Join us this week for Earth Day!

This week, we are commemorating the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. Please mark your calendars for these important events below.

In April 1970, tens of millions of people came together on the first-ever Earth Day to demand government action on pollution. The political momentum from that event helped create landmark clean air and clean water protections.

Today, we are in a very different place. We are facing two devastating global crises at once--the climate crisis and the Coronavirus. The climate crisis, with more and more extreme weather events, is threatening millions of people around the world. We are also in the midst of a global pandemic that is fundamentally altering how we relate to one another. We are certainly not taking to the streets.

Worse, with the world economy collapsing, oil, gas, and deforestation corporations--and the banks that finance them--are demanding large government bailouts. Under cover of COVID-19, they are seeking the wholesale dismantling of environmental protections. It is an affront to all of our moral teachings that even in a global pandemic, the world's richest and most powerful CEOs are trying to capitalize off of a crisis at the expense of vulnerable communities.

As people of faith, every one of our religious traditions demands us to care for the most vulnerable amongst us; our neighbors; the stranger at our door. We know that at this moment we have to turn towards each other. All of our faiths teach us so. We are building communities of care and resilience as a human family. We are coming together to prepare us for not just what is happening today, but what is to come.

Since the onset of the pandemic, we have been organizing daily Faith Community Calls for Care and Resilience, bringing together people of faith and religious leaders to share spiritual reflections and religious teachings, to mourn, to grieve, and to create local Circles. You may have been on one of the regular calls.

This week and on Earth Day, GreenFaith is participating in a number of special events:

• Tomorrow, Sunday April 18, there will be an online service focused on climate action at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC. Join GreenFaith and other faith organizations in prayer and song in honor of the 50th anniversary of Earth Day: www.cathedral.org/earthday

• On Thursday, April 23, Earth Day, at 10 am New York Time, we are joining a global coalition of organizations to commemorate the event. We are hosting an Interfaith Call for Care and Resilience that will be livestreamed as part of Earth Day, with faith leaders from different traditions leading the reflections. Please join us, as you would on a regular Call for Care and Resilience, but this time with the world joining as well. Please sign up for this special Earth Day Interfaith Call for Care and Resilience livestream here.

• Lastly, we are launching local Pray-Ins for Care and Resilience this week. Pray-Ins are hosted by you, bringing together your loved ones, friends, and neighbors for a moment of spiritual respite and reflection in this stressful time. They are a way of bringing home and sharing the solace and connection that you find in our regular Faith Community Calls for Care and Resilience. Please sign up here to host a Pray-In with your community. We’ll provide you with more information on how to host your own Pray-In and send you an easy guide when you sign up.

The climate crisis and COVID19 have much in common. Both exacerbate fractures--inequality, poverty, and injustice--in our societies, and both devastate those most who are on the frontlines and most at risk. The human response to extreme disasters is to help each other, to be compassionate and kind--something that is harder, of course, when we can not physically come together. But we are coming together, nonetheless--during this Earth Week more than ever.

We hope you can join us.

In faith,

Rev. Fletcher Harper

Executive Director, GreenFaith

101 South Third Avenue, #12, Highland Park, NJ, USA 08904

732-565-7740 (Phone)