A Green Reformation

FIVE HUNDRED YEARS after Martin Luther’s charge semper reformanda (“always reforming”), we stand on the precipice of climate disaster.

In Marrakesh, Morocco, people of faith met at the 2016 U.N. Climate Change conference (COP22) to face an impending climate disaster—a disaster that now seems likely to be exacerbated by U.S. political leadership rather than mitigated by it.

The World Council of Churches held an event in Marrakesh to emphasize how transitional justice- and rights-based approaches, alongside faith-based moral perspectives, can address challenges as complex as natural-resource management and ecological, humanitarian, and spiritual crises exacerbated by climate change. WCC organizer Henrik Grape hoped that “COP22 will take steps forward to fulfill the expectations from Paris and that nations will raise their ambitions to keep the temperature [rise] well under 2 degrees Celsius.”

A wide variety of church bodies were represented at the gathering. The Lutheran World Federation brought youth delegates from Africa to Marrakesh to promote intergenerational collaboration and solidarity with people most affected by climate change. “One of our thematic approaches to the commemoration of 500 years of Lutheran Reformation is the theme ‘Creation: Not For Sale,’” said Caroline Bader, youth secretary for the federation. The Act Alliance, a coalition of 143 churches and parachurch organizations, established a gender-climate change working group to address sustainability among poor and marginalized people through a gender lens.

Catholic theologian Guillermo Kerber believes that Pope Francis’ encyclical on the environment is a turning point for the social doctrine of the Catholic Church, by including ecology in the social concerns of Catholics. “The celebration of the 500 years of the Reformation should be an opportunity to express an ecological conversion of all Christian denominations,” said Kerber.

CLIMATE CHANGE INDICATES that global warming is happening. Climate justice is coming to terms with that reality. What will an “ecological reformation” look like?

Ecological reformation can occur when we reimagine creation as part of God’s body, tending to it with devotion and care. We can review church doctrine in light of climate change’s ecological endgame. Doctrine sets the boundaries of Christian life and practice. It should provide life-giving, life-sustaining guidance for people and all of creation. We can organize responsible stewardship in the wider society—for example, low-carbon economies, trash-to-energy programs, tax incentives for solar and geothermal power in private homes, tax penalties for companies with carbon-intensive production methods, and laws that criminalize egregious environmental violations.

The results of the U.S. presidential election were announced during the global climate meeting in Marrakesh. Most attendees were shocked, aware as they were that Trump is a climate-change denier who has stated his intention to withdraw the U.S. from the historic Paris accord to reduce global greenhouse emissions, which went into force in April.

Secretary of State John Kerry closed the Marrakesh meeting with a sobering speech. “We don’t get a second chance. The consequences of failure would in most cases be irreversible. And if we lose this moment for action, there’s no speech decades from now that will put these massive ice sheets back together.”

Where will the earth be when we celebrate the 1,000th anniversary of the Reformation?

The earth can thrive without human beings; but we cannot live without the earth.