Rev. Dr. Steven C. Bland, Jr. is the Senior Pastor at Detroit’s Liberty Temple Baptist Church and the President of the Michigan Progressive Baptist State Convention.

The COVID-19 pandemic has shined a glaring and harsh spotlight on the irrefutable fact that unhealthy air and water can become devastating disasters for communities of color. We have always known that clean air and water is necessary for human health. But the COVID-19 pandemic revealed, yet again, the harsh and tragic reality of what decades of pollution does to communities of color. While as a nation we are rightfully focused on addressing the immediate health needs of infected individuals, we cannot lose sight of the fact that the health and well-being of Black and Brown folks must be addressed through pollution reduction. 

Under the current deregulatory agenda, water protections are drying up, coal is worth more than human life, and new tailpipe emissions standards may actually cause more deaths. Even the nation’s bedrock environmental law, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), is under siege. These rollbacks will increase human exposure to pollution that is linked to higher coronavirus death rates. As a pastor concerned with both protecting human life and God’s creation, this is untenable. 

Cumulative impacts—a phrase to mean systematic and ongoing poisoning of neighborhoods and communities—need to be addressed if we are ever to truly recover from this pandemic. These cumulative impacts cannot be addressed by rolling back regulations in the name of economic progress. Yet, that is exactly what the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is doing -- including the recent executive order to use a national emergency declaration to waive NEPA’s crucial environmental protections.

The rollback of NEPA is of particular concern since it is credited with protecting communities from the devastating impacts of an unwanted and unneeded freeway expansion in the northeastern part of the state and saving Michigan taxpayers $1.5 billion. Yet, even given its effectiveness in minimizing impacts to the environment and to communities during infrastructure development, the EPA is currently planning to revise and undermine this law. Despite public outcry, the EPA is close to finalizing changes to the entire NEPA process that favor polluting industries. 

In a bid to escape the burden of environmental stewardship, the EPA proposed rollbacks aim to change the NEPA review process and pave the way for further degradation of vulnerable communities. We know that these communities—low-wealth neighborhoods and communities of color—often bear the brunt of problems caused by poorly planned infrastructure projects. By rolling back NEPA, the EPA is planning to eliminate one of few environmental protections that these communities have. The changes to NEPA threatens the health of our communities and puts our air and water at risk 

My Christian faith calls on me to care for the earth and most importantly to care for my neighbor. This healthy future that my faith envisions and my community deserves demands more than rollbacks designed to pave the way for unsustainable and irresponsible development. Protecting the environment through regulations like NEPA aligns with a vision of vibrant, healthy communities. NEPA has helped us escape some of the more environmentally tragic infrastructure missteps for more than half a century, and it should be regarded as helping us build a pathway to a healthier future.

The impacts of COVID-19 may have uncovered for many the environmental injustice lived daily by communities of color, but it also unearthed a solidarity among us all to care for our neighbor in their time of need.  We know more acutely now that pollution left unchecked will severely undermine our ability to respond to pandemics. We must, therefore, ensure that protections such as NEPA that protect human health remain intact, because we depend upon these safeguards to build vibrant and just communities.
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Around this time of year – the High Holidays – Judaism calls us to take an annual look in the moral mirror. This year more than ever, we may be afraid of what we might see. Yet that pessimism does not serve us, and it may not even be accurate. By the time these High Holidays arrive, the pandemic will have consumed over half a year of our lives and collective history. The virus has killed more than 800,000 people and counting, and has altered the lives of everyone on the planet to some extent. The High Holidays are a season for taking moral inventory for the sake of Teshuvah — turning and returning — and a global crisis must also be a time for self-examination for the sake of learning and changing course. The confluence of the High Holiday season with a global pandemic that has touched us all therefore makes this perhaps the ripest time in our lifetimes for a collective accounting of our moral state and our future direction. Though we often assume that such a reckoning should be focused on searching out our faults and making amends for them, true reflection finds whatever the mirror reveals, be it bad, good, or complicated, discouraging or hopeful. So if we take this time leading up to and including the High Holidays to look back and consider what has happened, how we have responded, and how we can prevent it from recurring, what do we see? What have we done, who have we been, and what can we learn from this debacle for the future?


