By Voices
Sunday, March 5, 2006

My full-time work is helping people understand the connection between global warming and faith. As a rabbi, I see three major avenues of connection:

1. Green. The planet we live on is a wonder, and appreciating that wonder can bring us closer to God and to inner peace. Conversely, actions -- or inaction -- that destroy the planet distance us from God, from our souls, from each other.

2. Justice. Increasingly, people of faith are understanding that the consequences of global warming, from heat waves to droughts to the spread of disease, hurt first and foremost the poor.

3. Pocketbook. Energy use is one of those rare issues where doing the right thing can actually save money -- money that congregations can then use to do all the other good works that they do.

As the coordinator of Greater Washington Interfaith Power and Light, I have worked with dozens of congregations and religious institutions in the D.C. area to help them take concrete actions to combat global warming. They have replaced exit signs and installed compact fluorescent bulbs, purchased electricity from wind and landfill gas and worked on local policy issues, such as the recently enacted renewable portfolio standard for D.C.

-- Daniel Swartz , Washington

Our polluting habits, wastefulness and lack of concern for our environment are not a matter of science. They are a matter of forgetting our morals, our faith and our duty as laid out in Genesis and other texts of all the major religions -- to be stewards of the Earth and to build rather than destroy.

-- Jennifer Phillips , Chevy Chase

I applaud the Evangelical Climate Initiative for having the courage to advocate for reasonable limits to our nation's greenhouse gas emissions in the face of political opposition. With all the violence and distrust among people of different religions, it's nice to see a faith community speak out strongly on a moral issue to which people of many faiths have a common commitment.

No matter how many days you believe that it took to create Earth, we can all agree that our system of values demands that we are wise and cautious stewards of the only planet we have.

-- Keya Chatterjee, Washington

Our ancestors revered nature and deified her components. We, being more "enlightened," revere an invisible God and treat nature as a garbage dump. I think it is essential to our survival as a species that we find a way to see nature and God as indivisible.

The forces of nature do seem to have an intelligence about them. Is it so far-fetched to think that Mother Nature/God, needing the wetland areas for the survival of a multitude of species, sends hurricanes and tsunamis to wipe the coastal areas clean of the polluters and infringers?

Hurricane Katrina elicited a lot of ridiculous and divisive speculation about God's unhappiness with the culture of New Orleans. (There are gay people there, and they like to dress up and fornicate! Why, it's just unnatural!) What's really unnatural in this scenario is destroying the God-given boundaries between the ocean and land, diverting the natural flow of rivers and building a city below sea level. These are assaults against biology, physics and other real laws of nature/God. And we see the consequences.

However we view God, we had better start revering nature just as strongly, or we simply won't exist as a species for very much longer.

-- John Friel , Rockville

Next month's question: Are faith-based groups more effective than the government in providing social services? E-mail your answer (100 words or less) tovoices@washpost.com. Include a daytime phone number.