The Sisters of Mount St. Joseph are approaching 170 years in Wheeling

Op-Ed Commentary by Ellen Dunn, Charleston WV Gazette, March 22, 2022

Gov. Jim Justice has repeated a shocking claim lately: “God will give us time” to solve climate change — if it’s even real — so, in the meantime, “Drill, baby, drill.”

I will not charge the governor with practicing theology without a license, but, as a Catholic religious sister, I do have to teach some lessons from Sunday school.

This month, many of us Christians heard the story of Jesus being tempted by Satan in the desert. The final temptation on the cliff is to “throw yourself down from here” for God will command his angels to save you. With signs of climate disruption all around, Justice says, “Let’s throw ourselves off this cliff. God will save us.”

If you have ever thought, “I really want to do this questionable thing; I’ll just ask for forgiveness later,” clearly you knew you were in the wrong. Some part of Justice knows he is able to help West Virginia transition to a cleaner, healthier economy. His conscience might vex him with each new report of exacerbated flooding in our state because of climate change or each new study on deaths from the pollution we choose to keep pumping into the air. (I remember a recent headline of a Bloomberg article: “Air pollution kills far more people than COVID ever could”).

God’s plan for us and for the world cannot be to keep poisoning our air and water, and to continue destabilizing the climate with worsening floods, hurricanes, heat waves and wildfires. God’s plan is for us to be stewards of God’s environment. Instead, this failure of leadership and lack of heeding nature’s warnings is an immense show of disrespect for God.

I believe God’s influence is at play with our continued innovations for cleaner, healthier technology. Why continue to choose self-destruction? To be sure, we need the will and the commitment to help workers transitioning from the fossil fuel industry — people who have made great sacrifices for all of us. But we must not keep inflicting wounds on them and on ourselves like Black Lung Disease, polluted air and water, and climate disruption. Pope Francis calls this “a sin against ourselves and a sin against God.”

There is a better, more life-affirming way. Jesus’ response to Satan: “You shall not put the Lord God to the test.”

We must not test God by stubbornly choosing to leap off a cliff into greater and greater climate disruption. Yes, we can trust that God will help us in this world. But we must do our part to walk alongside God, listening with humility and finding ways to make the needed changes in our policies and our lifestyles.

Congress now has an opportunity to truly make climate investments for a brighter future, and Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., is holding all the cards. I pray for him and all of us: “Be with us, God, when we are in trouble.” (Psalm 91)

It is a great joy to live on God’s abundant earth. It is God’s world, not ours to use and abuse. We show our gratitude to God by living with reverence for God’s creation and honoring our sacred duty to pass onto our children a safe, clean and healthy world.

>>> Sister Ellen Dunn, O.P., is a Dominican Sister of Peace who serves as co-chair of Catholics for a Sustainable Economy. She served on the executive staff of the Catholic Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston for 13 years.

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See also: Among the top five states dependent upon the fossil fuel industry, West Virginia is among the bottom five in economic and public health, Maury Johnson, Appalachian Chronicle, March 26, 2022

GREENVILLE, W.Va. – In the last several weeks, Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., has been touting how we need to ramp up all kinds of fossil fuel infrastructure and production in order to help Ukraine and become energy independent. He is also trying to help his fossil fuel friends from whom he has taken enormous sums of money in the last year. When I say enormous, I mean ENORMOUS! It appears he is willing to even write legislation to advance their cause and spout their propaganda.

Well, Senator Manchin is dead wrong.

Katharine Hayhoe has examined these issues in great detail

From an Article by Olivia Goldhill, Quartz Newsletter, September 18, 2019

Climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe says her evangelical religion influences her approach to climate change. She is very concerned.

When evangelical environmentalists talk about climate change, they don’t stick to sea level rise projections and the carbon emissions associated with red meat. Kyle Meyaard-Schaap, national organizer and spokesperson at Young Evangelicals for Climate Action (YECA), also points to the psalms, and the Old and New Testaments.

These texts emphasize how God created and loves the Earth, and wants humans to love it too. So for Meyaard-Schaap, choosing to care for the planet—and fight climate change—is simply following his God’s wishes.

In the United States, evangelical Christians are not known for their environmental engagement. The group is “synonymous with resistance, if we’re honest,” says Meyaard-Schaap. Evangelicals are the religious group least likely to believe the Earth is warming due to human activity: 28%, compared to 50% of all US adults, according to a 2015 survey from Pew Research Center.

