| April Conference - Healing Our Planet Earth: Singing a New Song of Hope. The conference will take place April 12, 2008 in Seattle, WA This national conference will focus on the web of relationships between faith, justice and ecology. It will be a place and time where people of all faiths traditions and environmental communities come together to learn, share, inspire and seed plans for sustainable action, and a global sustainable future. Read more about the April Conference here |
Who Signs the Genesis Covenant?
The Genesis Covenant is not designed for individual congregations. It is designed for national religious bodies to discuss, embrace, 
and carry out on behalf of their congregations. Individual parishes, mosques, temples, or houses of worship do not sign the Covenant. Their role is to advocate for and then implement the Covenant once their national legislative body has endorsed it. In this way, the Genesis Covenant requires a national commitment on the part of faith communities. It mandates that the total greenhouse gases produced by all the facilities they maintain (local houses of worship, schools, offices, seminaries, hospitals, etc.) be reduced by a minimum of 50% within ten years from the time that the Covenant was signed.
National governing bodies of any faith community are urged to sign the Genesis Covenant by officially endorsing it at their appropriate legislative assembly. Environmental ministers in all faith communities are asked to carry the Covenant forward through their governing process. It is up to members of any religious denomination or community to shepherd the Covenant through the process of ratification. Once it has been publicly approved, a faith community will be said to have signed the Covenant.
After we receive official notification that you have signed, we will post that news on this Website.
The Covenant is an invitation to all faith communities. Signing the Covenant does not commit any religious body to any doctrinal position or social agenda. The Covenant is only a pledge made by a community to itself from within its own unique tradition of belief. In this way people from all faiths – whether Buddhists or Baptists, Jews or Jains and so on – can share in the Covenant as brothers and sisters.Why Fifty Percent?
Setting percentages to respond to environmental concerns is never an exact science, but the vast weight of scientific research indicates that global warming can only be slowed, stopped or reversed by a major change in how we use energy and what volume of greenhouse gases we release. Lowering these levels by 10%, 15% or even 20% will help, but will not be sufficient if we are to avert the most catastrophic effects of climate change. A fifty percent reduction is much closer to what climate scientists tell us that we need to accomplish.
Communities of faith also have the power to inspire, to create momentum, and to become a catalyst for global transformation. By setting a realistic but challenging goal, we not only express our own deepest values but also model the kind of leadership that we want our public policy-makers to provide.
This will require a sacrificial effort from us all. However, with great sacrifices comes great reward.
Therefore, the Genesis Covenant calls for a minimum 50% greenhouse gas reduction stretched out over the course of a decade. If every religious community (along with every educational, political, business, and scientific community) reduced its carbon emissions by this amount, the cumulative result would be significant.
What your National Leadership can accomplish
What your local and national religious community can accomplish depends on how much time and energy they invest in implementing the Genesis Covenant. Reducing the greenhouse gas emissions of your facilities is in itself a great achievement. Everyone who takes part in making this happen will have the satisfaction of doing something significant to clean the air and to stabilize the world’s climate.
Perhaps just as important, you can also take with you the knowledge that you are taking part in something that has never been attempted before… a concerted effort by diverse religious traditions to work together on an issue that challenges us all and that none of us can solve alone.
This Covenant is not just about reducing greenhouse gases or lowing our carbon footprint either. It’s also about challenging the way we see the world around us. It’s about the diverse religions of the world reaching out to each other as partners in a shared struggle to protect life as we know it on this planet. It’s about proclaiming that – for all our 
differences – we share a common conviction that spiritual values and environmental values go hand in hand.
In the end, joining the Genesis Covenant is a win-win project. You win by demonstrating your community’s intention and commitment to live by example. The planet wins, because its climate becomes more stable. And the worldwide community wins, because your participation in the Genesis Covenant may well inspire similar efforts in other countries and produce effects that ripple out in unforeseen ways. Who knows. The Genesis Covenant may become a tool that helps to heal religious violence around the world. Sharing in a common mission to heal the planet may end up helping us to heal the divisions among ourselves.
Interested in becoming an advocate for the Genesis Covenant?
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Click here to read a copy of the Genesis Covenant you can share with your national governing leadership.