Bringing Faiths Together to Address Common Concerns In June 2008, the World Bank hosted a remark-able gathering of Moroccan Muslims and U.S. Evangeli-cals on an issue of urgent and common concern: global climate change. The event, part of a longer dialogue program between the U.S. National Association of Evangelicals and an official delegation from the Kingdom of Mo-rocco, was meant to showcase the common thread of “Creation Care” – religiously-inspired care for the environment (see Box 1) – shared by diverse faith back-grounds. The World Bank, which has been a convener of faith and devel-opment partnerships since the late 1990s, offered technical expertise and background for the meeting. The NAE delegation was led by President Leith Anderson and Vice President for Governmental Affairs Richard Cizik, both widely known for their involvement in advocacy on climate change. The Moroccan delegation, led by Am-bassador Aziz Mekouar, included prominent Moroccan academics and government figures active in envi-ronmental work. Katherine Marshall, of the World Bank and Georgetown University, and Michael Kirtley, president of the Friendship Caravan, moderated the dialogue. The meeting achieved the short-term goal of exploring the common Muslim and Christian Evangelical interest, grounded in

Christian-Muslim Dialogue on

Climate ChangeWith Delegations from the National Association

of Evangelicals and the Kingdom of MoroccoJune 19, 2008 – The World Bank

theology, in climate change. On a broader level, and important for the long-term relations between the two communities, the meeting demonstrated to both parties a clear instance on which they are united. See-ing the success of the climate change meeting, the two groups agreed to broaden their dialogue to include a wider set of faith and interfaith communities in the United States and the Arab world on issues of climate change. The following report summarizes prominent

Box 1: Evangelical Engagement on Climate Change

The U.S. Evangelical community has become a global leader in climate change advocacy over the past several years. In 2006, the Evangelical Climate Initiative (ECI) released a statement entitled “Climate Change: An Evangelical Call to Action.” The declaration has 124 senior evangelical leaders as signatories, including Rick Warren, author of best-seller The Purpose Driven Life; David Neff, editor of Christianity Today; and Todd Bassett, national commander of the Salva-tion Army. Led by Jim Ball, President of the Evangelical Environmental Network, the ECI lobbies top policy-makers for federal legislation to limit carbon dioxide emissions. Following some discord (in 2006 it stated that “global warming is not a consensus issue”), the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) has become the leading evangelical Christian voice in advocating on climate issues. In Janu-ary 2007, NAE Vice President Richard Cizik and Nobel-laureate Eric Chivian, di-rector of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School, led a group of scientists and evangelicals calling for urgent changes in val-ues, lifestyles, and public policy to address global warming. NAE President Leith Anderson is now a signatory of the ECI’s “Call to Action.” Additionally, the NAE has been directly involved through its “Creation Care” environmental protection initiative, with outreach materials that address issues of climate change in faith communities at the grassroots.

• Evangelical Climate Initiative - http://christiansandclimate.org/• National Association of Evangelicals - http://www.nae.net/

themes and remarks from the meeting.

Welcoming Remarks: Climate Change as a Development Challenge

The common thread that brought the World Bank, the Moroccan Muslims, and the U.S. Evangelicals together was a concern about climate change as a devel-opment challenge that has its most direct effects on the world’s poorest countries and people. In welcoming the delegations Warren Evans, the World Bank’s Environ-ment Director, highlighted that the Bank views climate change as a crucial and cross-cutting development is-sue. He underscored that faith and interfaith communi-ties play pivotal roles as advocates working to build the political will needed for policies that could reverse the buildup of carbon in the atmosphere and also, in the future, help developing and vulnerable countries cope with the most damaging effects of climate change. Leith Anderson of the NAE emphasized in his remarks how the Evangelical movement sees care for the environment as an integral part of to its mission to alleviate poverty. He emphasized how fruitful he thought that cooperation between Evangelical Chris-tians and Muslims on the issue could be, given that both Islam and Evangelical Christianity are growing quickly in terms of numbers of adherents.

