September News & Views
Sept. 28, 2023
IN THIS ISSUE
Top Stories
— Debra Rienstra at Sept. 26 General Meeting
— Third Act at NYC March
Organizing News
Third Act Central — Next Acts
News from Our Partners & Friends
Did You Know?
Resources
Upcoming Events
Letter from a Member
TOP STORIES
What Will It Take for Us to Be ‘A People of Refugia’
in Our Communities? Debra Reinstra Asks TAFers
By Mary Jane Cherry
TAF Coordinating Committee
What if we, as people of faith, imagined ourselves as “a people of refugia”? eco-theology author Debra Rienstra asked Third Act Faith members gathered virtually Tuesday evening. For Debra, and now us, it is not a hypothetical question. Third Act Faith, she told us, already is “a kind of dispersed refugium space,” a place we safely go to build resilience and resources for action in crises. Given that, she asked us to think about how our gifts can be used to encourage our faith communities to also become places of refugia.
Following up on that question, TAF co-facilitator Betsy Bennett, who interviewed Debra, left us with an “action item”: To discern the unique gifts we bring to this work, pay attention to the ideas that “percolate up” this week as a result of Debra’s presentation and reflect on how the ideas might work in our specific, local faith communities and traditions.
Debra was the guest speaker at our September General Meeting on Zoom. A member of Third Act Faith’s Coordinating Committee, she is the author of “Refugia Faith: Seeking Hidden Shelters, Ordinary Wonders, and the Healing of the Earth” and host of the podcast “Refugia: A Podcast About Renewal.” As her website describes her work, she is focused on taking the climate crisis seriously and responding with faith, mercy and justice, and Tuesday night she explained how other people of faith can, too. A cornerstone of her approach is her call for people of faith to create and nurture refugia spaces.
Refugia, as Debra explained, is a term biologists use to describe the small, hidden places where life survives catastrophe and is transformed. In these pockets of refuge, she said, small plants and creatures develop the capacity for resilience that enables them to rebuild and spread, as demonstrated (and described by Kathleen Dean Moore) in the return of life to the ash-covered slopes of Mount St. Helen’s, destroyed when the volcano erupted in 1980.
While the need for biomes of refugia — and understanding their mechanisms for resilience — is clear to biologists (a field of conservation biology was established to study the biological survivors of disasters, she said), it apparently is not so clear to the rest of us. Citing the “grim statistics” of a 2022 PEW research study, Debra said the study suggests that religion may indeed be getting in the way of Americans of faith seriously addressing climate change.
Pointing out that Americans may be at an “inflection point” where multiple crises have converged and threaten disaster, Debra suggests now is the time for people of faith to act as the “friends” of God they are, not as passive believers, as she said Christians have historically tended to do. Although her work is within a Christian framework, the concepts she describes are adaptable by other religions as we discern and adapt the mechanisms that build resilience in our faith communities (i.e., sacramental practices, attentiveness, communal work, sabbath, gratitude). That may mean keeping “old and new treasures” in religious traditions that help transformation and discarding the unhelpful. It also may mean normalizing advocacy as a religious practice, which TAF is “really, really good at” she said, and partnering with others outside our enclaves, which she noted TAF is also is doing already. The job of faithful people is to join in and act with agency, a faith practice she explored in the essay “Passivity to Citizenship” (“Going Deep,” August 2023).
She urged Third Act Faith “to think of itself as a kind of dispersed refugia space, where we create this space together for the sake of our own life-giving work with each other, but also that we are creating capacity and connecting and spreading, which is how refugia do their work? They connect, and they spread.”
This recap barely captures the scope and richness of her presentation and the conversation that followed. Afterwards, members gathered in “breakout” rooms to further discuss her insights in the context of the members’ local communities and faith traditions. If you missed the meeting, you can watch a video recording of it (use the passcode i6i6*0pH), or, if you prefer, read the transcript of her presentation here.)
Prior to the Debra’s presentation, TAF members heard a brief report about Third Actors’ participation in the Sept. 17 March to End Fossil Fuels in New York City and reports about Third Act’s three major campaigns to “Advance Fossil Free Finance,” “Uplift Democracy and Voting” and “Democratize Energy.” Our liaisons to the campaigns identified actions that need our attention and help now, and each encouraged TAF members to join them in the work of planning our working group’s specific contributions to the campaigns. Check out the stories in this issue about the “Finance” and the “Voting” campaigns. Look for a report in next month’s issue with details and resources regarding the “Energy” campaign.
TAKE NOTE: A special appeal was made during the meeting for a Faith member to step up and volunteer to serve with TAF member Patricia Tull as our liaisons to the “Democratize Energy” campaign. Email us at thirdactfaith@gmail.org to learn more about serving as a liaison to a national campaign (you not only will get to collaborate, by Zoom, with Third Act Central’s campaign leaders and liaisons from other working groups, but you also will help shape our working group’s involvement).
