Muslim-Christian Dialogue on Climate Change at COP28
Christian Climate Observer Program participants Eric Bagenzi (Rwanda) and Eugene Cho (USA) listen in to the Forum. Lowell Bliss is seated at the front (centre of photo) next to Rev. Deb Walker (another CCOPer from Canada).
Remarks by Lowell Bliss, co-founder and co-director of the Christian Climate Observers Program
On the occasion of the Muslim-Christian Dialogue on Climate Change, conducted during COP28, and graciously hosted by the Abu Dhabi Forum for Peace, 6 December 2023
On behalf of my fellows in the Christian Climate Observers Program, and our accompanying guests—young African activists of the Rise Up! Movement—I offer my profound thank you to the Abu Dhabi Forum for Peace for their kind and generous invitation and welcome. We are honoured to receive the address of His Excellency Sheikh Abdullah Bin Bayyah, and I shall never forget this moment. And if I may address the citizens of U.A.E. in the audience: it is no small thing to host a UN climate summit. Arab hospitality is famous the world around. Thank you for hosting COP28 at this critical juncture in our civilization’s history.
I wish to make two points accompanied by two stories. One story is a source of continued joy whenever I reflect upon it. The other reflects one of the most painful episodes in my family’s history.
I am director of the Eden Vigil Institute for Environmental Leadership at William Carey International University. I received much of my training in Adaptive Leadership from the Kansas Leadership Center in Wichita, Kansas (the hometown, incidentally, of President Barack Obama’s mother.) My cohort included Sheik Mohamed Al-Hilali and other members of the Islamic Society of Wichita which he directed at the time. The program invited each of us to arrive with a leadership challenge that we would then present to the entire group which in turn would seek to assist by supplying new interpretations, suggestions, and consultation on how to overcome the obstacles presented in that challenge. Sheik Mohamed presented a challenge that might be familiar to many settings hosted by the Abu Dhabi Forum for Peace: how to achieve a more thorough, peaceful, and understanding integration between the Islamic Society and the midwestern, largely Christian population of Wichita, Kansas. I remember that I threw out a couple of suggestions: 1) don’t try to integrate the Islamic Society as an institution; instead try to integrate into the community the families of the Society; and 2) in addition to all the face-to-face dialogue and gatherings—visits to mosques and churches, etc.—plan and conduct community work projects where Muslims and Christians can come alongside each other and work on projects of common concern. Clean up a park together. Supply books to a school’s library. Nothing promotes peace and understanding better than when, in the words of our distinguished convener, we work “shoulder-to-shoulder,” and not simply meet face-to-face.
Climate action presents a stunning opportunity for the shoulder-to-shoulder work that can foster Muslim-Christian peace. Pope Francis seemed to understand this when in 2015 he released his famous climate change encyclical Laudato Si. Normally, a papal encyclical is addressed to “the Roman Catholic faithful” or to “all Christians,” but Laudato Si, as well as September’s sequel Laudate Deum, as addressed to “all people of good will.” Its subtitle was “Care for Our Common Home.” That is our great shoulder-to-shoulder project: to care together for a home that all faiths share in common.
To be more specific, our common project is to achieve Net Zero. Scientists have recently declared that once we achieve Net Zero, further global warming effectively stops and quite quickly thereafter. Now, mind you, there will be additional ensuing impacts, such as sea-level rise, but the average global temperature above pre-industrial levels will have been stabilized. At that point, we can pour ourselves into merciful, compassionate, and just adaptation projects, confident that we are not simply chasing an ever-moving crisis. Until we achieve Net Zero, the adaptation question will always be “Adapt to what?” Achieving Net Zero is the great project of love for the poor and vulnerable of our common home. Other faith traditions may additionally understand Net Zero in terms of harmony and balance—to bring our carbon emissions in balance with what are called “carbon sinks,” the planet’s mechanisms for absorbing CO2. Our two faiths may additionally understand Net Zero in terms of obedience and submission—not as the violation of a law or a man-made treaty, like the Paris Agreement—but rather as honouring how our Great God chose to design the universe. Who are we to disdain how God created the salubrious greenhouse effect in the atmosphere and the carbon sinks of vegetation, oceans, and rock weathering?
