Congregation Unitarian Universalist

Ecology, Justice, and Compassion

The United Nations celebrates this day as World Environment Day on June 5,2008

By the Reverend Fred Small*

"We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality," said Martin Luther King, Jr., "tied in a single garment of destiny."

Dr. King understood the essence of ecology: we belong to each other. Today, people of faith around the world are coming to understand that threats to the environment are threats to the principles of justice and compassion at the core of every religion.

Automobile fuel economy is an environmental issue. But when our dependence on cheap gasoline drives a tanker aground and the spreading slick deprives an Inuit family of seal meat, that's an issue of justice and compassion.

Recycling is an environmental issue. But when a Chicago woman who's never smoked cigarettes gets lung cancer from breathing fumes from an incinerator burning recyclable trash, that's an issue of justice and compassion.

Deforestation is an environmental issue. But when tree root systems no longer hold soil in place and a mud slide sweeps away a peasant village, that's an issue of justice and compassion.

Energy conservation is an environmental issue. But when our tax dollars subsidize prison construction instead of green job training that could keep at-risk teens out of prison, that's an issue of justice and compassion.

Climate change is an environmental issue. But when people on the island nation of Tuvalu must abandon their homeland before it's swallowed by the sea, that's an issue of justice and compassion.

As we awake to the dangers of global warming, we realize that our profligate use of fossil fuels offends our most fundamental religious precepts.

Every religious tradition teaches us to hold sacred the wonders of creation, yet wantonly we desecrate them.

Every religious tradition cautions us to temper our cravings for sensation and material things, yet we pursue them addictively, vainly hoping to fill our spiritual emptiness.

Every religious tradition forbids theft, yet global warming steals from our children and our children's children. Its victims are and will be disproportionately poor and of color—those least able to contend with or to flee the storms, droughts, famines, and rising sea levels to come.

People of faith take the long view. We know that a community survives and thrives not merely in space but also through time, extending backward through memory and tradition and forward through vision and legacy.

According to the Great Law of the Iroquois Confederacy, "In our every deliberation, we must consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven generations." Today's political leaders are hard-pressed to consider the impact of their decisions beyond the next election. Like the prophets of old, people of faith must call our leaders to higher values—from our pulpits and pews, in the public square, and at the ballot box.

Since the days of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, Unitarian Universalism (UUism) has been a cradle of environmental awareness and activism. Our seventh principle, "respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part," articulates both a timeless spiritual truth and an urgent call to action.

Since 2002, 59 Unitarian Universalist congregations have been accredited as Green Sanctuaries in recognition of their achievements in ecology-based worship and religious education, environmental justice, and sustainable living. In 2006, the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) meeting in General Assembly approved a compelling Statement of Conscience on global warming, which UUA President Rev. William G. Sinkford calls "one of the greatest moral and spiritual crises facing Earth's people today."

To heal the wounds of our planet and its peoples, to restore right relations among all God's creatures, to apportion the earth's abundance with equity and generosity—these challenges will demand all our courage, creativity, devotion, and sacrifice.

Will people of faith heed the call? The answer may determine the fate of the biosphere and countless imperiled species—including the miraculous evolutionary experiment called humanity.

*Rev. Fred Small is minister of First Parish Cambridge Massachusetts, located in Harvard Square. "An old church for a new world". He is co-chair of Religious Witness for the Earth, a national interfaith environmental network. In March 2007, Fred was one of the lead organizers of the Interfaith Walk for Climate Rescue from Northampton to Boston, Massachusetts. In July 2007, Grist Magazine named Fred one of 15 Green Religious Leaders worldwide.





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