World Bank Presentations on Climate Change

World Bank environmental specialists held a technical session on the implications of climate change which backgrounded the discussion (see Box 2). Rich-ard Damania, Environmental Economist in the South Asia region, highlighted the immense complexity of

the climate change problem, and touched uncertainties inherent in predicting climate change’s effects and in assessing possible responses to the crisis. He stressed that climate change, as a problem that moves beyond national boundaries, cultures, and religions, must be addressed in a cooperative manner. Michele de Nevers, Senior Manager of the Environment Department, highlighted parallels be-tween the U.S. Evangelicals’ climate change advocacy strategy and the World Bank’s Strategic Framework on Climate Change and Development. Both strategies view climate change in the context of its effects on the world’s poorest citizens. She stressed that leadership in reducing CO2-intensity in production and consumption must come from the developed countries, which have the technology and institutional capacity to make the needed reductions Luis Constantino, Manager for Environment, Agricultural and Rural Development, and Social De-velopment in the Middle East and North Africa for the Bank, elaborated how higher temperatures, declining rainfall, and environmental volatility pose challenges for Morocco’s economy. Desertification is already oc-curing in North Africa, as the Sahara Desert covers an ever-widening area. Coastal areas, integral to the economic vitality of the region, will be affected by ris-ing sea levels and flooding. Constantino made the dire prediction that the region could expect to see the emer-gence of a population of “climate refugees” – people forced from their homes or livelihoods by a changing environment.

Religiously-Inspired Social Advocacy

The Bank presentations provided a context for the later discussions on the respective theological concerns motivating the Evangelicals and Muslims to speak and act on climate change. Abdelmajid Tribak, head of Morocco’s Koranic TV Network and a member of the Moroccan Ministry of Islamic Affairs, spoke to the importance of environmental protection in the Islamic tradition, citing a rich array of Quranic verses. Similarly, Leith Anderson traced Evangelical activism on climate change to Christian Biblical interpretations. He described the interplay between environmental degradation and its adverse effects on the poor as further reasons propelling Evangelicals to act. He noted that in recent years these concerns had been translated into con-crete action not only on environmental issues but also on global poverty chal-lenges.

Interfaith Dialogue The importance of the meeting as an opportunity for frank and pro-ductive interfaith dialogue was noted frequently by both sides throughout the meeting. All agreed that the dis-cussions were enriching and pertinent, and that more discussions of this na-ture were critical in a globalizing - and often polarized - world. Deborah Fikes, a member of the U.S. delegation, was forceful in em-phasizing that interfaith dialogue had growing importance in current times,

even in the face of criticism of such dialogue from some quarters of both faith communities. During his lunch-time address, Rick Love spoke to the perceptions and misperceptions of conversion in international develop-ment work between Muslim and Christian communi-ties (Love is currently a member of the Reconciliation Program at the Yale Divinity School’s Center for Faith and Culture, a program that emphasizes Christian-Muslim understanding and cooperation – see Box 3). Anouar Majid, Chair and Professor of English at the

Box 2: World Bank-Faith Community Engagement on Climate Change

Through an ongoing series of dialogues and consultations, the World Bank’s Development Dialogue on Values and Ethics has partnered with the Bank’s Environment team to engage faith leaders and communities on issues of climate change. In January 2005, the Bank hosted a diverse set of Catholic, Evangelical, and Orthodox Christian and Jewish leaders, alongside scientists and NGO leaders, to dialogue on interfaith cooperation and responses to climate change. More recently, in April 2008, a delegation of leaders from the National Religious Coalition on Climate Change met with Bank specialists, focusing on faith communities’ ethical and moral commitments to respond to climate change in developing countries.

The June 2008 dialogue between U.S. Evangelical and Moroccan Muslim leaders forms part of these ongoing efforts, and fits within the World Bank Environment Department’s global consultations toward a Strategic Framework on Climate Change and Development. The global consultations include a far-reaching set of stakeholders, including the United Nations and other international organizations, representatives of national governments, the private sector, and members of civil society. The active role of faith communities, especially in recent years, has been most pronounced on issues of advocacy.

