Religion column: Addressing climate change through faith and science

In the fall of 2023, a new interfaith organization was formed in Helena.

It began as a few of us meeting to share our concerns about the multiple environmental threats, not only to human health and well-being but to that of all life on Earth. Chief among our concerns was the challenges posed to life and civilization by climate change.

Our desire was not just to share our concerns, but also to connect those concerns to our faiths, and to raise awareness and take action in our community as a faithful response to the challenge of climate change. We found that our common love for the Earth as a sacred gift helped us begin to overcome our fears and the looming danger of despair, and motivated us to reach out and invite others to join in our mission.

Today, Helena Interfaith Climate Advocates (HICA) includes individuals identifying with Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Baha’I, Unitarian-Universalist and Native American traditions.

We believe that the Earth is a living system of very finely balanced elements and beings existing in a vast and intricate web of being. That balance of elements and beings has created a narrow range of environmental conditions allowing us to thrive as part of an interconnected and interdependent community of beings.

We regard the Earth, which supports this community of beings, as sacred.

Moreover, since how we live on the Earth and use its gifts affects the balance of elements and beings which supports all life on Earth, we believe we have a sacred obligation— and privilege— to live in such a way as to honor protect and nurture it with care and reverence.

We know from our own relatively recent experience — with atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons, the use of certain pesticides such as DDT, and the use of certain chemical compounds as refrigerants and aerosol propellants — that we have altered the makeup of the environment that threatens our life and health, as well as that of the creatures with which we share the Earth.

In each of these cases the scientific community alerted us to those threats, the global human community listened and agreed to stop those practices, and the worst of the consequences were averted.

Now the scientific community has been warning us since the 1950s, and with increasing urgency since the 1980s, that our unbridled burning of fossil fuels is upsetting the balance of elements in the environment which has kept the Earth’s climate relatively stable and allowed us to flourish over the last hundred thousand years or so.

Climate scientists tell us that in order to avoid catastrophic disruption of this climate, we need to rapidly and significantly reduce our use of fossil fuels, and to adopt other measures, such as preserving and restoring forests and other carbon-capturing ecosystems, and changing our industrial agricultural practices to be less damaging to our environment.

As people of faith, we see science as a gift by which we can better understand and therefore better care for our planetary home, and so we choose to heed what scientists are telling us and endeavor to respond accordingly.

In February, HICA, along with 40 other Montana organizations, signed on to a petition by the Montana Energy Information Center asking the Public Service Commission to adopt rules requiring it to consider climate impacts as it regulates energy producers.

This year, we will observe the 54th annual global Earth Day, celebrating the good gifts of the Earth, grieving the suffering of the Earth as a result of our unwise exploitation of its gifts, and committing ourselves to better following our sacred obligation to protect and nurture them.

Among those observances, on Saturday, April 20, Helena Interfaith Climate Advocates will hold a “Vigil for the Earth,” a time of listening, reflection, and renewing our commitment to care for the Earth, each other, and the whole community of beings.

The public is invited to join us at Plymouth Congregational Church, 400 S. Oakes St. in Helena, beginning at 10 a.m. for this time of interfaith reflection and community.

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