SAVE THE DATE, NOV. 7: The next General Meeting, held earlier in the month than usual, will feature renowned climate scientist Dr. Katharine Hayhoe as our guest speaker. Check out the story below for details.
Third Actors Join 75,000 Marching to End Fossil Fuels
By Katherine Alford and Pat Almonrode
Co-facilitators, Third Act NYC
Sept. 17— a lovely late-summer day here in NYC — started auspiciously. Gathered under beautiful banners for an Invocation of Spirit organized by GreenFaith, marchers received blessings and prayers from Indigenous spiritual leaders, rabbis, Zen monks and imams. We were moved by the determination of Pacific Islanders and called to action by the dynamic Dr. Cornel West. It was a very powerful and grounding way to ignite compassion, strength and courage as we assembled to “pray with our feet” through the streets of NYC, reminding us that we all are in a sacred fight to protect Mother Earth and create a just and thriving world.
Our celebrants and speakers came from The Peace Poets, GreenFaith, LabShul, Pacific Conference of Churches, United Confederation of Taino People, Brooklyn Zen Center, Poor People’s Campaign and Kairos Center, Kingdom Living Temple, Hindus for Human Rights and Community Church of New York.
The march was a joyous and creative celebration of “people power.” Accompanied by Brazilian drum corps (not one, but two!), The Church of Stop Shopping Choir and other musicians, we marched with signs, props and lots of positive energy. From toddlers in strollers pushed by elders to folks in wheelchairs, 75,000 of us of all colors and genders flooded the streets of Manhattan to demand decisive action from the Biden administration. Third Actors from all over the country were there.
The march ended with music and speeches. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called climate action “an electoral and a popular force that cannot be ignored.”
“We are all here for one reason: to end fossil fuels around the planet,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “And the way we create urgency is to have people around the world in the streets.” The movement must become “too big and too radical to ignore.”
Also read:
”Back on the march: A superlative Manhattan day in pictures,” Bill McKibben (“The Crucial Years,” Sept. 17, 2023)
”Marching in New York: What the wild bird saw,” the Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas (“Reviving Creation,” Sept. 19, 2023).
Giving Credit Where Credit is Overdue
Because the NYC March to End Fossil Fuels occurred on the second day of Rosh Hashanah, one of the holiest days on the Jewish calendar, members of the Jewish Climate Action Network NYC, who would typically be on the street with the marchers, created a special prayer, a “kavana” (or intention), as their way to express support. The prayer was to be read on Sept. 17 as part of the Tashlikh ceremony. A story and excerpt with the prayer were published in the August News & Views, but the prayer’s authors were unnamed. They are Rachel Landsburg, Jeff Levy-Lyons and Ace Leveen, members of the Jewish Climate Action Network NYC. The entire liturgy may be downloaded.
ORGANIZING NEWS
Save Oct. 19 for a Mega-Breakout Session
TAF’s next Mega-Breakout session on Zoom will be on Thursday, Oct. 19, beginning at 2 p.m. EDT (11 a.m. PDT). Coordinating Committee members Dan Terpstra and Kathleen Dickson, who also serve on our banking and program committees, respectively, will host the gathering. These sessions allow us to meet other Third Act Faith members and learn about the working group and our upcoming actions. Register here.
Katharine Hayhoe at Next General Meeting
World-renowned climate scientist and evangelical Christian Katharine Hayhoe will be the guest speaker at our next General Meeting on Tuesday, Nov. 7. The virtual meeting will begin at 8 p.m. EST (5 p.m. PST). Look for registration details and the Zoom link in the October newsletter.
Chief scientist for The Nature Conservancy, Katharine Hayhoe is a professor at Texas Tech University. Her TED talk has over 4 million views, and her book “Saving Us – A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World” is a best seller. She served as lead author of the second, third and fourth National Climate Assessment and her PBS series, “Global Weirding: Climate, Politics and Religion,” continues its multi-year run. She is widely recognized as the world’s foremost communicator on the climate crisis.
New Coordinating Committee member
TAF welcomed a new member to our Coordinating Committee this month: Dr. Eric Goplerud, founder of the Faith Alliance for Climate Solutions, from Fairfax County, Virginia. He has a long history of organizing and leading interfaith organizations focused on energy efficiency, energy conservation and resiliency, much of which focused on Virginia's low-income and disadvantaged citizens. In the 12 years since he founded Faith Alliance, he has facilitated its growth to more than 200 congregations.
Eric has served on several commissions and task forces in metropolitan Washington and frequently testifies on energy and climate matters before elected officials. He and his group have gotten awards from Interfaith Power and Light, the Unitarian Universalists for Social Justice and the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors.
