Rabbi Neil Amswych Addresses On-line Global Summit
Written by Movement for Reform Judaism Wednesday, 12 November 2008
At 8pm on Saturday October 11th 2008, Rabbi Neil Amswych, Chair of IDEA and Principal Rabbi of Bournemouth Reform Synagogue, spoke on "Faith Communities and the Climate Crisis" to a global summit based around the Earth Charter.
The Earth Charter is a widely recognised, global consensus statement on ethics and values for a sustainable future. Although the Earth Charter is well-known worldwide, it is only now growing in popularity in the UK and in 2008 Bournemouth was the first UK authority to formally adopt the Earth Charter.
Local Earth Charter summits took place all across the world in America, Europe, Africa and even Okinawa in Japan. At each local summit, groups gathered to share how they were using the Earth Charter and to hear the speakers. Rabbi Amswych spoke on the importance of faith communities in tackling climate change. He explained how he believed that the current climate crisis is technological in practise, but is spiritual at its core, having arisen from a divergence in the way modern society views the world and the way all the religious traditions view it. He critiqued “greening” communities because these actions often involved one-off consumer choices – often for financial savings - instead of fundamentally changing the mindset of the community towards a more ecocentric mindset.
In his speech, he said that for the first time in many years, both science and religion now hold that the Earth is fragile and that we have a duty to protect it. He explained that “in the face of the overwhelming evidence, faith communities have a moral obligation to place responses to climate change at the forefront of their vocabulary.”
In his presentation, Rabbi Amswych explained how he had set up IDEA: Interfaith Dorset Education and Action in 2007 and within one year IDEA has a contact list of over 400 names. He said that creating IDEA, their website and bringing the Earth Charter to Bournemouth Borough Council in April 2007 all took surprisingly little work, and that this demonstrates how much of an impact everyone can make. The website tells readers all about differing faith perspectives on the environment, has an extensive summary of the science of climate change and also suggests many practical action steps that individuals can perform every day to help minimise climate change.
He spoke of Martin Luther King’s belief that we should live in “creative maladjustment” with the world, which means seeing what we dislike in the world and working creatively to improve it, and he said that members of faith communities are well placed to live in such a way.
His final focus was on the depressing message of the environmental lobby and how faith communities need to capitalise on that message but make it positive. “We need to show people the beauty in the world that they had forgotten and show them how nature helps connect to God. Defence of that nature and beauty is a secondary offshoot of the mindset that every blade of grass is sacred.
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