Interfaith Education and the Environment

Interfaith educational events and programs can be vital resources for religious leaders and engaged laypersons. Together, participants from different faith communities learn about environmental conditions locally or globally; share information, strategies, experiences, and perspectives on creation care; and discover opportunities for becoming involved in initiatives to promote environmental justice and ecological integrity.

Energized and equipped, they go forth to continue working in their own faith communities with fresh ideas and inspiration. Building on new relationships, they can go on to find ways to address common concerns in their community or in the world.

Shared learning opportunities take varied forms and take place at different levels:

• A major component of the work of many interfaith environmental organizations is providing educational opportunities and resources through conferences, workshops, websites, and publications.

• The National Religious Partnership for the Environment has supported leadership development for its member faith groups. In April 2002, the Partnership brought 32 young Catholic, Mainline Protestant, Jewish and evangelical leaders together with seasoned religious environmental leaders for a three-day Young Leaders Retreat in West Cornwall, Connecticut.

• Environmental concerns are coming into focus for theological education in ecumenical settings:
• The Environmental Ethics and Public Policy Program at Harvard University Divinity School made environmental ethics a field of sustained activity and attention for faculty and students with faculty seminars, courses on ethics and religion, bibliographies, and occasional papers.
• Yale Divinity School offers a joint Master's degree with the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. Students at the two schools have also formed FERNS — the Faith, Environment, Religion, Nature Spirituality Network for exploring the connections between spirituality, religion, and the natural environment.
• The Religion and Environment Initiative at the University of Chicago, an interfaith community of students, scholars, and others, explores the relationship between religion and the environment and promotes environmental concern as a religious issue.
• TREES — Theological Roundtable on Ecological Ethics and Spirituality is a student-based, inter-religious organization at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley.
• Boston Theological Institute's Science and Religion program focuses on the environment as one of the key factors in the need for dialogue between science and religion.

Three congregations in Maine teach their neighbors how to protect creation through energy conservation.