Believe it or not, here’s what I see from where I sit: we are actually rising to the occasion in the most important and holy way – we are preserving life. Crisis has shown us who we really are, and this is what it has revealed – we are champions of pikuach nefesh, the Jewish principle that saving a life is of paramount importance, superseding even our most precious institutions like Shabbat. We have acted – or refrained from acting – in order to preserve life at the expense of not only conferences and family visits, large weddings and prayer services, school and sports, but that most untouchable of American idols: constant economic growth. This is how we are showing up in this moment of crisis.


Though there has been much sound and fury in the news media and on social media about resistance to the shutdowns, when viewed from high up, these exceptions only prove the rule. Without some dissenters, we might mistake our restraint for something that was truly out of our control, a constraint that no one could resist. But that’s not the case — we don’t absolutely have to follow the public health rules, we are choosing to. In fact, a recent poll showed that 86% of us are wearing masks outside the home and 75% of us support requiring everyone to do so. Most importantly, almost three quarters of us say that virus-prevention restrictions trump concerns about economic damage. And the relative few who aren’t following the rules aren’t primarily responsible for the virus spiraling out of control in the U.S. – other countries also have people who won’t follow rules, but those countries’ coordinated responses are keeping the virus in check anyways. Don’t get distracted by the drama; the reality is that we the people are doing this right. For the first time I can remember, the world is engaged in one giant exercise in Jewish, religious, and humanist values: we are putting life above all else. We are responding in the affirmative to the Torah’s great challenge to us — issued near the end, in the portions we read right before the High Holidays — to “choose life, that you may live.” (Deut. 30:19)


I hate to say it, but in a certain respect this comes as a surprise. To the extent that we have tried to dedicate some of our time, efforts, and resources to the wellbeing of humanity beyond our immediate circle of family and friends, we may even experience this as nothing short of a shock. The list of phenomena that kill or threaten to kill massive numbers of people, and yet are tolerated by most people — at least insofar as we do little or nothing to stop them — is far too long to enumerate here, though climate change and our addiction to the often lethal personal automobile can stand in for the full set, representing the much-reported and the normalized-to-the-point-of-invisibility ends of the spectrum, respectively. It is the constant underlying angst of organizers and would-be change-makers: human beings’ seeming inability to break out of the routines of our daily lives and the structures in which we live to prioritize life over the pursuit of everything that capitalism tells — or compels — us to focus on. Again — though now in reverse — the fact that some resist this trend only proves the rule: there is nothing forcing most of us to ignore these causes of death, we just do. It is just as hard — harder, even — to shut down major portions of our lives to preserve life in the face of COVID-19 as it would be to change our ways to prevent the looming climate catastrophe, but we are willing to sacrifice for one and not the other. The question of how to relay our willingness to “choose life” against this threat into a willingness to do the same with respect to many others is not merely an exercise in speculation about human nature, it is the most fundamental question of our time.


So our seasonal reflection on how we have performed in this moment of great consequence — the pandemic — must turn to the question of how we will perform in the face of a crisis with eternal consequences — climate change. Remember, the point of our looking back over the past year at High Holiday time is ultimately for the sake of the future. So how will we turn our willingness to “choose life, so that you may live” into one that also fulfills the next few words of the verse: “you and your descendants”?
Again, there is good, and surprising, news. Just as the pandemic has shown that we are capable of prioritizing life, the pandemic has also given us an unexpected boost in the daunting task of extending that will to preserve human life by averting climate catastrophe. According to the United Nations, the world’s carbon emissions must fall almost 8 percent each year from now until 2030 in order to avoid catastrophic climate change. It’s a goal that seemed incredibly daunting, at best, just a year ago, given the inertia of the global economy. But the pandemic has resulted in an 8 percent drop in coal use in the first quarter of 2020, and an increase in the use of renewable energy.  In other words, because of the pandemic, we have taken the first necessary step towards saving the future of life. The task is now a little simpler — to continue that trajectory. The problem with how we have taken this first step, of course, is that it was linked to an enormously painful economic shutdown. If the price of preserving life is destroying our economy, robbing our children of their education, and not seeing our loved ones — among other terrible consequences — it seems less likely that we’ll be willing to do the same in the face of future threats to life, like climate change.


