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Sunday, August 21, 2022

Report: Nonreligious LGBTQ people face heightened stigma, conceal their beliefs

A new report details the extent to which nonreligious LGBTQ people experience both religious oppression and anti-LGBTQ sentiment.

Photo by James A. Molnar/Unsplash/Creative Commons

August 17, 2022

(RNS) — As a Black, bisexual, nonreligious person, Rogiérs Fibby is all too familiar with the subtle navigations required of his different identities in professional and personal spaces.

“It’s sort of programmed. I’m making these adjustments and editing myself in these ways that take effort and it takes energy from my core,” said Fibby, 44, who was raised Moravian and is the director of Black Nonbelievers of DC.

A singer and producer, Fibby has found himself negotiating his identities, sometimes with people who may be homophobic or racist, but also with those who, while being pro-LGBTQ or supportive of Black Lives Matter, are uncomfortable with his lack of religion.

“There are times when I am very unapologetic and bold about asserting myself in those spaces,” said Fibby, who identifies as an atheist and agnostic. “Then there are other times where I have to make judgments and calculations that essentially are repressive. I find myself hiding and holding back.”

Rogiérs Fibby. Photo courtesy of Fibby

Sometimes he wonders, “What could you have done with that energy if you didn’t have to deal with these types of responses?”

Fibby is not alone.

A survey of nonreligious people reveals that LGBTQ persons regularly concealed their nonreligious beliefs and are more likely than their non-LGBTQ peers to encounter stigma and discrimination in nearly every aspect of their lives — education, employment, mental health services and within their families — due to their beliefs.

The report, “Nonreligious Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer People in America,” released Tuesday (Aug. 16), details the extent to which nonreligious LGBTQ people experience both religious oppression and anti-LGBTQ sentiment as well as the level of depression among those raised in religious households.

The research, based on a survey of nearly 34,000 nonreligious people in the United States, found that LGBTQ participants were about 16.1% more likely than non-LGBTQ respondents to mostly or always conceal their nonreligious identities from their families of origin.

Among those who are nonreligious and LGBTQ, a quarter said they always conceal their nonreligious beliefs (25%) with strangers, within their extended family (24%) and at school (23%). About 1 in 5 said they do so at work (21%).

“Negative Experiences and Discrimination in Select Sectors” Graphic courtesy of American Atheists

Of the nonreligious LGBTQ people in the military, 54% reported negative experiences because of their beliefs, compared with 45% of non-LGBTQ participants. Similarly, within the education field, nonreligious LGBTQ people are more likely to report negative experiences associated with their beliefs than non-LGBTQ nonreligious (33% compared with 28%).

The report also highlighted that nearly 9 in 10 LGBTQ participants from very strict religious families had negative experiences with their family because of their nonreligious beliefs.

“Family rejection had a significant negative impact on the psychological wellbeing of LGBTQ and other participants,” according to the report.

While levels of depression were generally higher for LGBTQ participants (28%) than cisgender/heterosexual participants (14%), parental support appeared to play an important role. Of those whose parents were aware of their nonreligious identities, LGBTQ participants with unsupportive parents were almost 1.5 times as likely to be depressed as those with supportive or neutral parents (34% vs. 26%), the survey found.

“Concealment of Nonreligious Identity” Graphic courtesy of American Atheists

“This report was to really look at who we are, as a double minority, as a group that’s often targeted for being LGBTQ, but also having religious beliefs imposed upon us and feeling that stigma and discrimination for being nonreligious,” said Tom Van Denburgh, a spokesperson for American Atheists.

“Our very existence, being both LGBTQ and nonreligious, often defies and maybe even denies the possibility that we are living in a Christian conservative nation,” Van Denburgh added. “That’s problematic to a lot of religious conservatives.”

“Nonreligious Lesbian, Gay Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer People in America” Image courtesy of American Atheists

The report notes a dwindling number of LGBTQ people who identify with religion, given religious efforts meant to “stifle LGBTQ equality,” such as opposition to legal same-sex marriage, support of legislation targeting trans youth and the unwillingness of many religious groups to marry or ordain LGBTQ people.

“Some find refuge in secular communities, which, on the whole, are among the religious demographics most accepting of LGBTQ people,” according to the report.

The report referenced 2018 data showing that atheists are the religious demographic with the highest percentage of LGBTQ members. Additionally, 92% of atheists favor same-sex marriage, according to the Pew Research Center.

