On March 12, 2025 a Creation Justice Webinar: America in Search of a Soul was co-hosted by the Rev. Dr. Brooks Berndt, who serves as the Minister of Environmental Justice for the United Church of Christ, and the Rev. Michael Malcom, who serves as the Executive Director for Alabama Interfaith Power & Light and the People's Justice Council.
The webinar drew it's title from a 1976 sermon entitled, “America in Search of a Soul,” by Howard Thurman, who prophetically understood that the soul of America was threatened by “the Cult of Inequality.”
Today, we face our own moment of reckoning as we confront the crises of societal inequality and climate change. The following are some comments from the panelists that help us unpack both the threats and the opportunities before us as people of faith:
Rev. Cameron Trimble, Founder and CEO of Convergence
“Look well to the growing edge.”
Care for the common good is dying.
Our spiritual journey is about “becoming stripped of our literal substance before God.” ~ Howard Thurman
We are clearly headed for autocracy. The conditions were set many years ago.
We must now face the “Dark Night of the Soul.”
Meister Eckhart said “The shell must be cracked apart if what is in it is to come out, for if you want the kernel you must break the shell.”
We can create an “Island of Sanity” as Meg Wheatley says, where we come together to practice together to learn wisdom and how to treat one another with kindness.
There are Seven critical steps congregations can take that might make a difference:
Strengthen our local communities
Leverage local and State government to serve its people
Support Independent journalism and civic education
Prepare for civil resistant and democratic resilience
Stand firm for social justice and vulnerable populations
Cultivate personal resilience and a commitment to generosity, creativity and kindness
Embrace climate action and environmental regeneration
Find out more from Convergence in the November 2024 article: The future ahead congregations in the age of Trump 2.0
The story we have been telling ourselves does not have a future.
St. Thomas Aquinas, writing in the 13th century, integrated these earlier ideas with Christian theology. In his monumental work, Summa Theologica, Aquinas provided a robust understanding of the common good, particularly within the context of natural law and the role of the state. For Aquinas, the common good was closely related to the ultimate end of human beings, which is to achieve union with God, and the role of the state was to help foster conditions that would promote this end for individuals and society as a whole..
Rev. Dr. Jim Antal, author of "Climate Church, Climate World”
We have a shared vocation. The climate crisis was well recognized in the 2015 Climate Paris Accord and Greta Thunberg spoke truth to power, but Covid, which struck in March 2020 and caused the death of 20 million people was the perfect setup for shift to authoritarian government.
America’s emphasis on rugged individualism, racism, sexism, and unbridled capitalism played on "the fear that each of this is under attack."
We now live under the threat of theft of our online identities.. We have lost the principles and assumptions that have guided our society in the past..
The earth's life sustaining capacity has been compromised.
Truth, facts and freedom are in the throwes of attack by the tyrannical power on the throne.
The Civil Rights Act was approved 55 years ago because 10 million people to took to the streets. But, we are no longer living in that America.
Hannah Arendt has said “Our lives begin to end when we become silent.“
"We the people" are the ones we have been waiting for.
We are in a theological emergency. We are being called to organize now.
Read Rebecca Solnit’s books:
Bill McKibben’s Third Act, now has nealy 100,000 activist. Third Act is "a dedicated group of organizers, campaign strategists, and communications professionals working together to build a powerful elder-led movement for climate action and democracy protection." Third Act Faith, launched in 2021 is "one of the first affinity working groups that brings together elders from a broad range of faith backgrounds and spiritual traditions to address climate and democracy."
Read Timothy Snyder's 2017 book On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century.
Rev. Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas, Canon Theologian at the Washington National Cathedral
This is the urgent conversation - environmental justice is linked to inequality. The most marginalized people and the disposed are disproportionately effected by climate change.
The World Bank projects by 2030 some 32-132 million people will be pushed into poverty by climate change.
The countries that are most affected are those who are causing the crisis the least.
Boston University Economist John Friedman says that when people feel they don’t have a chance it breeds the fear that you are going to loose what you have, be left behind and your children will be worse off. Inequity is the enemy and the greatest threat to a democracy.. Fear becomes the seed for anti-democracy.
Check out the Opportunity Insights Economic Tracker.
Scapegoating (who can I blame?) masks the real source of the inequality: the systemic reality that serves inequality.
People are looking for a savior from the extreme realty of inequality and environmental injustice, but that savior is us.
Empathy is what binds us together.
Read Matthew D. Taylor's 2024 book, The Violent Take It by Force: The Christian Movement That Is Threatening Our Democracy.
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