Following the summer 2020 Global Training of The Climate Reality Project Leadership Corps, a group of clergy and faith leaders formed the group Faiths4Future to address climate change—and the urgency of 2030 emissions reduction goals—embracing a multifaith perspective. Those involved in forming the group recognized the need for action at all levels, from local to regional. And they also recognized that faith leaders needed somewhere to learn and talk together, for learning and for mutual support. Out of this need, and with inspiration from Jess Pepper, the Climate Café® Multifaith held its first gathering in April, 2021.
Formed during the 2020 pandemic, the Climate Café Multifaith has always been a virtual group. The virtual aspect allows the group to include clergy, ministers, and faith leaders from around US.
The Faiths4Future group identified some key needs from local faith leaders. What was needed were resources, information, and learning around the effects, but also hearing the stories of those experiencing climate change. Also, there was a need to better understand how to act and organize, from the local to the global and back again.
The Cafés were formed to try to meet these needs, while creating a gathering of support for each other and the realities we face. Our topics help inspire conversation and include those centered on organizing faith communities, climate justice activism, and how faith communities can respond to climate emergencies.
Organizing Faith Communities
It was our joy to engage conversation with faith organizers William H. Morris and Rev. Michael Anthony Howard this summer. William H. Morris spoke to the need for the voices of the youth to be heard and prioritized in faith settings, “You Won’t Even Hear Me.” Youth, Faith, and Climate Change. Rev. Howard offered experience and insight that rises from Prophetic Witness of Place, bringing faith communities into environmental and climate justice conversations through organizing with and alongside local people.
Climate Justice
Climate justice often stands alongside communities that are suffering deep loss, dislocation, and harm because of the destruction of their homes due to fossil fuels and other destructive enterprise. In June, the Cafe centered the Voices of Line 3, the voices of the Anishinaabe and allies of faith to protect the water and food production from the Enbridge pipeline. In July we welcomed Dr. Michael Roman for a conversation centering Sea Level Rise, Place & People: Kiribati.
The Faith Community Response
In July and August it was important to provide a place where faith leaders could lament and talk together about the heat-dome heatwave (Heatwaves, Cooling Shelters, and Social Infrastructure) and climate-fueled wildfires (Witness & Wildfire) that dominated headlines in the US and Canada, and took hundreds of lives. Faith communities can literally be lifelines not only in the aftermath for those displaced and in need of emergency and lasting support, but well in advance.