What Quakers Are Called to Do About Climate Change
This is an excerpt from The Kabarak Call of Peace and Ecojustice, which was approved at the Sixth World Conference of Friends in 2012 at Kabarak University in Kenya. It represents two years of work by the Friends World Committee for Consultation.
- “We are called to see what love can do: to love our neighbor as ourselves, to aid the widow and orphan, to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, to appeal to consciences and bind the wounds.
- We are called to teach our children right relationship, to live in harmony with each other and all living beings in the earth, waters and sky of our Creator, who asks, “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the world?” (Job 38:4)
- We are called to do justice to all and walk humbly with our God, to cooperate lovingly with all who share our hopes for the future of the earth.
- We are called to be patterns and examples in a 21st century campaign for peace and ecojustice, as difficult and decisive as the 18th and 19th century drive to abolish slavery.
We dedicate ourselves to let the living waters flow through us – where we live, regionally, and in wider world fellowship. We dedicate ourselves to building the peace that passeth all understanding, to the repair of the world, opening our lives to the Light to guide us in each small step.”
— Friends World Committee for Consultation, 2012
Reader Responses
How do you work to steward the earth?
Many Quakers include “stewardship” as one of our core testimonies. Do you find earthcare to be a sacred responsibility? What does that look like in your life?
Since every atom, nanoparticle, molecule within the vast universe is a manifestation of the Divine Ground of all Being, I feel compelled to treat all beings, including mineral, plant, sentient beings (insects, sea creatures, reptiles, avians & mammals) with respect and reverence. It is what made me become a vegetarian in 1975. Around the same time I began to consciously mend, re-use, recycle all clothing, glass, paper, metal containers and continue to do so to this day. Nothing should be discarded or considered "garbage" as long as it has some utility. Most of the furnishings in my home were inherited from my parents or found in second hand stores. I wear clothes until they are almost threadbare. I drive an 18 year old car & have maintained it at the dealership every six months. I was certainly influenced by my Depression Era parents who were frugal, but not stingy, in their use of money & material possessions. If we could all see the Divine Light shining through all created things & beings, our planet & its climate would not be in the declining condition it's in.
Joseph I., Washington, DC, USA
I only find testimonies helpful insofar as they are specific: is there a shared set of behaviors that we have discerned as integral to being a Friend? And do we encourage and support one another to take the risks of faithfulness to live into that testimony? A true testimony would be both a recognized outward sign of a significant inward transformation along the Quaker path of faithfully responding to God’s promptings, and an outward act that binds us together visibly as a people.
I do not find vague moralistic generalities or principles a sacred responsibility or a particularly Quaker approach: I only find sacred that which God has revealed for me to do or not do.
For me, I have been led to bear a testimony against flying. I don’t believe I have flown in an airplane in the past 9 years. And I write this from a coach seat in the overnight Amtrak to Chicago. So I guess that’s what I can say. That’s all I’ve been given for now.
Jay O., Belfast, ME, USA
As a dweller in the heart of an urban environment, I currently steward the earth by cultivating a colony of house wrens on my deck, where I also maintain a small composter for household use. I replenish the planter beds where I try to cultivate growth for pollinators.
I grew up on a biodynamic farm in south Jersey and am now in Philadelphia, where I share housing with three teenaged grandchildren for whom I am trying to model good earthcare.
Karen L., Philadelphia, PA, USA
I am on the Adult Ed committee for my Quaker Meeting. We recently organized a program titled, "The Light and the Living Earth." We had a panel of five, and three queries to start the conversation. The assumption was than any member in attendance was truly part of the "panel."
The primary question boiled down to: Should Quakers be extending their belief in "that of God" in each person, to "that of God" in all living things? This would ask us to extend the same actions of equality and nonviolence to creation that we profess towards human beings.
Michael S., Claremont, NH, USA
This Week’s Messages
Mon Jan 13
How to Start Singing Again
“I thought of myself as a former Peace Corps volunteer who had loved living in a mud hut, and now I had more bathrooms than I could keep clean. I thought of myself as a person who used canvas shopping bags twenty years before it was mainstream, but now with two cars and two electronics-addicted teenagers, I’d developed a low-level despair about my inability to protect the planet they would inherit. I’d been reading about how global warming was withering maize crops in Botswana, the southern African country where I had taught decades earlier – the place that had originally taught me about social responsibility. Our new house was so big, no one heard me when I cried…” …
Tue Jan 14
William Penn: Why Man Abuses the World
“It would go a great way to caution and direct people in their use of the world, that they were better studied and known in the creation of it. For how could man find the confidence to abuse it, while they should see the great creator stare them in the face, in all in every part thereof?” …
Wed Jan 15
What Is That Beautiful Thing That Just Happened?
“At Blackwater Pond the tossed waters have settled / after a night of rain. / I dip my cupped hands. I drink / a long time. It tastes / like stone, leaves, fire.” …
Thu Jan 16
The Best Response to Miracles
“In my studies of the world’s various religions, I have noticed that miracles are important in all of them, miracles meaning events that go beyond any natural explanation and are believed to confirm the power and truth of each tradition.” …
Fri Jan 17
Leaps of Unpremeditated Joy
“In the sun, the coming together of two hydrogen atoms at intense temperatures and pressures to form an atom of helium results in the release of an energy which is essential to our planet. This energy has warmed the earth, set the stage for creation, and provided the supporting energy for all life on earth. The dance of the ever-moving atomic particles in the center of the sun could well be described as ‘ascending leaps of unpremeditated joy.'” …
Sat Jan 18
This Destruction Must Stop
“We are building towards the climax of crisis. The spiritual crisis is folding into the ecological crisis and the ecological crisis is folding into the economic crisis. As Christians, it seems to me, we are now required to critically assess the capital driven market economy and identify it as a false religion, a fabulously productive but ultimately destructive system bringing closure on God’s goodness in creation and bringing a creeping atheism to the soul. To look this system straight in the eye and call it to account is a critical test of Biblical faith.” …
Banner image: Gillian Pokalo
