Week 2: Faith in Action and Earth Care (April 8 to 14).
Most faith traditions carry a call to care for the Earth. The river, the stone, the wind, and the seed are more than resources; they are sacred evidence of our connection to the divine.
In Unitarian Universalism, the interdependent web of existence is often simplified to mean care for the Earth. Rooted in Transcendentalist thought, this foundational principle reaches much deeper. Ralph Waldo Emerson believed that a single spiritual unity encompasses every living thing. Nothing exists in isolation. Our fates, human, animal, and elemental, are bound together. When you harm the land, you are literally damaging a piece of the universal whole that you inhabit. This is not a simple metaphor, but an invitation into faithful practice. This week we center faith leaders and communities who are strong examples of living this theology through action.
A Faithful Practice
As a spiritual discipline, Earth care moves into the same category as prayer or meditation, a way of staying in right relationship with the truth of our existence.
We see faith lived as action in the work of Rev. Lennox Yearwood Jr., a Pentecostal minister, U.S. Air Force veteran, and founder of The Hip Hop Caucus whose organizing principle is simple and uncompromising: racial justice is climate justice and climate justice is racial justice. Galvanized by Hurricane Katrina, he has spent two decades building one of the most diverse and powerful earth justice movements in the country, bringing together culture, faith, and frontline communities across every divide. Listen to his work in his own words on The Coolest Show his award winning climate and environmental justice podcast.
The interfaith work of earth care finds its most global expression in GreenFaith, an international coalition training faith leaders across Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and traditional African and Indigenous religions to organize their communities toward ecological justice. In 2024 alone they trained nearly 3,000 faith leaders worldwide. Their work proves that care for the Earth is not a single tradition’s calling; but a shared human and spiritual responsibility.
For UU communities ready to dig deeper into environmental justice work, the UU Ministry for Earth is a hub for spiritual grounding, education, and coalition building. As a founding member of the UU Climate Justice Coalition they coordinate across eleven UU organizations, actively centering Black, Indigenous, and frontline communities most impacted by ecological harm. This is more than a committee. It is a covenant in sustained motion. Find out how your congregation can plug into this work at uumfe.org.
“No religious tradition sanctions the destruction of nature.” – Thea Ormerod, GreenFaith Network
Reflection: How does your faith tradition call you to care for the Earth? What would it look like to make that care a daily spiritual practice? Let us know which of these leaders or organizations feels like a natural partner for your community.
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