The National Religious Partnership for the Environment brings together an alliance of faith institutions and leaders in order to bring voice and action on behalf of caring for God's Creation.  

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History

By the mid-late 1980s, portions of the religious community had begun to create responses and programs to the address environmental stewardship. In the 1990s, after an open letter sent from 32 Nobel laureates and other eminent scientists, senior religious leaders affirmed the need for theologically grounded, scientifically informed religious initiative. What followed was a formal consultation with senior religious leaders to lay the groundwork for such action. In October 1993, the National Religious Partnership for the Environment formally began its activities as an alliance of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the National Council of Churches, the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life, and the Evangelical Environmental Network. The bylaws set forth its foundation and protocol for action: “The Partnership builds upon the religious beliefs and moral values of each of the bodies which make it up and which will independently undertake its own initiatives in its own community.”

Accomplishments over the years include:

• Hundreds of evangelical leaders signed an Evangelical Environmental Declaration in a consultation sponsored by Dr. Billy Graham's Christianity Today.
• NRPE led the effort to address the needs of developing countries (known as international adaptation) in US climate legislation.
• Internationally prominent scientists joined religious leaders from across the denominational spectrum to issue “Earth’s Climate  Embraces  Us All: A Plea  from Religion and Science for Action on Global  Climate  Change,” calling on Congress to give serious  attention to proposed climate change legislation.
• Scholars from the Catholic, Jewish, and Protestant traditions gathered to consider the theological dimensions of the relationship between children’s health and the environment.​

• ​The Partnership's faith groups sent resource kits to over 100,000 congregations: every Catholic parish, virtually every synagogue, 50,000 mainline Protestant 
  and Eastern Orthodox churches, and 35,000 evangelical congregations.
• A delegation of Christian and Jewish leaders met with officials  from Ford, General Motors, and the United Auto Workers to deliver an “Open Letter to 
  Automobile Executives” and held substantive  discussions  on fuel economy.
• Thousands of news accounts have appeared, from the very smallest outlets such as the Laramie Daily Boomerang (WY) and the Downer's Grove Suburban Life (IL), to extended features in the New York Times, Washington Post, Washington  Times, Los Angeles Times and ABC World News Tonight. Thousands more stories and opinion pieces in the print, radio  and  network television media have featured a  variety of Partner member  initiatives, e.g., the “What Would  Jesus Drive?” campaign of the  Evangelical Environmental Network,  generating an unprecedented level of  public interest in personal transportation decisions as moral and religious choice.​

Founding of Our Partners:

• Recap of religious environmental formation in Chesapeake Quarterly
• Founding of the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life
• Founding of the Catholic Climate Covenant
• History of Creation Justice Ministries​

The earlier work of the Partnership helped forge a coalition that, to this day, is guiding major religious communities as they continue to integrate a concern for caring for God’s creation into the fabric of religious life in America.