The below article was published in Salish Current on July 28, 2022 on the Bellingham Multifaith Network for Climate Justice (MNCJ) and their upcoming Sacred Earth Fair.
By Clifford Heberden
For the believer as well as the nonbeliever, the plagues of heat waves, droughts, wildfires, floods and storms — extreme weather events brought about by climate change — are bedeviling the environment and the lives of people all over the world.
The crisis is forcing communities to question their relationships to nature and the world around them. As environmental consciousness grows, members of faith communities are among those seeking to engage with the reality of the climate crisis.
Many are finding motivation and even direction to do so in the writings of their faiths, such as admonitions in Exodus, “… I will send the full force of my plagues against you and against your officials and your people,” and Pirkei Avot, “It is not on you to finish the work, but you are not free to desist from it.”
The Multifaith Network for Climate Justice (MNCJ) was formed in 2019 when leaders and members of communities of faith around Bellingham organized to join in acting toward climate justice, raising awareness and opening discussions within their groups.
There is a groundswell of people who are deeply concerned about the environment and may feel that’s not a priority in their congregations, said Judy Hopkinson of the MNCJ.
To address that concern and priority, the MNCJ will hold a Sacred Earth Fair in Bellingham on July 31, to engage the community in exploring ways to care for each other and the environment.
Longstanding Indigenous relationships with the environment will be represented, in presentations and performances by Lummi and Nooksack tribal members.
Different words, same message
Hopkinson said she was surprised that when people from different faiths have done presentations for MNCJ, they brought “fundamentally the same message … coming through with different words, or different tradition, or different rituals, but it’s striking how similar they all are.”
Bellingham’s Baha’i community will participate in the Sacred Earth Fair. Michael Karlberg, a member of the Baha’i faith, said the fundamental teaching of Baha’i is that humanity is moving toward a transition to learning how to live together globally.
“All the crises that we’re seeing today are the result of clinging to immature patterns of behavior,” Karlberg said. “We need to embrace the principle of the oneness of humanity and figure how to translate that into a form of civilization that can actually prove peaceful, just and sustainable on this planet.”
Within the Baha’i faith, Karlberg said the question of climate change and justice is often discussed.
“Baháʼu’lláh taught that nature is an expression of God’s will,” Karlberg said. “It serves as an environment within which we can develop our spiritual potentialities, but we need to be responsible stewards of nature, or trustees of the natural world.”
Karlberg said the Baha’i faith teaches that “we’re one with the natural world, we’re inter-dependent, we drive our well-being from the integrity of the natural world we live in, so we have a responsibility to take care of it.”
A gift
Congregation Beth Israel will also participate in the fair. Cantorial Soloist Andrea Shupack said there is a strong foundation in Judaism’s biblical texts of caring for and appreciating the Earth and understanding that we are guests on this Earth, that it is all a divine gift, and that we are to take care of the Earth.
“Those are some of the tenets and teachings within Torah and our other biblical texts,” Shupack said. “There’s a lot of mitzvoth, which are the commandments given in the Torah, that speak to environmental protection.” For example, Shupack said there’s one known as bal tashchit: “do not waste.”
“There is the idea of B’tzelem Elohim, ‘made in God’s image,’ that everything in this universe has divinity within it, is sacred, is holy and asks to treat everyone and everything, every plant, every animal, every being with that in mind so that we really appreciate and take care of and honor all of it,” Shupack said. “That’s another beautiful teaching in Judaism.”