Nearly 23% of people who participated in the 2019 U.S. Secular Survey, which is the basis of the report, were nonreligious LGBTQ adults.

Among the surveyed nonreligious LGBTQ people, more than half (54%) identified primarily as atheists. Most were white (92%), half were female (50%), with 42% identifying as male and 16% as trans or gender nonconforming. About half said they were bisexual (49%). Nearly 60% were raised in a Protestant household.

“Primary Nonreligious Indentity” Graphic courtesy of American Atheists

For Killian Bowen, who grew up in a Pentecostal household, finding atheism as a teen was “how I escaped from the situation around me.” Bowen said he knew he was queer by around age 8.

Bowen identifies as an atheist and works as American Atheists’ assistant state director for Morehead, Kentucky.

“A part of the reason I got into atheism is because I felt such a huge amount of shame being in the religion that I was in. Atheism helps me justify my identity,” Bowen said.

With this new report, Bowen said he hopes “more people could acknowledge the fact that there is religious discrimination in every aspect of our lives, especially in the South.”

Australian Anglicans split over same-sex marriage

A conservative Anglican splinter group launched in Australia this week, citing the Anglican Church of Australia’s failure to condemn same-sex marriage.

Head of the Anglican Church of Australia, Primate Geoffrey Smith, left, and Glenn Davies, right, the newly appointed bishop of the new Diocese of the Southern Cross. Smith photo via Anglican.org/au; Davies photo via Gafcon.org

August 18, 2022

Kathryn Post

(RNS) — A conservative splinter group opposed to same-sex marriage announced the formation this week of a new Anglican diocese in Australia, triggering an apparent split in the church in that country. The launch of the Diocese of the Southern Cross prompted the head of the Anglican Church of Australia, Primate Geoffrey Smith, to issue a statement Thursday (Aug. 18) characterizing it as a “new denomination.”

“This company, while established by some members of the Anglican Church of Australia and structured to mirror some of the characteristics of an Anglican diocese, has no formal or informal relationship or connection with the Anglican Church of Australia,” Smith said in the statement. Smith could not be reached for comment in time for publication.

Glenn Davies, former archbishop of Sydney in the Anglican Church of Australia, was appointed as bishop of the new diocese Thursday at the Gafcon Australasia Conference, a gathering of conservative Anglicans from Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific that met in Canberra, Australia, this week.

“This is a sad day, in many ways,” Davies told The Guardian. “If the leadership would repent and turn back to the teachings of the bible, we wouldn’t need the Diocese of Southern Cross. I’d shut it down and come back.”

This split is the latest in a series of fissures over LGBTQ inclusion that have bifurcated Anglican denominations in New Zealand, Canada, Brazil and the United States.

According to its website, the Diocese of the Southern Cross views itself as a “separate and parallel Anglican Diocese” bound by theology, rather than geography. The number of churches in the diocese remains unclear, but the Australian-wide group promises on its website to “hold to biblical convictions” and hopes “many new Anglican churches will be established.” Leaders of the new diocese could not be reached for comment in time for publication.

The diocese is a byproduct of GAFCON — the Global Anglican Future Conference — a conservative movement within the Anglican Communion formed in 2008 to “retain and restore the Bible to the heart of the Anglican Communion,” according to its website.

Leaders of the Australian iteration of GAFCON have been planning on launching a conservative Anglican diocese since at least 2021 in response to the Anglican Church of Australia’s murky position on same-sex marriage.

In 2020, the highest court in the Australian Anglican Church, the Appellate Tribunal, allowed clergy to bless same-sex civil marriages. In May of this year, a motion celebrating same-sex marriage failed to pass at the Anglican Church of Australia’s General Synod but won support from nearly 40% of voters. Bishops at the General Synod also voted against a statement defining marriage as only between a man and a woman and condemning same-sex marriage blessings, but approved a separate resolution recognizing that the denomination’s marriage rites currently affirm marriage as between a woman and a man.

“The issue for us is the authority of the Bible,” Richard Condie, chair of GAFCON Australia, said in a statement. “The decisions at the recent General Synod, the 2020 Appellate Tribunal opinion that opens the way to blessings for same-sex marriages, and the watering down of standards of behaviour in changes to Faithfulness in Service are examples of this. The Diocese of the Southern Cross provides an Anglican home for those who feel they need to leave their current Dioceses.”

