Baptists Latest Religious Group to Weigh in on Environment

Forty-four U.S. Southern Baptist leaders made headlines on Monday with a declaration urging Baptists to take personal actions and back policy positions that will reduce human impact on climate. “We believe our current denominational engagement with these issues has often been too timid,” the church leaders wrote in their new declaration. The statement comes only a year after the Southern Baptist Convention staked out a much more conservative stand on climate change.

The declaration is only the latest in growing activism by religious and spiritual traditions on environmental issues. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has tracked nearly 100 articles in the past year that document support for environmental protection by major world religions. UNEP reported on Monday that a Vatican official, building on the Catholic Church’s centuries-old list of “seven deadly sins,” has enumerated seven sins of the globalization era, one of which is environmental degradation. (Several other “sins” also deal with issues of sustainability, including excessive wealth, the widening gap between rich and poor, and activity that creates poverty).

The moral weight wielded by religious leaders, their capacity to shape worldviews, and the sheer number of religious adherents in the world—some 85 percent of the world’s people—make religious views on any issue important, especially if religions come together to speak with one voice. As leaders like the Dalai Lama, the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, and prominent Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and indigenous leaders have weighed in, a powerful moral voice for protection of the environment is emerging.

Another step in building that voice may come next month, if, as anticipated, Pope Benedict of the Catholic Church uses his April address to the United Nations to stress the central moral importance of the climate issue and to urge the global community to take action on climate.

Gary Gardner is a Senior Researcher at the Worldwatch Institute and author of the book Inspiring Progress: Religions’ Contributions to Sustainable Development.