We welcome you to download our free guidebook [1] for faith-based communities, especially those that are Christian, to use citizen science approaches to engage environmental justice in ways that recognizes racial injustice. This guidebook has been created with the support of a Climate Science in Theological Education grant from the Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion (DoSER) of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) to Dr. Kate Ott, Professor of Christian Ethics and Rev. Dr. Andrew Wymer, Associate Professor of Preaching and Worship at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary. This project came to be through successive, unfolding “entry points” that started in conversation and led to an initial collaboration between the Center for the Church and the Black Experience, The Stead Center for Ethics and Values, and the Evanston/North Shore NAACP on the creation of the Evanston Environmental Justice Conversation Series, a regular public event centering the voices of leading Chicagoland environmental justice advocates and providing an accessible community forum for the Evanston community. Read more about this series on our events page [2]. That collaboration has led to further collaborations as we have continued to identify projects such as this one that will tangibly address environmental and climate injustice in our community.
Learn more about the guidebook from this reprinting of the introduction.
“The earth is in crisis. The massive scale of human extraction and consumption has led to devastating rises in global temperature. Industrial and commercial pollution has significantly impacted even the most remote environments, and a catastrophic loss of biodiversity may lead to a sixth great extinction.
Yet this climate crisis does not emerge from or impact all human communities equally. The ecological devastation caused by centuries of colonialism and imperialism has been interwoven with systemic inequality along lines of geography, race, ethnicity, or class. Today, disadvantaged communities around the world often: materially benefit the least from environmental degradation and contribute the least to the climate crisis, yet they are the most vulnerable to the impacts of environmental degradation and climate change. Here in the United States of America, race is the most significant predictive social indicator of heightened vulnerability to disparate impacts of environmental degradation and climate change.
As a reader (of this guidebook), you likely opened this guidebook because you are concerned about the environmental and climate crisis and are looking for ways for you and your community to make a difference. The enormity of the crisis and its disparate impacts can leave us feeling like any response is inconsequential. Why recycle when it does not stem the tide of plastic use or reduce energy consumption when major corporations pollute more each minute than a household does in a week? Why plant a tree in an impacted environmental justice community when it seems like a whole forest could not improve air quality indicators or urban shade disparities?
Lilla Watson, Aboriginal Australian activist and scholar, said, “If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up in mine, then let us work together.”2 This guidebook invites you to a balance of personal and communal awareness, responsibility, and action with the conviction that proportional, collective action is necessary for environmental and climate justice to be achieved. Individual actions are important, but they are not the only solution. In fact, throughout this guidebook you will be reminded of the power of communal action and coalition-building across lines of social difference. Faith communities offer a rich space for community partnerships and organizing to make a difference for environmental justice in the United States.
“Mattering” Framework
The theme of this guidebook, “mattering faith,” is drawn from climate science and advocacy. Early climate scientists had difficulty raising social awareness and achieving policy change, because many climate change related impacts are not visually obvious. For example, car emissions in the United States were largely unregulated until scientists developed devices and measurements to “matter” emissions; they found a way to make harmful invisible gasses visible through a system of measurement. This is only one part of the method of “mattering.” Additionally, scientists also had to show that the measurements related to a threat had impacted humans and nature. Thus, reporting on levels of asthma impacted by various pollutants including emissions in urban areas, for example, is a way to connect the “mattering” of emissions to the “mattering” of human flourishing. The methodological approach of this guidebook is based on this equally scientific and ethical practice of “mattering.”
We are conditioned to “see” and “not see” certain aspects of climate science and who or what is most affected by environmental degradation and climate change. Related to climate change, “seeing” is believing for most persons even when that is opposite of core Christian approaches to a faith-filled life. For example, with the visibility of historic climate events like floods, wildfires, and tornadoes more individuals “believe” in climate change and the effects we have been warned about for decades. In the United States of America (USA), in order to get people to care about carbon dioxide emission, an invisible gas, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) gave it a quantifiable material structure by measuring and regulating it. Sociologist Jennifer Gabrys calls this process “mattering”; it is a way to make an intangible both materially visible and have relevance or value. We are bringing this methodological approach to climate science, specifically in minoritized local communities, and the role of faith-based communities. In doing so, this workbook provides pathways for persons and communities of faith to, in a parallel sense, “matter” their own faith—that is to render it visible, impactful, relational, and meaningful through taking action to address environmental and climate injustice.
Finding Our Entry Points
This guidebook is curated with awareness that each person and community will have different entry points to this work of mattering—whether geographical, social, economic, or religious. Additionally, in Christian terms, we may recognize different “calls” to uniquely participate in this work and have varied gifts for use in this work.
We hope that you will use this guidebook as it best fits the entry points of you and your community. We have curated this book with a range of possibilities in audience and utilization. This guidebook can serve as a personal resource as you navigate your own participation in individual and communal responses to environmental and climate crises. And this guidebook can be used as a group or resource in communities of faith who are seeking ways to more fully live out their faith amidst growing awareness of environmental and climate crises and injustice. With discreet sections that are brief and accessible, this book can serve as a resource to help persons and communities to work through broad overview of environmental and climate engagement over an extended period of time in a small group or class setting. Additionally, individual components of this guidebook may have particular usefulness by groups seeking focused conversation on only one dimension of environmental and climate engagement such as Christian education, liturgical planning, or citizen science.
This guidebook is divided into three primary sections providing introductions to: 1) environmental justice; 2) environmental justice from a faith-based perspective; and 3) citizen science. Each of these sections contains three to four subsections with accessible theoretical frameworks, questions or activities to consider in your context, and helpful resources for more deeply exploring each topic.
As communities of faith seek to find their entry point or continue to faithfully respond to the environmental and climate crises, we hope that this guidebook will be a valuable resource for you and your community as you seek to live out faith. We pray for a future of local and global courage, mutuality, and solidarity as we learn how to more fully care for all of creation!