Smith, the primate of the Anglican Church of Australia, said it’s “perplexing” that the leaders of the Diocese of the Southern Cross are departing, given the General Synod’s affirmation of traditional marriage and failure to recognize same-sex marriage. Yet members of the new diocese appeared to believe that did not go far enough in condemning same-sex marriage, saying a “majority of bishops” at the General Synod “were unable to uphold the Bible’s ancient teaching on marriage and sexual ethics.”

“My conviction is that the Anglican Church of Australia can find a way to stay together, graciously reflecting God’s great love, with our differences held sincerely,” the primate wrote. “This week’s announcement makes achieving that end more difficult but not impossible.”

Attack on Rushdie shows divisions among Lebanese Shiites

The religious edict, or fatwa, urging Muslims to kill Rushdie was issued in 1989 by Iran's then-spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who accused the author of blasphemy for his portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad in the novel 'The Satanic Verses.'

FILE - Lebanese Journalist Dima Sadek uses her cellphone to make a video of an anti-government protest, in Beirut, Lebanon, Dec. 4, 2019. The stabbing of author Salman Rushdie on Friday, Aug. 12, 20222 in western New York, has laid bear to divisions within Lebanon’s Shiite community of which some have expressed support for the act while others harshly criticized it leading to death threats against Sadek, a prominent journalist. The assailant, 24-year-old Hadi Matar, is a dual Lebanese-U.S. citizen, and his father lives in a village in Hezbollah-dominated southern Lebanon. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla, File)

August 17, 2022

Bassem Mroue

BEIRUT (AP) — The stabbing of author Salman Rushdie has laid bare divisions in Lebanon’s Shiite Muslim community, pitting a few denouncing the violence against fervent followers of the Iran-backed Shiite militant Hezbollah group who have praised the attack. One Rushdie defender received death threats.

The attack struck close to home among Lebanon’s Shiites. The assailant, 24-year-old Hadi Matar, is a dual Lebanese-U.S. citizen, and his father lives in a village in Hezbollah-dominated southern Lebanon. Matar’s mother has said she believes her son’s visit to the village of Yaroun in 2018 turned him into a religious zealot.

The religious edict, or fatwa, urging Muslims to kill Rushdie was issued in 1989 by Iran’s then-spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who accused the author of blasphemy for his portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad in the novel “The Satanic Verses.”

Iran, a close Hezbollah ally, has praised Friday’s attack but denied direct involvement. Hezbollah officials have been tight-lipped since the attack on the 75-year-old Rushdie as he was about to give a lecture in western New York. A Hezbollah official declined comment when contacted by The Associated Press.

Rushdie suffered a damaged liver and severed nerves in an arm and in an eye, but was removed from a ventilator on Saturday and able to talk.

Most Lebanese Shiites support Hezbollah and the more secular allied Amal movement of Parliament Speaker Nabih, which won all 27 seats allocated to the sect during this year’s parliamentary elections. Parliament and Cabinet seats are divided in Lebanon in accordance with religious affiliations.

Still, there is a vocal minority of Hezbollah critics among Shiites. Several were attacked and one was shot dead last year.

As the controversy swirled, an old video of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah resurfaced on social media. In it, Nasrallah said that “no one would have dared to attack Islam’s Prophet Muhammad again” if Rushdie had been killed immediately after the fatwa.

Some Hezbollah critics have accused the group and its supporters of teaching their children to kill in the name of religion,

Matar’s mother, Silvana Fardos, told the local Al-Jadeed TV late Tuesday that her son had lived all his life in the United States until he visited Lebanon for the first and last time in 2018. That trip changed him forever, she said.

“After he returned from Lebanon he was a different human being … I knew that he had a long depression and I was expecting one day to wake up and find out that he had committed suicide,” Fardos said, alleging that her son was mistreated by his father.

Asked if she asked herself whether she had raised a terrorist or an extremist, the mother said: “No. I raised an angel.”

Journalists have been prevented from entering Yaroun, and Matar’s father has not spoken to the media.

Despite Hezbollah’s official silence, the group’s supporters on social media are praising the attack.

Some released threats against prominent journalist Dima Sadek after she posted on her Twitter account a photo of Khomeini and Gen. Qassim Soleimani, a top Iranian general killed in a U.S. strike in 2020, describing the two as “satanic verses.”