Fortunately for us, it doesn’t need to be this hard. Much of the hardship involved in slowing the pandemic was avoidable — failing to heed many warnings about the likelihood of pandemics and the government’s gutting of our public health infrastructure are just two of many choices that were made that ultimately led to the need for the dire sacrifices we are now all making to mitigate its consequences. As Barrett Swanson wrote in his indictment of American disaster culture in Harper’s Magazine, the pandemic and its consequences are not “acts of God,” though government officials, news media, and corporations have all rushed to categorize them as such.  Even more so than the pandemic, we have ample warning about the likelihood and dangers of climate change, giving us even more opportunity to make choices ahead of time that will avert not only the last-resort response of upending our lives to slow its progress, but the catastrophe itself. Instead, we can make measured, conscious, strategic, and ultimately far less painful choices now to prevent crisis and death later. Whatever limited sacrifices might be necessary now — and in truth, it is more likely that only certain corporations’ carbon-based business models would ultimately have to be sacrificed — the suffering and death that would result from not addressing the problem in advance would be many orders of magnitude more painful. A move towards preserving life now would in fact be joyful and meaning-making affirmation of our collective will to live, which is no sacrifice at all.


So finally, if we have discovered that we are willing to sacrifice even our precious economic growth to save lives, and if proactive measures to preserve life from climate disaster would not be nearly as painful as ignoring the threat, if at all, why then is the United States being ravaged by the pandemic and why does it seem so difficult to change our collision course with climate change? Again, it is not the fault of those individuals who aren’t being careful enough, or who are outright flouting the rules — at least not primarily — because most of us are in fact acting to preserve life. Rather, the answer to both is that we the people have not yet claimed enough of our power to let our goodness determine the outcome. We are not failing; our national government and certain overly-powerful corporations are failing us. In fact, when I said earlier that I was surprised that we rose to the occasion and sacrificed to save lives during the pandemic, I should not have been, because we the people were never the primary cause of societal failures to effectively address the other major threats to life in the first place. Responding to overwhelming threats to life that respect no borders and feed on our interconnectedness — as both the pandemic and climate change surely do — requires massive coordination and direction, and a certain unity of purpose. In other words, they require leadership. We would not have had to give up so much — or endure so much death — if our leadership had risen to the occasion during the pandemic as we have, and we will not have to sacrifice to stave off mass death from climate change if our leaders meet the climate challenge as we now know we are able to. We need leadership that is willing to rise to the call of history, to match our commitment to life, to stitch our individual goodness together into a coordinated response, and to help us preserve life for the ages. We cannot wait for leaders to lead the way, we must become our own collective leadership, leading our leaders to choose life as we have. Our reflection in this High Holiday season has revealed that we have what it takes to preserve life; now let us find the power within us to lead ourselves to a future that chooses life.

(This article appeared first on Tikkun magazine’s website, you can read it and other thought provoking articles here.)

by Alexander Sankey
Alexander is proud of his heritage and background from the Kiowa and Northern Arapaho tribes. He is a Junior at the University of Oklahoma and an intern for the EYA Summer 2020 Program.

As a native person and a Christian, I am deeply passionate about understanding the struggles of Native Americans and responding to their needs from the perspective of my faith. The history of Mt. Rushmore, located in the Black Hills of South Dakota, is a prime example of this struggle. Prior to being called “Rushmore,” the mountain was named “The Six Grandfathers” by the Lakota Sioux, after the four directions, the Earth, and the Sky. Many Lakota people still travel there to gather medicines for prayer and to connect with creator at a spot that has been sacred for them for generations. 

