CST Professor Participates in COP26
Claremont School of Theology alumnus and professor Dr. Philip Clayton grew up in northern California. His environmentalist parents taught him to love camping in the redwood forests, singing around campfires on the rugged coast, and backpacking in the Sierras.
“Loving and caring for God’s creation was never a matter of the head,” he said. “It was in my heart and soul before I ever encountered terms like ‘eco-theology’ and ‘climate justice.’ When I give talks, I often ask people to picture a part of nature to which they are bonded, and to move from there to action to protect places that they love.”
As Dr. Clayton began to see the wide-scale destruction of precious ecosystems and as he studied environmental science, he understood the urgency for all life on this planet. He knew creation care and environmental justice would become his primary calling.
“When it comes to the climate crisis,” he contends, “people of faith will need to play a major role in the transformation of attitudes and actions worldwide. From the earliest religions of indigenous peoples to the global religions of today, the category of the sacred has been central to religious belief and practice.”
Religions also offer a higher calling: love for one’s neighbor, not only for oneself. “Religions,” Dr. Clayton said, “call people to lifestyle change and transformation – John Wesley called it ‘sanctification’ – sometimes at great personal sacrifice.”
Dr. Clayton’s experience at CST helped pave the way for his participation in EcoCiv at COP26, the United Nations climate change conference last autumn in Glasgow, Scotland.
“I came to CST in 2003,” he recalled, “to teach theology, succeeding John Cobb and Marjorie Suchocki as the holder of the Ingraham Chair. I had already been teaching environmental philosophy, so it was natural for me to teach such classes in this area and to organize lecture series with titles such as ‘Faith and the Future of the Planet.’” Along with Frank Rogers and Andrew Dreitcer, he helped form the faculty “Center for Spirituality and Sustainability.”
In 2010, Dr. Clayton, his colleague Dr. Andrew Schwartz, and others began working with John Cobb to organize a 2,000-person conference, which took place in 2015. After the conference ended, the two founded EcoCiv.org. Its title inspired their mission: “Seizing an Alternative: Toward an Ecological Civilization.”
Since then, EcoCiv – now with a staff of more than 20 – has conducted projects and events in 10 countries around the world. “We help leaders in government, industry, and civil society to formulate road maps toward an ecological civilization and then to take concrete steps to move societies along those paths,” Dr. Clayton explained.
“Because we want to avoid becoming too abstract or theoretical,” he continued, “we always begin with a particular ‘action hub’ that models the principles of sustainability for a particular sector. Examples include the EcoCiv water hub in South Sudan, which is working for clean and fair water access for people, and the ‘wellbeing economies’ hub in Pomona, California, which is helping Pomona launch worker-owned cooperatives that will employ the least-advantaged residents, with the goal of bringing long-term economic justice to Pomona.”
At COP26, Dr. Clayton and Dr. Schwartz organized and professionally filmed three major panels for business leaders and young activists. Panels and one-on-one interviews explore the paths for people to follow in order to mitigate climate disruption and adapt to a changing planet. Meetings with leaders from many other organizations, he said, opened possibilities for new partnerships in 2022.
While COP26 had many highlights, Dr. Clayton shared some of his favorites.
“The march of 20,000 youth leaders on Nov. 5, and more than 100,000 activists the next day,” he said, “taught us a deep lesson: The voices of activists matter, now more than ever. We would not have achieved the concessions we won during those closing days of negotiation were it not for the massive mobilization of citizens around the world who proclaimed that the climate crisis is the greatest threat to human civilization. Their clear, strong, and compelling arguments for radical change are now getting through to people in power, both in governments and in business.”
Dr. Clayton offered a three-part call to action:
- Read and learn; be informed! “It does not take much reading to recognize that global climate change is the single largest justice issue that humanity has ever faced,” he said. “Never before have the actions of the rich – the largest consumers in the greatest producers of greenhouse gasses – so directly threatened the quality of life and, indeed, the very existence, of those who are least responsible for the climate crisis. Go to EcoCiv.org, and sign up for our monthly mailings with information and ideas. We have also prepared videos and study questions for people wishing to do studies.”
- Speak up! “Work with other leaders in your congregation or among your friends,” Dr. Clayton continued. “Contact Interfaith Power and Light, or 350.org, and ask how you can become involved in a local chapter.”
- Share your faith! Find areas where you can be a leader, helping others to become informed and to become activists as well.
Religious leaders and everyday believers, Dr. Clayton contends, can best model, in word and in deed, what it means to live in harmony with one another, with animals, and with the biosphere as a whole.
“Progressive Protestants,” he said, “have been some of the most powerful voices arguing for the sacredness of the earth. Many of us have been inspired by Pope Francis’ amazing encyclical, Laudato Si’, which you can access at this link.”
So, what are Dr. Clayton’s dreams for The United Methodist Church?
“Instead of destroying ourselves through our disagreements on Christian sexual ethics,” he suggested, “we might use [our] two different approaches to the climate crisis in ways that are complementary and mutually enhancing. Conservative Methodists use the powerful language of ‘creation care,’ while progressive Methodists speak of ‘climate justice.’ Imagine that, instead of going to war over our different vocabularies, we celebrate the fusion of both in a powerful Christian witness to the importance of saving our planet.”
Here is a link to the best short summary of this year’s climate summer summit and what it achieved.