Against the menace of pollution and climate change, environmentalism’s secular old guard is gaining a new ally.

If God were one of us, would he drive a hybrid?

In the minds of a growing number of religious leaders, theologians and believers, the answer is yes. Scattered across the U.S., groups like Floresta, the Green Zionist Alliance and Web of Creation are part of an emerging religious environmentalism movement that has surged in the past few years. One result of the craze has been high-profile campaigns such as the Evangelical Climate Initiative and What Would Jesus Drive?.

“People used to say, ‘oh, it’s religion and the environment.’ Now what do those two things have to do with each other?” says filmmaker Marty Ostrow, whose new documentary, Renewal, which profiles eight religious environmental groups, has screened at venues as diverse as the United Nations and a New Jersey synagogue. “All of the faith traditions really care about this, and they all have things to say to tell us about the deep connections to the natural world.”

The environmental movement of the 1960s was driven largely by secular values. “We have all the science that informs us about environmental problems, and for 40 years, we’ve been implementing policy. But we haven’t been able to change people’s attitudes and habits,” says John Grim, a professor at Yale University and co-coordinator of Harvard’s Forum on Religion and Ecology, a leading multi-faith think tank on the subject. “The environmental community needs to explore the values that motivate people. And those values are religious.”
In our interactive graphic, learn how the major world religions view environmentalism and push their followers to live in an eco-friendly wayThe faithful have caught up to the non-religious—whom they once lagged behind—in their attention to environmental problems. Half of Catholic Americans now see global warming as a “very serious” problem, according to a report by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. That’s roughly the same as the secular population. Mainline Protestants fall closely behind, with four in ten sharing that viewpoint.

White evangelicals demonstrate the most lingering hesitancy (three in ten view global warming as “very serious”), but many of the community’s brightest stars have made climate change a priority.

In 2006, 86 Christian leaders created the Evangelical Climate Initiative, a call to action on reducing carbon emissions. There are now more than 120 signatories to the ECI, including Rick Warren and Bill Hybels, pastors of some of the country’s largest congregations.

Naturally, there are prominent dissenters. In mid-May, the Southern Baptist Convention responded to ECI by launching the We Get It! campaign. Backed by supporters like Focus on the Family’s James Dobson, the campaign takes a stance toward human responsibility for climate change that counters most environmentalists. It argues that some environmentally minded proposals could increase the cost of food and harm economic growth.

That response is in part due to the fact that religious environmentalists are making themselves heard. In mid-May, ECI spokesman Rev. Jim Ball hailed the cap-and-trade emission proposal of presumptive Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain. Rev. Ball cited a recent Ellison research poll indicating that 84 percent of evangelicals favor federal legislation to reduce emissions.

Environmentally minded scientists and policymakers have begun to recognize the power of religiously motivated environmentalism. In just the last four years, lawmakers have adopted a view that they “absolutely need the religions,” says Mary Evelyn Tucker, a Yale professor who co-coordinates the Forum on Religion and Ecology alongside Grim.

Evangelicals have proven to be a powerful voting bloc in the past, and may prove to be a swing demographic in November. Sen. Barack Obama, who has appealed to evangelicals with flyers highlighting his conversion, spoke in April about how he takes his belief in the importance of being good stewards of the Earth from passages in Genesis.

Still, the movement remains fragmented. During their research trips, Ostrow and his filmmaking partner, Terry Kay Rockefeller, came across green-conscious churches where members felt they were alone in their fight. They were often unaware of eco-projects being undertaken just a few miles away.

“Not only did the Catholics not know what the Jews were doing, but they had no idea what the other Catholics were doing,” Ostrow says.

Our second floor story gives you the inside scoop on Terry Kay Rockefeller and Marty Ostrow’s documentary Renewal, which chronicles religious environmentalists across the country.And that’s the reason why, in spite of all the publicity gained by catchy campaigns and the pronouncements of spiritual leaders, experts say that much work remains to be done.
“Until people see destroying the environment as a moral issue, as something that’s ethically wrong,” Tucker says, “we’re not going to see change.”

From Native American celebrations to Mississippi church leaders who are fighting for eco-justice, watch four short documentaries about environmentalism projects that have a faith-based element.