The Black Hills and the Six Grandfathers were originally listed as “unceded Indian territory” in the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie, but colonizers changed the treaty boundaries after discovering a small amount of gold in the Black Hills. In 1927, the sacred mountain was further desecrated when Gutzon Borglum was commissioned by the State of South Dakota to carve what is now known as Mt. Rushmore. Furthering the insult of desecrating a sacred site by carving into the mountain, Borglum had social and financial ties to white supremacist groups, and the Mt. Rushmore project was funded in part by the Ku Klux Klan, with which Borglum had sympathies.

Each of four men memorialized at Mt. Rushmore deserves credit in building this country, but each man has a blemished past when it comes to people of color. Untangling the history of Mt. Rushmore helps us to understand why many native people view the memorial as a symbol of white supremacy. What most non-indigenous people do not know is that every time this carving is celebrated, the oppression of indigenous people is ignored and the pain of the native peoples that call this area home is increased. 

Jesus taught us that we must love our neighbor as ourselves (Mt 22:39). As people of faith, in order to manifest Jesus’ teachings, we must work towards reconciliation and justice and endeavor to heal these wounds. Only then, by being in right relationship with our “neighbor,” can we then be in right relationship with God.

Georgia Congressman and civil rights icon John Lewis died Friday after a career of advocating for racial justice that spanned the historic marches of the 1960s and the Black Lives Matter protests of today.

After watching video of the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, he said, “It was so painful, it made me cry.” Yet “people now understand what the struggle was all about,” he said.

“It’s another step down a very, very long road toward freedom, justice for all humankind. It was very moving to see hundreds of thousands of people from all over America and around the world take to the streets — to speak up, to get into what I call ‘good trouble.’”

“This feels and looks so different,” he said of the Black Lives Matter movement, which has led the anti-racism demonstrations after Floyd’s death. “It is so much more massive and all inclusive.” He added, “There will be no turning back.”

John Lewis became an early leader in the movement and ally of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., whom he met in 1958. He was among the original 13 Freedom Riders, the African-American and white activists who challenged segregated interstate travel in the South in 1961.

Mr. Lewis led demonstrations against racially segregated restrooms, hotels, restaurants, and swimming pools. At nearly every turn he was beaten, spat upon or burned with cigarettes.

On March 7, 1965, he helped lead the march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama for voting rights for African-Americans and all Americans. The first attempt of the march started when the demonstrators crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. They were met by state troopers in riot gear.

Ordered to stop, the protesters silently stood their ground. The troopers responded with tear gas and bullwhips and rubber tubing wrapped in barbed wire. During the attack, which came to be known as Bloody Sunday, a trooper fractured Mr. Lewis’s skull with a billy club, knocking him to the ground. Since I was a participant in the last day of the second attempt of the march (walking into Montgomery), we were aware that the first attempt had been met with violence by state troopers.

Mr. Lewis was arrested 40 times from 1960 to 1966. Lewis’s first arrest came in February 1960, when he and other students demanded service at whites-only lunch counters in Nashville. He was repeatedly beaten senseless by southern policemen and freelance hoodlums. During the Freedom Rides in 1961, he was once left unconscious in a pool of his own blood, after he and others were attacked by hundreds of white people.

But John Lewis’s family did not support him. When his parents learned that he had been arrested in Nashville, he wrote, they were ashamed. As a child, when he asked them about signs saying “Colored Only,” they told him, “That’s the way it is, don’t get in trouble.”
But as an adult, he said, after he met Dr. King and Rosa Parks, whose refusal to give up her bus seat to a white man was a flash point for the civil rights movement, he was inspired to “get into trouble, good trouble, necessary trouble.” Getting into “good trouble” became his motto for life.

On the other hand, President Trump, as one might expect, dismissed the current Black Lives Matter protests as having “nothing to do with justice or peace,” stating that Floyd’s memory is being dishonored by “rioters, looters and anarchists.” Good trouble is probably not something he understands.