I understand that the U.A.E. is rich in fossil fuels. So is Canada, the United States, Mexico, and many of the other countries represented today in this room. Faith communities must take up the prophetic task of promoting the love, harmony, and obedience behind Net Zero. In the Appalachian region of the United States, there are many church buildings that have been built by the coal companies. In the Athabasca region of northern Alberta in Canada, there are many churches dependent on offerings from families employed by the oil companies. The same is true for churches around Houston, TX. It is hard for a preacher to step into the pulpit with a commitment to the gospel and a commitment to the fossil fuel companies. The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) and our Apostle Paul had something in common: when they both entered the city they were disgusted, outraged, deeply troubled by the idolatry they encountered. Today, may we also have eyes to see the idolatry that has sprung up around our use of fossil fuels.
The joy in this first story is that whenever I would rejoin my cohort in Wichita, Sheik Mohamed would spot me, run up to me, and give me a big hug. He is a short Yemeni man with a huge smile. “You gave the best suggestion!” he would say to me. I only gave a suggestion, but it is based on the truth that when we begin to work shoulder-to-shoulder on a common challenge, we often find not only solutions to our common problems, but peace between our communities.
My second story is more painful. On March 15, 2019, Brenton Tarrant walked into two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand during Friday prayers and gunned down 51 Muslim worshippers, wounding some 40 others. The day before, this terrorist had published a hate-filled manifesto, which the Government of New Zealand has now locked down except for study by scholars and journalists. Why allow such hatred to stay in print? The massacre was greeted with grief and outrage by the world’s Muslim and Christian communities, by Prime Minister Arden, by New Zealanders, and by my own family.
My father-in-law lived and worked in Pakistan as the founder and director of a Technical Training and Bible School. He taught Auto Mechanics to young men from the Christian community who otherwise found it hard to get employment as a minority without such a valued skill set. They also ran a girl’s hostel that allowed Christian young women to come in from the villages for the sake of an education. On March 17, 2002, my father-in-law was at a worship service at the Protestant International Church in Islamabad, Pakistan when two terrorists entered and threw five grenades into the middle of the worshippers. Five people died, including a mother and her daughter right in front of my father-in-law. My father-in-law was spared but lost his hearing and has been diagnosed with PTSD.
What happened to my father-in-law is just another example of the sectarian violence that the Abu Dhabi Forum for Peace and so many other people of good will work so tirelessly to prevent and heal. Certain evil individuals commit acts of violence, and while they claim to do it in the names of our faiths, their violence has NOTHING to do with the peace and compassion that our faiths teach and hold dear. What makes the first story—the terrorism of a Brenton Tarrant—so unique is what he wrote in his manifesto. He did consider that he was murdering Muslims in the name of what he called “Christian Europe” but additionally he was doing it in the name of climate change. In his manifesto, he claimed that climate change was real and urgent. He understood that climate change would bring certain resource pressures and so he determined in some dark place of his heart to strike first: to preserve those resources for people who looked like him, who were labelled like him, for “Christian Europeans.” He proudly called himself an “eco-fascist.”
Working shoulder-to-shoulder for Net Zero can, in itself, promote peace between our communities. Failure to work shoulder-to-shoulder, failure to achieve Net Zero, will—I fear—see the rise of a new type of motivation in violence—one that will surely break the heart of you, our new friends at the Abu Dhabi Forum for Peace, break the heart of participants in the Christian Climate Observers Program and the Rise Up! Movement, and break the hearts of all people of good will who truly care for our common home. Now is the time to show our solidarity and pursue Net Zero.
Thank you.