Religious groups around the U.S. are raising alarms and stepping up action as President Donald Trump’s administration has quickly moved to gut environmental regulations and federal programs for reducing climate pollution during his first weeks in office.
While some evangelical leaders have backed Trump’s dismissal of climate science, most faith leaders say the teachings in the Bible, the Torah, the Quran, and other sacred texts compel people to be good stewards of the Earth and care for each other.
“Each of us must feel in some way responsible for the devastation to which the Earth, our common home, has been subjected, beginning with those actions that, albeit only indirectly, fuel the conflicts that presently plague our human family,” wrote Pope Francis, leader of 1.3 billion Catholics around the world, in a papal message released January 1, 2025, reiterating the call in his encyclical – a formal letter – known as “Laudato Si’: Care for Our Common Home.”
“At the beginning of this year, then, we desire to heed the plea of suffering humankind,” the pope wrote in his January message.
Faith groups pledge action
On Day One of his new administration, Trump began steps to pull the United States out of the Paris Climate Agreement. Some 839 faith communities joined with 2,978 businesses, 428 universities and colleges, 175 major investors, 362 local governments, 10 states, and 13 tribal nations in declaring they will continue the work of fulfilling the U.S. pledge to the Paris Agreement to reduce climate emissions to levels that would limit average global warming from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius.
The faith communities that signed onto the “America is All In” declaration include the Jewish Climate Action Networks of New York and Massachusetts, Methodist, Congregational, Lutheran, and Unitarian congregations all around the country and the large Roman Catholic Archdioceses of Anchorage, Cheyenne, Cleveland, Fort Wayne, Jackson, Mississippi, Louisville, Lubbock, New Orleans, and Newark, New Jersey, St. Augustine, Savannah, and Toledo, as well as many others. In late January, two U.S. Catholic organizations called on Trump to reverse the anti-environment executive orders he had issued, describing their “alarm at the extensive reversal of U.S. domestic and international climate policies.”
What religious groups are doing about climate change
Some religious coalitions are already taking steps to fill the void expected to be left by the federal government abandoning programs for renewable energy and environmental justice.
“We see the challenges ahead and we intend to bolster up,” said Codi Norred, executive director of Georgia Interfaith Power & Light, which counts hundreds of churches, synagogues, mosques, and spiritual groups as members or affiliates.* “We are in a mode of expansion,” he said.
The group is asking the state public service commission to encourage the state utilities to build out more clean energy. They’re building resilience centers for people hurt by extreme weather disasters and bolstering funding to help more congregations install solar.
Read: Trump and his allies could kill funding for lifesaving resiliency hubs
Some 22,000 faith communities are involved with Interfaith Power & Light chapters in 40 states.
Religious groups are also mobilizing around other issues, such as protecting immigrants, health care for poor and working-class people, and others in the crosshairs of Trump’s policies.
The Jewish Climate Action Networks in Massachusetts, New York, and Maryland are galvanizing members to act at the state level.
“The Jewish Climate Action Network works through education, activism, and spirituality to add an urgent and visionary Jewish voice to the climate crisis,” explained the co-presidents of the Jewish Climate Action Network of Massachusetts in an email, adding that the organization focuses on decarbonization, advocacy, and spiritual resilience. “In the absence of federal leadership, we’re going to keep Massachusetts leadership honest (in fulfilling climate commitments) and pursue opportunities to work with municipalities” as well as promote personal responsibilities for individuals, they said. Deb Nam-Krane, one of the co-presidents, added that the group is looking to collaborate with other groups and to be advisers and helpers to “the next generation of climate activists.”
Pressure in the form of shareholder resolutions
On another front, the pension boards of mainstream protestant denominations and the Reform Jewish Movement, as well as dozens of congregations of nuns, are preparing to file or vote for climate-related shareholder resolutions at major corporations this year, according to the Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility, whose members include hundreds of faith-based organizations.
If they’re like past years, these faith-based investment groups will ask major companies in which they are shareholders to report on how they are reducing climate emissions, how the companies are meeting their stated climate goals, how they are protecting water resources, and if their policy lobbying matches their public statements on climate and water.
“Members certainly feel the change. They are watching with shock and awe” as the federal government under the new administration rolls back policies on renewable energy, environmental justice, and protecting water resources, said Tim Smith, senior policy adviser of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility.
“However, the major faith communities we work with are declaring forcefully that they are doubling down on climate work to protect God’s Earth and on diversity and human rights,” Smith said. “If you are stewards of God’s Earth, then you are compelled to actively try to do God’s work.”
