Our Mission

Faith for the Climate exists to encourage, inspire and equip faith communities in their work on the crisis of climate change. People of faith see our planet as a gift, and believe we have a sacred responsibility to care for and protect those who have done the least to cause climate change but are suffering its worst impacts.

Faith communities have a unique and precious role to play. In our thought, speech, worship, witness and action, alongside and in partnership with secular environmental organisations, we can enable people to live out their calling by acting to protect the climate.

We welcome and celebrate the diversity in our motivations for, expressions of, and work on the climate; and we know that faith communities, by coming together, have a powerful witness, voice and role to play in the wider climate movement.

What We Do

We send out monthly e-news, and bring our members together in annual events and termly network meetings to connect with and support one another in faith-based action for the climate, hearing from inspirational speakers and providing opportunities for training. We also work in collaboration with other national and international networks, faith-based and secular, on climate action.

We support people of every faith and every kind of faith-based action for the climate, including behavioural change, advocacy, meditation, prayer, shareholder engagement, divestment, and non-violent direct action for the climate.

Our network currently has over 600 members, including faith-based organisations and individual faith leaders and activists working on climate change, on a voluntary or professional basis.

Membership of the network is open to any faith-based organisation, and people of every faith, working on climate change. Membership is free through signing up to our monthly e-news, although, in the past, many of our larger organisational members contributed to the cost of our small secretariat.

Our events

Our events bring together bishops, rabbis, imams, priests, and individual members or activists from all faiths to provide thought leadership and to help equip faith communities to respond to the crisis of climate change.

Our first Interfaith Symposium was held at St John’s Waterloo in 2016, and was covered by the New Statesman and the Church Times.

Our second Symposium was held in February 2018 at the Liberal Jewish Synagogue, St John’s Wood, at which Lord Deben, former Chair of the Committee on Climate Change (now Climate Change Committee) spoke.

On 26 June 2019, Faith for the Climate helped organise the faith and interfaith events ahead of the Time is Now – the largest ever mass lobby of Parliament.

More than 400 people attended workshops equipping people of faith for climate action at St Martin-in-the-Fields on Trafalgar Square, and 1,000 people of faith joined UK leaders from many faiths on an interfaith Walk of Witness along Whitehall, to an inspirational and packed Speaker Event at Church House addressed by Christine Allen, Director of CAFOD, Imam Qari Asim MBE, Chair of the Mosques and Imams National Advisory Board (MINAB), former Archbishop Lord Rowan Williams, Quaker school striker Anya Nanning Ramamurthy, Buddhist teacher Vishvapani, and Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg, the Senior Rabbi of Masorti Judaism in the UK.

We also offer regular online webinars and workshops. Our Events section contains recordings of past webinars and in-person events, as well as information on forthcoming actions.

Our Rationale

In 2018 with funding from GreenFaith, we undertook research with our members and partner organisations. Our trajectory as a faith-based and faith-inspired network that promotes climate justice is based on these key findings:

First, network members and partners see a unique and precious role for the Faith for the Climate network, both in encouraging, equipping and supporting one another in climate work within and across our faith traditions, and in the power of faith actors speaking together on the urgency and moral imperative of climate action.

Second, network members and partners want us to reach out to, engage with, and support smaller faith communities to make their unique contribution to the network and to the wider climate movement, to enable the sharing of learning and resources between faiths, and to assist with the development of resources tailored to and appropriate to each specific faith tradition.

Third, members and partners want us to take a greater role in advocacy, both equipping faith communities and organisations to engage their own leaders, and engaging directly with national faith leaders, to gain greater public, media and political awareness of faith-based action on climate.

Fourth, there was strong support for the network to operate nationally, not just in London, by having more regional events and presence.

Our Accounts

Click here to see our latest set of accounts.

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