Young leaders from different faiths share ideas on bringing a moral perspective to the climate change challenge.
Many Faiths, One Goal: Addressing Climate Change
Many Faiths, One Goal: Addressing Climate Change
Young community leaders from many different faiths gathered on Duke’s campus in January for a week-long conference and retreat to work on mobilizing their faith traditions to address the challenges of Earth’s changing climate.
Through a series of individual and group activities, more than two dozen fellows from around the world shared their thoughts and their sacred texts, prayed together, and learned from others who have brought faith into environmental activism. On Thursday, they shared artistic narratives and performances in the elegant York Room of the Divinity School.
The fellows met with Duke faculty from divinity and policy, nursing and medicine, the Nicholas School and Institute, and the Fuqua School of Business and received prayers from their fellows of the Buddhist, Taoist, Hindu and Sikh faiths.
Muhammad Mohsin from the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh shows fellows Tamina Rauf and Andile Mnguni his phone.
Vedhan Singh, from South Africa, led participants in a Hindu prayer for water.
This is the second round of the fellowship, which was developed as a partnership between Duke Divinity School and Faith for our Planet, a non-governmental organization devoted to uniting faith communities around fighting the effects of climate change. The fellowship is co-hosted by Divinity Professor Norman Wirzba and Abdullah Antepli, associate vice provost and associate vice president for community-engaged teaching and research, and planned to run for several years annually.
Since that first meeting, Wirzba has been named Director of Research for the Duke Climate Commitment and Antepli has become leader of a new university Center for Community Engagement.
“Climate change is a global moral crisis at heart and should be studied and imagined as such by those who are working to make significant sustained solutions to this monumental challenge that humanity faces,“ Antepli said. “This fellowship is a modest attempt to model and exemplify such efforts.”
Samir I. Ibrahim, a researcher, author and ambassador, shared descriptor words during an exercise on how everyone sees themselves in the world, as Fuqua Professor Dan Vermeer looked on.