Most denominations carry out climate work through multiple activities, he noted, from public policy advocacy to helping houses of worship become more sustainable to corporate engagement and shareholder advocacy: “People might get battered and tired,” in the current political environment, “but at least at this point what we are hearing is that people are deeply committed.”
He said the investment arms of religious denominations, or ICCR members, “have filed dozens of climate-related shareholder resolutions,” this year that will be voted on at corporate annual meetings. Such filers include the pension boards of denominations or investment managers of congregational endowments.
Mercy Investment Services, the investment arm of the Sisters of Mercy, filed a resolution asking a major food company to report on its water pollution. “Water sustainability remains a priority for Mercy Investment Services and will be a focus of shareholder engagements during the upcoming advocacy season,” it noted on its website.
And Friends Fiduciary Corp., which manages investments for Quaker houses of worship and schools, has filed a resolution at a major bank asking it to set emissions reduction goals for its operations, lending, and investments that are aligned with the goals of the Paris Agreement.
Many investors generally do not make their resolutions public before the annual meetings. But even investment managers who are not affiliated with any faith group “have a fiduciary duty to address climate change,” Smith noted, and in each of the past few years, there have been more than 100 climate-related shareholder resolutions filed by investors generally.
The financial risks of climate change are well known – and demonstrated in the losses resulting from the Los Angeles wildfires and the North Carolina floods. For investment managers “it is not just a ‘nice to do’ but it is your legal duty to address climate risk” when making investment decisions for beneficiaries, he said.
Alarm at reversal of climate policies
Pastor Rev. Jeff Courter of the First Presbyterian Church of Forest Hill, New York, and Imam Muhammad Shahidullah, chair of the Queens Imam Council, wrote to readers of their Queens, New York, neighborhood newspaper last year that “the climate crisis is the moral crisis of our time.” The clergymen reminded readers that “The Bible is filled with verses that celebrate the beauty of the natural world and instruct humans to care for the Earth (Genesis 1-2) as well as our neighbors (Matthew 22:39). The Quran tells us that we are custodians of the planet (Surah Al-Baqarah 2:205) and that we have an obligation to plan for the future (Surah Al-Kahf 18:24).”
The two Catholic groups that called for Trump to reverse his executive orders were the Catholic Climate Covenant and the Laudato Si’ Movement. They described their “alarm at the extensive reversal of U.S. domestic and international climate policies” and added in a statement that “Scientists have been warning us for many years that our continued burning of fossil fuels is heating the atmosphere and creating current and future chaos for decades to come.”
They added, “Rather than embrace and advance this country’s essential role in domestic and global responsibilities to confront this existential crisis, this new administration has chosen to relinquish scientific and economic potential, freeze U.S. commitments, and abdicate leadership on climate policies.”
The groups urged the faithful to act: “As Catholic institutions working within the U.S. to ensure that all human life is protected and justice for all is promoted, we urge our fellow citizens – and especially those in power – to take a serious look at not only our own carbon and resource-intensive lifestyles, but our impact on all of God’s creation, human and nonhuman.”
Their words echoed those of the Jewish Climate Leadership Coalition issued in its founding statement two years ago that still define its mission:
“The overwhelming global scientific consensus confirms what we see with our own eyes: hurricanes, superstorms, wildfires, drought, dangerous air quality for months at a time – each year worse than the last. The impact does not affect us all equally. Those in our society with less power and fewer resources, already more vulnerable, are hit hardest by the traumatic impact of climate change. Jewish values compel us to confront this crisis, and our commitment to Jewish community compels us to do so together,” said the coalition, which represents Jewish organizations across the world.
And even Evangelicals have spoken about their faith-based responsibility to care for the earth and work to halt climate change.
“As a Christian, I believe that God created this incredible planet we live on and gave us responsibility over every living thing on it. And I further believe that we are to care for and love the least fortunate among us, those already suffering the impacts of poverty, hunger, disease, and more,” said climate scientist and author Katharine Hayhoe, distinguished professor at Texas Tech University and chief scientist for the Nature Conservancy, said on a recent TED talk. “I truly believe, after thousands of conversations that I’ve had over the past decade or more, that just about every single person in the world already has the values they need to care about a changing climate. They just haven’t connected the dots.”
*Editor’s note: This sentence was updated February 13, 2025, to correct the spelling of a name.
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