​Trump then claimed falsely on twitter, “The professionally managed so-called “protesters” at the White House had little to do with the memory of George Floyd. They were just there to cause trouble. The @SecretService handled them easily.”

It’s better to remember this 2018 tweet by Lewis: “Do not get lost in a sea of despair. Be hopeful, be optimistic. Our struggle is not the struggle of a day, a week, a month, or a year, it is the struggle of a lifetime. Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble.”


Originally posted in the Portland Press Herald.

by Alexander Wimmer
Alexander is the Program and Policy Advisor for NRPE.

In his encyclical on the environment, Laudato si’, Pope Francis sets out to “enter into dialogue with all people about our common home” (LS 3). Religious and political leaders around the world have drawn upon the message of Laudato si’ to call for increased institutional and international action around conservation, biodiversity protection, chemical pollution, and climate change. But the fact remains that Pope Francis addresses the words of this encyclical to the individual, not to the institution. At the heart of Laudato si’ is a call for individual conversion towards a new lifestyle that opposes a culture of self-centeredness and greed and “embarks on new paths to authentic freedom” (LS 205).
 
This conversion towards a new lifestyle must begin with contemplation. Pope Francis beautifully states that “the world is a joyful mystery to be contemplated with gladness and praise” (LS 12). In the United States, there is no shortage of beautiful landscapes to be contemplated, many of which are found within our National Parks. 
 
My own journey towards a deeper contemplation of nature began during a trip to Shenandoah National Park with my brothers during the summer of 2015. On the first night, as the sun set over the Shenandoah Valley, I recall being filled with a great sense of peace. Later during that same trip, I was dismayed to overhear a father and son discussing their disappointment in Shenandoah. They were visiting from Colorado, and remarked that the grandeur of the awe-inspiring peaks in the Rocky Mountains far outweighed the less imposing beauty of the Appalachians. At the heart of their observation is a simple reality: the disarming beauty of certain landscapes draws us into awe much more easily than other landscapes, which we subsequently categorize as “less beautiful.”
 
A few years later, an old ranger at Everglades National Park spoke to this reality when he told me that “In the American West, God shouts at us through the grandeur of creation. In the Everglades, God whispers, and most of us never listen closely enough to hear.” The lofty heights of the western mountains may easily lift our hearts to contemplate the Creator, but this does not take away from the glory of God that is also hidden in the smaller, more unassuming parts of creation.
 
God does not always shout at us; sometimes He whispers. Recall 1 Kings 19:11-12, when the Lord passes by Elijah: “and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and broke in pieces the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice.” At the sound of the “still small voice,” Elijah arose to meet the Lord.
 
Pope Francis’ invitation to contemplate the “joyful mystery” of the world with gladness and praise requires a disposition towards hearing God whispering. Each leaf, blade of grass, and drop of water owes its existence to the Creator. The tiniest of creatures reflects the beauty of God in its own unique way, and scripture tells us that God is revealed through the beauty of the world (Wisdom 13:5). I pray that each of us will heed the words of the old ranger, and learn to listen closely enough to hear.

by Peter Sawtell
Peter Sawtell is the founder and Executive Director of Eco-Justice Ministries.

In the early years of Eco-Justice Ministries, a newspaper reporter asked me a challenging question. It is one that I'd heard fairly often from church people, but answering for a secular news article called for a different kind of response.

The reporter asked, "What Bible texts do I look to as a basis for Christian environmentalism? What passages are most important in seeing the need to care for all of God's creation?"

Coming up with an answer was hard. There are so many texts that generally point us in the right direction and inform our understanding -- which one to pick? And yet there are so few texts that deal directly with the sorts of issues we face in our technological, globalized, and hurting world. What one or two passages could I lift up which would make sense to a casual reader?

As I think back, I remember that part of the way I responded wasn't terribly theological. I wanted a little bit of shock value. I wanted to give an unexpected answer. I wanted a few sentences that will make a quotable sound bite.