Since then, death threats on social media and through messages on her cell phone haven’t stopped, with one man warning her, “I will rape you in public,” and another saying that “her blood should be shed.” She received a text message in which the sender told her where she lives.

Sadek said despite the public threats, she has not been contacted by the authorities with offers for protection.

“This is the first time I feel I am in danger,” Sadek, a harsh Hezbollah critic for years, told the AP. She alleged that the social media campaign against her is orchestrated by Nasrallah’s son, Jawad.

She said she is restricting her movements for the first time.

The Committee to Protect Journalists urged the Lebanese authorities to launch an investigation and protect Sadek.

Shiite journalist Mohamad Barakat, managing editor of the Asas Media news website, also came under attack after he wrote that by stabbing Rushdie, Matar “stabbed Shiites who live in Europe and America.”

In the other camp, Lebanese journalist Radwan Akil of the renowned local daily An-Nahar said in seemingly contradictory remarks that he condoned the fatwa against Rushdie, but not the killing of anyone, including writers.

“I am of course with political freedoms and freedom of expression … but I’m not for criticizing the greatest man in history the Prophet Muhammad, and I also reject the criticism of Jesus Christ,” Akil said in a televised interview with Lebanese media.

An-Nahar issued a statement, headlined “adopting a call to murder contradicts our policies.” It said that Akil’s views were his own. Two journalists who had worked for the paper and were outspoken critics of Hezbollah and the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad, another Iran ally, were killed in car bombings in 2005.

The debate may eventually fizzle out because most Lebanese are preoccupied with the country’s economic meltdown and lack of services. “They have lots of other concerns,” said Hilal Khashan, political science professor at the American University of Beirut.

Lebanese political leaders have not commented on the Rushdie attack.

However, caretaker Culture Minister Mohammad Mortada denounced Rushdie’s depiction of the prophet .

“Freedom of speech should be polite,” tweeted Mortada, a Shiite minister close to Hezbollah’s allies. “Insults or holding dark grudges has nothing to do with morals.”

___

Associated Press writer Kareem Chehayeb in Beirut contributed to this report.

Thailand’s restive south hit by wave of arson and bombings

Muslim residents have long charged they are treated like second-class citizens in Thailand, and separatist movements have been periodically active for decades. Heavy-handed crackdowns have fueled the discontent.

A Thai officer stands beside the burnt down oil tanker at a gas station in Pattani province, southern Thailand, Wednesday, Aug. 17, 2022. A wave of arson and bombing attacks overnight hit Thailand’s southernmost provinces, which for almost two decades have been the scene of an active Muslim separatist insurgency, officials said Wednesday. (AP Photo/Sumeth Panpetch)

August 17, 2022

Sumeth Panpetch

HAT YAI, Thailand (AP) — A wave of arson and bombing attacks overnight hit Thailand’s southernmost provinces, which for almost two decades have been the scene of an active Muslim separatist insurgency, officials said Wednesday.

At least 17 attacks occurred Tuesday night in Pattani, Narathiwat and Yala provinces, mostly at convenience stores and gas stations, military spokesperson Pramote Promin said. Three civilians were reported injured. There have been no claims of responsibility.

More than 7,300 people have been killed since the insurgency began in 2004 in the three provinces, the only ones with Muslim majorities in Buddhist-dominated Thailand. Attacks have also taken place in neighboring Songkhla province.

Muslim residents have long charged they are treated like second-class citizens in Thailand, and separatist movements have been periodically active for decades. Heavy-handed crackdowns have fueled the discontent.

The attacks are the most high-profile ones since early April, when the Thai government and BRN — Barisan Revolusi Nasional Melayu Patani, believed to be the biggest of several insurgent groups— agreed to halt violence during the Muslim holy period of Ramadan. In other violence since then, two Thai army ordnance experts on duty were killed by a bomb later that month.

Pramote said the attackers Tuesday night “dressed up as women, using motorcycles and in many cases using petrol bombs, throwing them into the target sites.“

“It is clear that the insurgents remain committed to using violence on people, damaging confidence in the economy, creating uncertainty and undermining the government system,” he said.

Police Capt. Sarayuth Kotchawong said he received a report shortly before midnight that a suspect had entered a convenience store at a gas station in Yala’s Yaha district, placed a black bag inside and warned employees to leave if they “do not want die.” The workers left before the bag exploded 10 minutes later.