A clinical/community psychologist, he served, until his retirement in 2018, as vice president and senior fellow at NORC (the National Opinion Research Center) at the University of Chicago. Previously, he was a research professor in the Department of Health Policy at George Washington Medical Center.
Eric became aware of Third Act this summer. “Over the course of a week, I had a discussion with Jim Antal about his book ‘Climate Church, Climate World,’ met Bill McKibben and the leaders of Third Act, and heard Bill give a sermon based on Job, Chapter 28,” he said. “Third Act made sense. There is much work to be done quickly, and we are the generation given the task.”
THIRD ACT CENTRAL NEWS
Next Acts We’re Planning
Third Act Central brought together liaisons from its working groups in August and September to begin organizing this year’s actions in conjunction with Third Act’s three national campaigns to “Advance Fossil-free Financing,” “Uplift Democracy & Voting” and “Democratize Energy.” The liaisons will be meeting monthly with Third Act Central campaign staffers to collaborate on actions to be undertaken by the working groups. Look for regular reports to come from our campaign liaisons Jim Antal and Dan Terpstra (finance), Betsy Bennett and Mary Jane Cherry (democracy/voting) and Patricia Tull (energy).
… to Advance Fossil-Free Finance
The first meeting of the Fossil-Free Finance liaisons was held on Sept. 1. TA Central staffers Deborah Moore, Jeremy Friedman and Melanie Griffin led us through a recap of what Third Actors have already been — and continue to be — involved in. This included the Banking on our Future campaign, with bank engagements and Move Your Money pledges, that culminated with actions across the country last spring on 3.21.23 and continue to this day.
They also highlighted legislative actions at the state (pensions, insurance companies) and federal (Fossil-Free Finance Act) levels and ongoing efforts to support Responsible Finance through webinars and programs such as the Move Your Money Office Hours with peer facilitators ready to help.
But wait - there’s more! In addition to all these activities and opportunities, there’s a new campaign gearing up to engage with Costco to put pressure on Citibank, their credit card partner, to stop financing fossil fuels. As the third largest retailer in the U.S., Costco has plenty of leverage with Citi. Costco’s internal motto is “do the right thing,” and they are committed to setting full value chain emission targets, including Scope 3 emissions.
As Faithful Third Actors, we are uniquely positioned to prick Costco’s corporate conscience and encourage them to do the right thing regarding their relationship with Citi. It’s up to us to figure out exactly what that looks like. If you want to join us in that work, email us at thirdactfaith@gmail.com. (Submitted by Dan Terpstra)
… to Uplift Democracy & Voting
Third Act’s Uplift Democracy & Voting campaign has a three-fold focus: strengthening our election protection laws, protecting voter access and encouraging turnout, and fostering democratic culture. Campaign liaisons have met twice, on Aug. 28 and again on Sept. 15. Although much discernment and organizing awaits us as a working group, Third Actors are needed as volunteers —now — on two get-out-the-vote initiatives:
TA Senior to Senior: Intergenerational Voter Registration (with The Civics Center). We must reach out to our high school seniors eligible to vote. Young voters typically are progressives and are known to become lifelong voters.
TA Postcards to Voters Action (with Activate America). Third Act has a goal of 10,000 postcards, or 300 per working group. Sign up to request voter names and addresses for a targeted campaign.
Third Act has targeted elections in four states: Virginia (state legislature elections); Ohio (the pro-choice voter ballot initiative); Maine (the “Pine Tree Power” green utility voter ballot initiative); and Pennsylvania (municipal elections).
As an affinity group, not geographically based, our first task will be to determine how to use our unique, faith-based gifts and resources to help protect the vote and democracy. We welcome your help discerning our direction and identifying specific ways to contribute. Check out the timeline Third Act has set down and its list of partnering organizations. As the lists show, much must be done between now and Election Day, Nov. 7, and beyond.
If you have questions or would like to join us in this work, contact us at thirdactfaith@gmail.com (Submitted by Mary Jane Cherry)
Lobbyist Watchdog Is Set to Help TA Working Groups
Third Act has a new partner, F Minus, a lobbyist watchdog that has built an impressive cross-reference database of fossil fuel industry lobbyists. Third Act can help working groups connect with F Minus, which will work with any Third Act working group to provide data about lobbyists and their clients from fossil fuel companies, utilities, and government officials and agencies! Please pass along this information to your state or community working group. An F Minus team can help your group build a narrative for an initiative targeting a specific politician, agency or law as you engage with voting and democracy.
Next month, we’ll learn about the campaign to “Democratize Energy.”