I was also aware that, for people who are not familiar with the idea of eco-justice -- whether newspaper readers or a lot of church members -- that it is important to use a very familiar text. An obscure passage gives the impression that eco-justice commitments are also obscure, so I wanted a text that is clearly at the heart of Christian faith and ethics.

So I decided to pick a few verses that are in every Sunday School curriculum, that are well-known to every church-goer, and that will be familiar to most who don't go to church. The words come from the Jewish scriptures, and are quoted several times in the Gospels. In Matthew, for example, Jesus is asked, "Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?" And Jesus answered:

'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. (Matt. 22:37-40)

"Love God, and love your neighbor" isn't usually thought of as an environmental text. This teaching does have a profound eco-justice meaning, though, as soon as we stretch the definition of "neighbor" into a broad realm.

I can claim a good precedent in stretching the definition of neighbor. That is precisely what Jesus did with the parable of the good Samaritan (Luke 10). Jesus had affirmed the centrality of neighbor love, and then he was hit with the follow-up question of "And who is my neighbor?" As his parable makes clear, loving our neighbor calls us to look beyond our family and friends, and the people who live next door. So, too, a faithful love of neighbors moves us beyond abstract concern or warm feelings, and makes us act with compassion and responsibility. 

Using "Love God, and love your neighbor" as a central text is fruitful in interviews -- and conversations and classes at church -- because it then requires the discussion to continue into three essential expansions of our ethical circles of being a neighbor.

1. Our neighbors include the whole human family.
We are to be neighbor to the poor and people of color who are the frequent victims of environmental injustice. We are to be neighbor to the residents of Pacific islands and Bangladesh, whose countries are beginning to be inundated by rising sea levels. We are to be neighbor to the indigenous people of the Amazon and Indonesia whose forest homelands are being clear-cut, and in Africa where spreading deserts bring famine. We are to be neighbor to the residents of urban areas whose health is degraded by smog, and to agricultural workers who are exposed constantly to dangerous chemicals. 

The command to love all of our human neighbors lifts up the justice components of eco-justice. Our compassion and concern are for those who have been hit hardest with painful impacts, and who have had few benefits from these environmental changes. We care for the poor and the powerless, the ones who the least ability to control their situation.

2. Our neighbors include future generations.
If we are neighbor to all of Earth's people today, we must also be neighbor to the coming generations who will bear the brunt of today's destructive lifestyle. Because of human actions today, they will be forced to live in a hotter world (a new report this week sees Earth hitting the 1.5 degree warming threshold within five years), a world without thousands of species, a world with more people but diminished resources. 

Looking to the future also forces us to see elements of justice. Charity might incline us to leave some resources for those who will come after us. Justice, as a component of profound love, turns the equation around, and looks at what those future generations have a right to demand from us. Love demands that we provide them with a livable world. Love and intergenerational justice call for ecological stability and sufficient resources for their ongoing well-being. Love of future neighbors means that we must change our destructive and consumptive ways. 

3. Our neighbors include the rest of creation.
Our ethical stretching has to go beyond our human neighbors. We are to be neighbor to all the varieties of life with whom we share this planet and with whom we relate in ways both dramatic and subtle -- the whales and the coral and the salmon, the wolves and caribou and prairie dogs, the complex communities of life in grasslands and forests and wetlands.

Because God's love encompasses all creatures, the obligations of faithful love also hold us in relationships of compassion, respect and justice with the entire web of life. Now, and into the future, we must care for all the family of life, and for the natural systems which maintain life. 

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What Bible texts provide a basis for Christian environmentalism? The biblical basis for eco-justice, of caring for creation, is not drawn just from interpretations of Genesis texts: of "dominion", and the Garden of Eden, and the story of Noah. It does not depend on subtleties of Greek meaning in God's love for the cosmos (John 3:16). Those are familiar and true, but we don't need to start there.