The various southern insurgent groups have not issued a consensus demand. They are a shadowy mix of veteran separatists and often loosely led groups of violent young militants. Their goals range from greater autonomy to independence, with little indication they are related to jihadist movements in other Southeast Asian countries, such as Indonesia and the Philippines.

Peace talks have been ongoing for several years under the auspices of the Malaysian government between Thai officials and Mara Patani, an umbrella body representing several insurgent groups. In January 2020, Thai officials held their first formal meeting in years with BRN representatives.

Although BRN is considered the most influential of the separatist groups, local members operate with some autonomy. They generally stage hit-and-run attacks, such as drive-by shootings and ambushes with roadside bombs. They are also known for occasional coordinated attacks when seeking to make a political point with a show of strength.

There has been occasional large-scale bloodletting. In November 2019, gunmen killed 15 village defense volunteers and wounded five security personnel in what was believed to be the deadliest attack on government forces since the separatist rebellion began.

Confronting anti-Shia hate is necessary to prevent killings like Albuquerque’s

Shia Muslims often feel isolation and vulnerability in a world where we struggle to find a sense of belonging.

Altaf Hussain cries over the grave of his brother Aftab Hussein at Fairview Memorial Park in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on Aug. 5, 2022. A funeral service was held for Aftab Hussein, 41, and Muhammad Afzaal Hussain, 27, at the Islamic Center of New Mexico on Friday. Both Muslim men were shot and killed near their homes only six days apart. Law enforcement believes one suspect could be responsible for killing three Muslim men in the past nine months. (Chancey Bush/The Albuquerque Journal via AP)

August 18, 2022

Faiyaz Jaffer

(RNS) — It was at the end of a religious service in the first 10 days of Muharram, some of the holiest days of the year for Shia Muslims, that news broke about the series of killings of Muslim men in Albuquerque — three in the space of two weeks. Initially suspected to be anti-Muslim violence, it was now believed that the suspect under arrest was acting on Shiaphobia — discrimination against members of the Shia sect of Islam.

My wife, my daughters and I are Shia Muslims. We, like many members of my community, are worried about what this attack means for us and our children. We are a community that has long been isolated and targeted, and these killings confirm that Shiaphobia is alive and active.

Shia Muslims make up a minority within the larger Muslim American community, which itself is only about 1% of the U.S. population. Following a different lineage of successors to the Prophet Muhammad than the majority Sunni Muslims, we are a minority as well among the global Muslim community, amounting to about 10% of Muslims worldwide.

It is difficult enough being Muslim in the United States. But my family and other Shia Muslims feel isolation, vulnerability and further loneliness in a world where we often struggle to find a sense of belonging. Our distinct theology, jurisprudence and ethical frameworks are assumed to be incorrect by the masses, contributing to a dehumanization of my community. In many places, our religious and cultural narrative has virtually been erased.

At New York University, where I’m a professor of Islamic law and ethics, my students who know my religious identity have questioned my legitimacy and scholarship, particularly in classroom discussions where I asked them to see beyond what they have been taught about a religion of close to 2 billion people. Shia Muslims have long been seen as “the other” when it comes to discourse around Islam, and this alienation has repercussions.

As the stories came out of Albuquerque, it turned out that these dangerous forces led to this violence. Authorities say the suspect, who had a history of domestic violence charges against his family and harbored Shiaphobia, targeted men in the community who were Shias or perceived to be Shias.

As a freshman in college, I was asked to leave the Muslim prayer space on my university campus by my Muslim peers because I am Shia. I spent the next two and a half years of my collegiate career praying alone in a stairwell of the library. When I share my experience with young Shia Muslims, hundreds of them say they have had similar experiences.

As a chaplain at New York University, I speak with Shia Muslim Americans daily, and everyone I know who identifies as Shia has experienced physical, verbal or (at the very least) casual anti-Shia microagression from privileged Muslims and others whose perception of Islam is shaped through negative media stereotypes. Reporting on political turmoil in Iraq and Iran, where Shia Muslims make up a majority, often lacks nuance about the geopolitics of the Middle East, instead caricaturing Shia Islam as “bad” or “evil.” This skewed orientalist understanding of Islam, coupled with the United States’ ties to Sunni majority countries that have long contributed to the genocide of their Shia communities, has allowed for a perception that Shias are “less Muslim” or “less human” than others.

