will admit to himself his shortcomings and develop enough astuteness to find the best advisors= those without their own agendas on these subjects.
This seems like the end of the Church or, at minimum, a path to the end.
Are the truly religious leaders wise enough to realize that getting rid of Capitalism means Socialism / Communism is the result? Will the governments then provide the funds for the Church? Will the parishioners then have the funds needed to support the Church?
I bet they live quite well on the backs of the proletariate.
John Houghton bears a huge amount of blame, as he started this crap some time ago, so now the poisoned fruit comes ripe…
This was an evil thing to do.
“Anti-Capitalist Religious Group” got there via him quite directly…viz:-
“awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 on behalf of the IPCC, shared jointly with former US Vice-President Al Gore”
…”was … convinced that Christians and the Church must re-find what he regarded as their biblical mandate to care for the earth, and, as retirement approached, he in effect started a new career to try to bring that about by his own efforts and supporting others.”
… founded the John Ray Initiative (JRI), an organisation that seeks to connect science, environment, and the Christian faith for sustainability and action….
….was generous with his time and encouragement to a new generation of environmentalists.
When I and my young policy and campaigns team at Tearfund initiated the climate and development programme in 1999, John was delighted to see Tearfund tackling the issue, and offered to be our adviser…
“I was invited to a private pre-launch screening of Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth; so I asked John to come with me to give me an immediate assessment of the robustness of the science.
“John leaves an important international legacy from his academic work, his post as first chair of the IPCC’s scientific panel, the ongoing work of JRI, and his private influencing work with US Evangelical leaders.
He was also an inspiration and fatherly friend to younger generations of UK Christians seeking to address climate change in their own lives, (READ BRAINWASHING) Churches, and wider society.”
He came up to London from Wales for the evening and took me out to dinner after the film where he plied me with questions and offered helpful tips about Tearfund’s climate work, as well as giving me his expert opinion on the film. He thought the science accurate but that Al Gore had pulled his punches in not suggesting much bolder action at the end.”….
“one of Sir John’s boldest initiatives was working with Bishop James Jones of Liverpool diocese, JRI, and Tearfund, on a series of private meetings and public conferences in the United States to try to engage leading US Evangelical church leaders with the reality of climate change.
The penny dropped for several prominent figures, and one result was the publication in 2006 of “Climate Change: An Evangelical Call to Action”.”
As one of the principal climate scientists of his generation, he contributed significantly to the understanding of the causes and impacts of global warming, convinced many politicians about the gravity of its risk and, as a Christian, in his later years undertook to persuade American evangelist preachers that humans are able to influence the Earth’s climate.
John Houghton described global warming as ‘a weapon of mass destruction’
https://www.cis.org.uk/obituary-for-sir-john-houghton/
https://www.issr.org.uk/news/obituary-sir-john-houghton-frs-1931-2020/
https://goodfaithmedia.org/remembering-the-life-of-sir-john-houghton-1931-2020/
Says it all really…the corruption of science from the top down.