The biblical basis for caring for creation is found in the very message that Jesus named as most central, in the two commandments that support all of the law and the prophets. Love God and love neighbor. As our hearts and minds and spirits perceive ever-broadening circles of "neighbor," eco-justice emerges as an essential, basic expression of our faith. As Jesus stretches the notion of neighbor, we are called to live and act with expansive justice.
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May God's Spirit move within us to expand our love and vision. May our individual and collective lives be shaped by deep and responsible love of all of our far-flung neighbors.

Residents of all ages around my home in the Tampa, FL, area have felt the economic, social, and physical and emotional health impacts of COVID-19. Great sacrifices have been made for the wellbeing of friends, families, and strangers. Despite this, there are some that blame young people for failing to do their part in stopping the spread of the virus. Back at the beginning of the quarantine, one article even went so far as to say that “a generational war is brewing over the coronavirus,” and a lack of alarm among young adults could “hinder the fight against the virus” and “endanger elders.”
 
When it comes to the environment, this generational dynamic is flipped on its head: many young people believe that their parents and grandparents failed them. Last fall, Greta Thunberg famously accused world leaders of destroying the earth in pursuit of “fairy tales of eternal economic growth.” With COVID-19, many have seen the same passive disregard that Greta criticized, except the blame is on people of the younger generation who choose to overlook recommendations in place to protect their parents, grandparents, and others who are most at risk. This disunity between generations and disregard for the well-being of others is far from what Pope Francis envisions in his encyclical Laudato Si’, which recently celebrated its fifth anniversary on May 24th.
 
In Laudato Si’ Pope Francis devotes an entire section to “justice between the generations.” Throughout his message, Pope Francis makes it clear that caring for others and for the environment are one and the same. That is why he urges us to consider: what general direction is society heading in? What values are guiding us? And "what kind of world do we want to leave behind to those who come after us?" These questions, commonly asked in the context of caring for the environment and how it will be left for the next generations, must now be asked about the response to COVID-19 as well.
 
Steps are being taken to bridge the gap between the environment and the spread of disease. As highlighted in a Tampa Bay Times article, Catholic and evangelical leaders met virtually during the quarantine to discuss how we should approach the intertwined problems of environmental protection and deadly contagions. The leaders discussed how respiratory and general effects of air pollution make vulnerable individuals even more susceptible to viruses such as COVID-19. Catholic Bishop Gregory Parks said that “In these things, we are united in the challenges, and, therefore, we must work together for a common solution.” In order to help give the vulnerable a fighting chance, we must also help the environment for their sake. As we inch towards life after the pandemic, I hope that more people, young and old, will consider how they can serve the needs of others, especially those who might be fearful to return to normal life. This is an opportunity to practice the charity that leads to reconciliation between the generations, instead of the selfishness that drives us apart. 

Why is the United States not taking more action on climate change? This question has been at the center of political discussion for decades now. It seems like a question we shouldn’t even have to ask, since the Pew Research Center reports that 77% of the population believes it is important for the country to move towards sustainable energy.

Despite the majority opinion that change is a threat, others see the move towards sustainable energy as a frightening deviance from the norm, which could call their economic stability into question. They believe that it is more important to continue doing what has provided them economic stability (reliance on fossil fuels) and are unwilling to move towards the unknown - in order to protect the environment. For them it is simple - they are willing to sacrifice the environment.

If our democracy is to truly work then we must set aside political affiliation and come to work together. Majority opinion, as the basis of democracy, should influence everything from renewable energy to police reform.

As children of God, we are taught that the earth is a gift, crafted for us by God with the expectation that we take care of it in return. In Genesis 1:26 “God said Let us make humankind[c] in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth,[d] and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” To have dominion over the Earth is not to dominate it. God created all things and it is our job to care for Her creation, as we understand that all things are good in God’s eyes. This is a great responsibility at which we must admit we have failed. Reader, I am here to tell you that it is not too late. It is both possible and imperative that we take action now to save the Earth and all of God’s creations.

