In a special guest post, Steve Chase, the founder & director of the Environmental Advocacy & Organising course from Antioch University in New England, shares with Green Prophet his reflections from a University-wide event held this past february in the US that examined climate activism from both Jewish & Christian perspectives.

“This week, Antioch University New England joined with over 1,400 colleges and universities across America that offered a coordinated national teach-in on how to address global warming and move toward meaning climate protection solutions. I was very honored to have been asked by Antioch’s Focus the Nation Organizing Committee to host the week’s final event, which took a close look at climate protection activism through the eyes of the Jewish and Christian faith traditions.

This is more than an academic concern for me. I come to my own work as an activist and as an activist trainer from the faith tradition of Quakers, also known as the Religious Society of Friends. In my faith tradition, we have long tried to follow the call of the Spirit, the early Jewish prophets, and Jesus to do God’s will “on Earth as it is in heaven.” For us, this not only means working hard to support peace and justice among people, but also to live in loving “unity with creation.”

Right at the beginning of my talk, however, I had to acknowledge an elephant in the room. Over the years, there have been many in the field of Environmental Studies, and within the environmental movement itself, who have assumed that devout Jews and Christians either have nothing special to add to the environmental cause, or are actually a big part the problem.