• World Bank Environment Department - http://www.worldbank.org/environment/

• Global Consultations - http://www.worldbank.org/climateconsult/

Box 3: A “Common Word” in Christian-Muslim Dialogue

In October 2007, a group of 138 Muslim scholars, clerics, and intellectuals released an open letter, entitled A Common Word Between Us and You, addressed to the leaders of Christian churches everywhere. The signatories represented every denomination and school of thought in Islam and represented every major Islamic country or region in the world. The Common Word website states, “The most fundamental common ground between Islam and Christianity, and the best basis for future dialogue and understanding, is the love of God and the love of the neighbor.” The Common Word letter is hoped to provide a basis for future interfaith dialogue and to bring together Christian and Muslim organizations working in this field. It was indeed a groundbreaking effort: “Never before have Muslims delivered this kind of definitive consensus statement on Christianity. Rather than engage in polemic, the signatories have adopted the traditional and mainstream Islamic position of respecting the Christian scripture and calling Christians to be more, not less, faithful to it.” A month later, a group of over 300 Christian theologians and leaders endorsed a statement entitled “Loving God and Neighbor Together: A Christian Response to A Common Word Between Us and You.” This response was written by scholars at Yale Divinity School’s Center for Faith and Culture. As a result of the original Muslim statement and the Christian response, a series of major conferences and workshops are currently underway, bringing together signatories of the two documents as well as other international Christian, Muslim, and Jewish leaders.

• A Common Word - http://www.acommonword.com/• Yale Center for Faith and Culture - http://www.yale.edu/faith/

University of New England, placed historical relations binding Christian and Muslim societies in the con-text of increasing religious pluralism, and highlighted historical periods of meaningful interfaith cooperation and pluralism in parts of North Africa and in the Ibe-rian Peninsula following Muslim conquests and before the Spanish Inquisition.

Managing Change

The idea of “managing change in a changing world,” the phrase coined by Driss Alaoui M’Daghri, for-mer professor and Moroccan government min-ister, proved a resonant theme at the meeting. M’Daghri emphasized individual responsibility for activism and touched on what he believes are the three crucial issues affecting the world today: the environment and climate change; scientific and technological breakthroughs; and misunderstandings between cultures that cause violent conflict. By addressing both religious perceptions and issues surrounding climate change, he said, interfaith dialogues on development issues serve a dual purpose.

Richard Cizik, Vice President for Governmental Affairs of the NAE, noted his

frustration with people, espe-cially within the broader Evan-gelical community, who refuse to acknowledge that the reality of climate change in the face of overwhelming evidence. He noted parallels between refusals to acknowledge climate change and refusals to engage in inter-faith dialogue, and expressed a desire to explore ways in which the delegations could change negative beliefs on both issues.

Engagement on Gender and Youth The participants noted the ability of faith communi-ties to mobilize and magnify the voices of women and youth in the climate change debate. Asma Chaabi, mayor of Ess-aouira and the first female may-or elected in Morocco, spoke about women’s leadership, the role of mothers in development,

and the importance of women in the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim faith traditions. The need to harness media outlets to convey issues of climate change to religious communities was a strong mutual concern. Asma El Kasmi, professor at Al-Akhawayn University, described how many Moroccans’ perceptions of climate change are affected by the global media. A short documentary video on climate change produced by the NAE and viewed during the confer-ence showed the use of media as a mode of outreach to congregations.

A remarkable event is taking place in Wash-ington from June 18 to 20, 2008. The National Association of Evangelicals is hosting a delegation of six Moroccans—including this writer, who is Moroc-can-American—to discuss the pressing problem of the environment and the “future of our planet.” In the language of faith, Christians and Muslims alike are called upon to care for God’s creation. The mes-sage that came across from the very start is that if Christians and Muslims cannot come together to do something about environmental degradation, both communities will have, in essence, forfeited their mis-sions, if not abdicated their faiths altogether. This is quite a twist in Christian-Muslim dialogue, one that should be broadened not only to include Muslims and Christians from other na-tions but also representatives of every possible faith, including atheists. I could well imagine a United Nations-like assembly meeting for two days or so and issuing an inter-faith proclamation on the sacred-ness of the creation and our God-mandated duty to protect it. Such a measure, however, may not be enough. It is our faiths, as Reverend. Richard Cizik, the co-convener of the event, suggested, that need to be rethought. But how does one begin to do so in a hyper-consumer global society, one in which people are divided into the super-fed and super-entertained few and huge masses living on the edge of starvation? We may ache for our embattled planet and the losers among us, but we are way too embedded in our long-dysfunctional economic and political structures to see our way out to natural safety. This is what I thought, at any rate, as I listened and talked to various participants. I imagined Chris-tianity and Islam as cities upon crumbling hills and having only themselves to blame for their obsoles-