It is difficult to feel hopeful during this time. Recently, oil and gas drilling plans in the United States have sped up and are threatening the lives and sacred sites of indigenous communities. Especially during this time of COVID-19 it is important to remember that the indigenous community is one of the most at risk populations. The Navajo Nation has some of the highest per capita coronavirus cases in the world and an alternative lease plan pushing forward in New Mexico would open millions of acres of sacred land to fracking. This lease could cause up to 3,000 new fracking wells. This is devastating. 

Although the government of the United States has failed to protect the government today it is important that we never give up hope and never forget that all of God’s creation is worth protecting. As we look towards a post-pandemic, we understand the effects of a falling economy but cannot ignore the truth in knowing that if we do not take action now, when will we? Despite our fears and the knowledge that we are embarking on the more difficult path, we must remember that the earth is worth it.

The United States can generate 90% clean energy by 2035, would create more than half a million jobs per year. Most of these jobs would come from wind and solar industries, with coal becoming obsolete while gas generation would be reduced by 70%. These numbers sound amazing, almost like a dream. But 2035 seems like a lifetime away when sacred lands are being destroyed daily and people value their money more than God’s earth.

Japan recently invested $2.7 trillion dollars into a green virus recovery plan which transitions towards clear transportation, increases energy savings, and boosts the production of renewable energy. This is a clear example of how it is possible for us to move forward in both an economically sound and environmentally clean way. If Japan can do it, of course the United States can too.

Most of the population believes in sustainable energy and a future in which the United States runs on green energy. There is power and solidarity in the understanding that millions of American’s stand together and climate deniers are not as strong a force we believe them to be. Change in the United States is simple. Our elected officials and policymakers are there to listen to us and to make the changes we demand. Make yourself known as a citizen of the United States and as a child of God.

I believe that we can come away from COVID-19, with plans for a better future. We cannot afford to be silent or fearful.  

By Cassandra Carmichael

Zoom calls have become the new norm and with them, as has been commented on in a variety of forums, comes the kid “photo bomb.” Or the crying child in the background. Or the noise of child unrest coming from the other room. Children have most definitely stepped into the work “frame.” 
 
At first glance, one may judge this change to be messy, unplanned and inconvenient. But perhaps this is what life is really like anyway, and we are just now beginning to live life. Living life “unedited” and integrated may be more cumbersome, but it does have its upsides. We have opportunities to participate more fully with our families and those around us. We can embrace a deeper fullness of relationship with those who are photo bombing our carefully crafted “frame.”
 
More importantly, this lesson can be taken beyond the confines of our own households. The COVID-19 pandemic has put a spotlight on human health, but it has also thrust into our “frame” other issues such as worker justice, environmental justice and racial justice. Injustice has existed all along, but the pandemic has put an undeniable spotlight on these critical areas that need a salve of enlightenment. 
 
When my kids step into the frame of a Zoom call, I am a little—sometimes a lot—annoyed. They are disrupting the tidiness of meetings. This inconvenient annoyance to business as usual should be countered by the recognition that the façade of yesterday’s normal doesn’t speak fully to the reality of today. Perhaps they step into the frame to remind us of untended relationships, or to beg us to see all that we are actually missing and neglecting.
 
In a similar way, justice, along with the many warriors of truth that she employs, has stealthily and persistently stepped into the frame of our lives. Justice reminds us, often starkly, of the many relationships—particularly with our black and brown neighbors—that have been left untended. The environmental injustices that we have created and perpetuated are begging to be addressed. We should now be able to see and really begin to earnestly address the disparate pollution that communities of color have suffered, to attend to worker justice, to dismantle the systems that have held entire communities at the margins to suffer. 
 
Pope Francis just five short years ago reminded us in his encyclical Laudato Si’ that the entire human family has a common home. No amount of segmentation of our lives or separation of communities can alter that reality. And when injustice steps into the “frame,” as it has done during the global pandemic, it is reminder that we were created to be in right relationship with God, creation and each other.   
 
It is my prayer that we can hold tight to this unplanned moment as an opportunity to move towards right relationships and to heed the call of justice that has stepped into our “frame.”