But in recent years, a few leaders have started connecting environmentalism with religion. They’re starting to find a receptive audience among evangelicals.

Katharine Hayhoe, a prominent climate change scientist and evangelical Christian, says her religion motivates her interest in climate change. She finds the concept of protecting God’s planet to be an effective framing when talking to religious groups. “As Christians, we believe that we have been given responsibility over every little thing on this planet,” she says, “and we believe we’re to care for people who are less fortunate than ourselves.”

Hayhoe first started talking about the importance of combating climate change from a religious perspective in 2008. That’s when she realized that audiences thought she cared about the environment simply because she was a scientist—and disengaged as a result. Since she shifted her approach, she says, the response has been overwhelmingly positive. “I can count on the fingers of my hands and maybe just a few extra toes the letters and emails and even nasty tweets I’ve gotten from atheists over the last decade,” she says. “On the other hand, I can count on my fingers and toes how many I get from people who call themselves Christians every week.”

Of course, not every evangelical Christian applies the loving-protection maxim to climate change. There are two types of evangelicals in the United States, says Hayhoe: political and theological. “For political evangelicals,” she says, “their statement of faith is written first by their political ideology and only a distant second by what the Bible says.” Evangelicals are more likely to be Republicans than Democrats, and their religious beliefs can be interpreted to support conservative views on climate change. “As a Christian, I believe that there is a creator in God who is much bigger than us,” Republican congressman Tim Walberg said in 2017. “And I’m confident that, if there’s a real problem, he can take care of it.”

But there are ways to communicate the importance of addressing climate change across the political spectrum, says Meyaard-Schaap. He says that, when talking to conservatives, YECA emphasizes the economic freedom that comes from not accessing energy through a regulated monopoly. Also a plus: the national security benefits of not being dependent on hostile foreign powers for oil. YECA members also highlight how climate action is a pro life issue, as burning fossil fuels contributes to low birth weight and preterm babies, and heavy metals emitted through the burning of coal cross the placenta and impede fetal development.

Amidst these messages, there are signs that evangelical engagement on climate change is shifting: A recent poll found that 40% of evangelical Christians support the Green New Deal. In July, YECA released a statement highlighting the “biblical principles” in the proposed legislation. “The Green New Deal shows clear concern for making sure that we have tangible ways of protecting the natural environment, caring for God’s creation,” says Meyaard-Schaap.

Hayhoe would like to see even more support from the evangelical community, though she doesn’t expect evangelicals to embrace environmental action en masse, as long as “political ideology continues to drive the belief system of those who identify as Christian.”

Meyaard-Schaap, meanwhile, sees a distinct generational divide. Millennials and Generation Z often already care about climate change, he says, and YECA focuses on training these young leaders to talk with their parents and pastors.

Although politics is a strong indication of belief in climate change, Meyaard-Schaap says YECA activists are motivated by religion rather than politics. “We come at this work not because we’re environmentalist, even though some of us identify that way, and not because we’re Democrats or Republican,” he says. “We come at this because we’re Christians and we believe that acting on climate change and calling the church to action and it’s just part of what it means to follow Jesus in the 21st century.”

>>> This story is part of Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of more than 250 news outlets to strengthen coverage of the climate story.

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Denominational Religious Statements on Climate Change

>>> Inter-Faith Power & Light Campaign Compilation

Most religious communities have released statements on “climate change” and the need to care for the earth and living things. The compiled list (organized alphabetically first by religion, then by denomination) demonstrates the unity within the religious community on these important issues.

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VIDEO: Burke Lecture: An Ecological Inquiry – Jesus and the Cosmos with Elizabeth Johnson – UCSD-TV – University of California Television, July 6, 2010

Prof. Elizabeth A. Johnson, a former president of both the Catholic Theological Society of America and the ecumenical American Theological Society, argues that interfaith dialogue has made clear that each religious tradition has its own distinctive contribution to make. In this Burke lecture, she explores one line of thinking peculiar to the Christian tradition, namely, the meaning of Jesus Christ. Her question is whether the central, organizing figure in Christian faith also has anything intrinsic to do with the natural world.

https://www.ucsd.tv/search-details.aspx?showID=18746