The tragic episode in Albuquerque must be a rallying cry to create avenues that allow Americans of all faiths and backgrounds to appreciate the important differences in religious practice and expression, their subtleties as well as the headlines. As we have conversations about diversity and inclusivity, it is vital for us to acknowledge that religion is a salient element of identity for millions of people in the United States. We must learn to utilize our differences as a source of strength and growth.

Unfortunately, there are few models for combating anti-Shia rhetoric in this country. At the Islamic Center at NYU, my colleague Imam Khalid Latif, a Sunni Muslim leader, and I have sought to create a socially pluralistic space that embraces unity, but not uniformity. We strive to create an environment where Shia Muslims, Black Muslims and other minoritized people on our campus can freely express their religious identity and just “be” without any qualifying statements.

There is still so much more work to do, but it’s a step in the right direction, and in a world filled with so much darkness, a small incremental step has to count for something.

(Sheikh Faiyaz Jaffer is the associate chaplain at the Islamic Center at New York University and a professor of Islamic law and spirituality at NYU’s Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. Follow him on Instagram @faiyazjaffer. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)

‘God is life,’ Rabbi Yonatan Neril on ecological conversion and the war in Ukraine

Rabbi Yonatan Neril is the founder and executive director of the Interfaith Center for Sustainable Development — a Jerusalem-based nonprofit engaged in revealing the connection between religion and ecology worldwide.

Rabbi Yonatan Neril in 2017. Photo by Mariona Bonsfills/Wikipedia/Creative Commons

August 19, 2022

Marika Proctor

(RNS) — Not long after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in late February, Orthodox Jewish Rabbi Yonatan Neril found himself surrounded by 25 different religious leaders, including bishops, rabbis and sheiks, in Jerusalem’s Moscow Square as he affixed a letter calling for peace to the wall of the Russian Orthodox church.

The letter, signed by more than 150 religious leaders worldwide, including the Dalai Lama, called on Patriarch Kirill, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church who has close ties to President Putin, to implore the Russian president to de-escalate the armed conflict and seek peace.

“In this moment, religious leaders are called to rise to the occasion on behalf of God, people, and all creatures,” read the interfaith letter Neril placed in Moscow Square.

Nearly six months later, the war in Ukraine rages on, bringing with it a growing list of both humanitarian and ecological concerns ranging from massive grain shortages to recent shelling around Ukraine’s largest nuclear power plant.

Neril is concerned about both. He is the founder and executive director of the Interfaith Center for Sustainable Development — a Jerusalem-based nonprofit engaged in revealing the connection between religion and ecology worldwide — and co-author of the best-selling Eco Bible, an ecological commentary on Hebrew Scripture.

“God is life,” Neril told RNS in a recent interview. “We exist because every moment God is reinvigorating creation with life.” Neril also spoke with RNS about the spiritual crises he sees at the root of both ecological degradation and warfare, and the role religion can play in response.

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

During the Global Bildung Network festival earlier this year, you said, “We can’t have ecological sustainability without spirituality.” Can you explain that connection?

The ecological crisis is a spiritual crisis. It’s not just about nature and bees and the birds and the trees and the toads. It’s also about human beings and how we live as spiritual beings in a physical reality. And so, you know, with all due respect to Elon Musk and everyone buying a Tesla, we’re not going to curb climate change with Teslas alone — when the operating system of billions of people is consumer-driven.

The only force in the world that changes this operating system of consumerism is religion and spirituality. The root issues we’re talking about are greed, short-term thinking, egoism, seeking pleasure in the physical.

The spiritual solutions to those are humility, long-term thinking, caring for other people and creatures. The only institutions in the world that can deliver that are religious institutions.

Rabbi Yonatan Neril, standing, addresses an Interfaith Climate and Energy Conference. Photo by Mariona Bonsfills/Wikipedia/Creative Commons

Rabbi Yonatan Neril, standing, addresses The Interfaith Climate and Energy Conference, one of many stops Neril has made on speaking tours. Photo by Mariona Bonsfills/Wikipedia/Creative Commons

Why not just focus on composting? Why bring God or the Divine into the environmental conversation?

Scientists can’t promote this transition. And politicians can’t do it either. And business people also, I don’t think can do it. The transition that I’m thinking about — a spiritual ecological transition — it is about composting and it’s about clergy speaking from the pulpit about composting and it’s about that push being part of religion. But it’s, at a deeper level, about finding the center of our pleasure satisfaction in family and community and spirituality instead of finding that in fast food, new smart phones and cheap airplane travel.