cence. Obviously, the meeting brought to mind John Winthrop’s 1630 sermon, one that is often invoked by politicians in Capitol Hill. For more than any other Christian in American history, it is Winthrop’s vision that has issued a warning to the ages, one that Chris-tians (and Muslims) would ignore at their own peril. Faith, I remembered Winthrop saying, is sharing and forgiveness. It is unconditional love. Faith is com-munity, above all, not the maniacal pursuit of private wealth, redeemed by charitable donations to worthy but, ultimately, futile causes. The first governor of Massachusetts failed to keep his comrades in the fold of Christian love, and so we today stand on the hill of perdition. We stand as helpless sinners, as the fire-and-brimstone Puritan preacher Jonathan Edwards would say more than two centuries later, “in the Hands of an angry God.” If nothing else comes out of this historic en-counter, then the least it could do is, in fact, broaden the reach of our faiths. Creation care requires un-conditional love for God’s whole creation, including our fellow humans, without regard to their religions. One could imagine this approach leading to more trust and, even, love, thereby tempering the destruc-tive (but equally human) drive for accumulation and conquests. Families tend to fight strangers more than they do themselves. And so this inauspicious Christian-Muslim encounter could very well lay the foundations of a world closer to divine intent than all our traditional expressions of faith have so far been able to do.

This piece was originally published in June 2008 on Newsweek’s “On Faith” Blog.

Cities On Crumbling HillsReligious communities and climate changeBy Anouar Majid, Chair and Professor of English at the University of New England

Global warming, too, makes strange bedfel-lows. Which is the simple explanation of why Rich Cizik, a prominent evangelical pastor, could be found for two days last week at the World Bank, closeted with a group of other evangelicals and a delegation of Moroccan Muslims, led by their ambassador to the U.S., Aziz Mekouar. Cizik is propelled by his conviction that no issue has greater importance than global warming. And he is casting a wide net for common cause and effective partnerships to persuade, mobilize, and gal-vanize action. The Moroccans were willing to sign on to a dialogue. Why Morocco? Among Muslim countries, Mo-rocco has deep historic ties to the U.S. (it was the first country to recognize the fledgling American republic in 1776) and is proud of its openness to different faiths and new ideas. And Morocco is beginning to feel the pinch of climate change with some serious droughts and some crunch on water resources. As to the World Bank, Cizik’s group wanted both a true global perspective and credible technical grounding. The World Bank is heavily involved in vet-ting new strategies on climate change. And the Bank also knows full well that without public understand-ing and support, the kinds of change needed simply will not happen. So the Bank readily agreed to host the group. (I was involved in the planning process and as moderator.) But the combination of Islam and evangelism: how would that play out? The extreme statements of a few American evangelical leaders have been broad-cast and rebroadcast throughout the Muslim world, inciting anger and fueling mistrust. The core evangeli-cal message, which is to spread the “good news” about Jesus Christ, when it is understood to mean conver-sion of Muslims, does not go down well in the Islamic world. If, Cizik and his colleagues reasoned, these

two groups could agree on what to do about climate change, that might spur wider rethinking of positions and tensions. And at the same time it might even contribute to world peace by bridging some divides. The dialogue that unfolded was both predict-able – following an implicit script – and full of sur-prises. As hoped and expected, the group found much common ground in deep worries about the threat of global warming. And they found resonating echoes in Christian and Muslim scriptures enjoining mankind to care for the earth. The word responsibility came up again and again. And, as hoped, friendship was a resounding theme – the importance of people-to-people contact, of getting to know others. The surprises? The willingness to engage about proselytizing and conversion was reassuring, though plainly the discussions just scratched the surface of some very sensitive issues. The readiness of pretty much the whole group to acknowledge how little they knew of each other opened the way to future exchange. Several admitted that Moroccan im-ages of evangelicals and American images of Muslims bordered on caricatures, and that the depth and sheer complexity of both American evangelical Christianity and of Islam caught them by surprise. The boldest dream involves the great renew-able resource of the Sahara: sunshine. A tiny square of Saharan desert, with the right technology, could power the entire world if the power of the sun could be truly harnessed, an expert suggested. And the sunshine of honest dialogue could power a new dynamic of pluralism and allow different groups to respect one another, celebrate their differences, and live not in tolerance but in friendship.

This piece was originally published in July 2008 on News-week’s “On Faith” Blog.

Improbable DreamsClimate change advocacy, religion, and relationshipsBy Katherine Marshall, Senior Fellow, Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and Global Affairs