You have also emphasized that we can’t have ecological sustainability without peace. Do you think there is a way of understanding war as part of a consumerist mentality?

Yes. Or another way of phrasing it would be an ‘expansionist mentality.’ Which is a related topic I also occasionally speak about. I think we need a transition within religion from religions trying to expand their base of followers.

Pope Francis talks about ecological conversion — of how essentially we need to transition to an ecological lifestyle. And I think it’s important that religions transition today to focus on that instead of focusing on trying to win more adherents to their particular religion.

At the end of the day it doesn’t matter how many people of each religion there are in the world if we don’t have a sustainable planet, because we’re all going to be held accountable by God for destroying the planet. It’s not like the “game ends” and the religion with the most numbers of adherents wins. The religion with the most number of adherents on a destroyed earth loses, together with every other religion.

So how might we more fully understand connections among religion, ecology and war?

With the fighting around Europe’s largest nuclear reactor right now, we’re not just talking about Cain and Abel where Cain has a rock and he’s killing his brother. We’re talking about 8 billion people, all species that God created, and if something goes wrong, there could be a nuclear explosion. Or there could be a nuclear conflict between Russia and other nuclear powers. And so everything is at stake here.

We need to raise our level of spiritual awareness. It doesn’t matter whether Russia has more territory. It doesn’t matter that the Russian Orthodox Church has more faith adherents. What matters is doing what is right and proper in the eyes of God, to quote a verse from the book of Deuteronomy.

And in this case that means seeking peace and stepping back and doing it on behalf of the people in Ukraine and Russia. And doing it on behalf of all people, including the hundreds of millions of people who now have less to eat as a result of the conflict.

Residents walk with their bicycles in front of a damaged church, in Lukashivka, in northern Ukraine, Friday, April 22, 2022. A single metal cross remains inside the Orthodox church of shattered brick and blackened stone. Residents say Russian soldiers used the house of worship for storing ammunition, and Ukrainian forces shelled the building to make the Russians leave. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

Residents walk with their bicycles in front of a damaged church in Lukashivka, northern Ukraine, Friday, April 22, 2022. A single metal cross remains atop the Orthodox church of shattered brick and blackened stone. Residents say Russian soldiers used the house of worship for storing ammunition, and Ukrainian forces shelled the building to make the Russians leave. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

In Western society, environmental activism is often framed as a progressive rather than conservative ideal — is there a deeper way of framing what is at stake beyond this polarization?

Yes, I think so. At the end of the day, caring for God’s planet, caring for our home is a value that we all should have whether we are progressive or conservative. That was part of the reason I wrote and published Eco Bible. The environmental movement began 50 years ago. For the past 50 years, most mainstream religious groups and clergy have not gotten onboard the ecological bandwagon — partly because they see it as a progressive or tree-hugger cause.

Some of my values you might describe as conservative and some of them you might describe as progressive. The environmental movement is not going to succeed to convince conservatives to be progressives. But what I think faith-based ecological activists (could do), is try to speak with conservative people about how caring for God’s creation is a religious value. It’s not a “left wing” thing, it’s something that is part of our religions and that God wants of us. And to properly be a religious person in this moment of history requires that we live a more ecological lifestyle.

In early March, your organization, the Interfaith Center for Sustainable Development, partnered with the Elijah Interfaith Institute to deliver a letter signed by over 150 religious leaders worldwide to the Russian Orthodox Church in Jerusalem, calling for peace. What’s the importance of an interfaith response to both the environmental crisis and the current war?

We need to come together. First of all, when I say strength in numbers, it means that the messaging is stronger when we’re together. The more that religious leaders publicly speak about this issue, along with scientists who have been speaking about this now for decades, the more I think it will be convincing.

You know if the Dalai Lama, Ecumenical Patriarch (Bartholomew), Pope Francis and Rabbi (Jonathan) Sacks, of blessed memory, came together (to discuss the climate crisis), there’s a certain seriousness with which you can take the issue. These are “conservative” religious people who, from a spiritual place, are able to understand that something is off here. And the melting of the ice caps and the record fires and droughts and flooding — these are all signals that earth is messaging to us that we need to change. Religious leaders are in agreement about that. That’s the whole idea of bringing them together.

And then similarly with the war in Ukraine, if 150 religious leaders say to Patriarch Kirill, “We’re calling on you to seek peace,” theoretically he should listen. You know, that’s the idea. They are supposed to be his peers.