NEWS FROM PARTNERS & FRIENDS
Religious climate groups consider joint finance campaign
On Sept. 7, several members of Third Act Faith met with leaders from GreenFaith and other religious environmental organizations to discuss a potential Multi-faith Climate Finance Campaign. We aim to urge individuals and communities of faith to move funds away from institutions that invest in fossil fuel producers. Religious organizations have been leaders in divesting from fossil fuels, but we can be more vocal about how our beliefs prompt us to take action on this profoundly moral issue. We will continue working with these partners to develop strategies and educational materials for a campaign launch early in 2024.
Meanwhile, here are three ways to get involved:
• Join TAF’s Faithful Banking committee by emailing us at thirdactfaith@gmail.com.
• Use the same email address if you would like to help develop the new campaign.
• Join GreenFaith’s Climate Finance Circle, which grew out of their Climate Finance Summit last spring. (Submitted by Jane Ellen Nickell)
DID YOU KNOW?
False information online about climate change has become a major problem, and it is getting noticed — not just by conspiracy theorists spreading it, but also by journalists, climate activists and sustainable energy specialists working to counter lies with truths.
The internet is rife with sites calling this summer’s horrific heat waves “part of a globalist hoax” or insisting the Maui wildfires were caused by a “directed energy weapon” — the lies often traceable to posts paid for by the oil and gas industry. Climate researchers call this “denialism”— designed to slow climate action by casting doubt on science.
Bill McKibben reports on one such disinformation campaign in Florida schools, where Prager University videos are telling students “the planet has heated up and cooled since prehistoric times, even without the burning of fossil fuels” and that solar and wind energy is “unreliable, expensive and difficult to store.” Started by conservative talk show host Dennis Prager, the “university” is not accredited but has received “close to $200m from 2018 to 2022 from conservative donors,” partly to spread climate lies.
News broadcasters like Jeff Berardelli, chief meteorologist at WFLA News Channel 8 in Tampa, are also working to tell viewers the truth. Extreme weather, he says, is a “good teaching opportunity.”
Debra Rienstra, our guest speaker at Tuesday’s General Meeting, addresses the problem in her Sept. 9 “Refugia” blog post, noting that “one of the reasons people — and, sadly, so often North American Christians — drag their feet on climate action is, alas, misinformation and disinformation. So let’s face a dizzying and frustrating contrast… the very real, very present suffering of people in, say, Pakistan, contrasted with the kind of culpable nonsense that gets circulated in the United States.” She gives a shout-out to climate journalist Emily Atkin, who she said “has been busy exposing some real delights in her newsletter Heated.”
Combating false information
We can carry forward the work of combating the spread of misinformation and disinformation about climate change. For starters, check out the recently formed International Panel on the Information Environment, which works to identify the causes of online misinformation and how to combat them.
Addressing misinformation and disinformation encountered through social media requires care. Common Cause, a nonpartisan election protection organization, has been training volunteers monitoring social media since 2016 on how to deal with disinformation, misinformation and malinformation (the latter defined as accurate information that is deliberately manipulated to cause harm). Its volunteers are advised not to directly engage with such information abuses because social media platform algorithms reward engagements. Instead, they suggest volunteers promote sources of reliable information. (To combat voter suppression, the volunteers are also advised to report this content to reportdisinfo.org.)
Combating climate misinformation is often best done one person at a time, Alicia Cox, executive director of Yellowstone-Teton Clean Cities, told The New York Times. “A save-the-planet argument doesn’t go very far. Most people won’t buy green technology unless it will clearly save them money.”
Meteorologist Berardelli agrees: “I always tell people the biggest thing is, vote with your wallet... You want to show companies what you think is important and what’s not, and if you guide them in the right direction, and companies feel that pressure, it helps.”
Challenging it in court
Another way of fighting misinformation, of course, is lawsuits. On Sept. 15, California filed suit against Exxon Mobil, Shell, Chevron, ConocoPhillips and BP — some of the world’s largest fossil-fuel companies — as well as their lobbying arm, the American Petroleum Institute, saying they intentionally deceived the public about the risks of fossil fuels.
Holding Fox News accountable
Did you know Fox News is now meeting with cable companies Charter/ Spectrum, Xfinity/Comcast, and Cox Communications to renegotiate their fees? Common Cause, in collaboration with Media Matters for America, is waging a campaign to hold Fox News accountable for spreading election lies and harming democracy. Sign the #NoFoxFee petition, write a letter to the editor, contact your cable provider directly with the message and tell them, “Don’t raise our bills to fund Fox News lies.”
RESOURCES
Oases in News ‘Deserts’ in the South
Check out the Southern Environmental Law Center’s podcast “Broken Ground,” which this season spotlights young, trailblazing journalists who are filling the environmental information gap in the South. Increasing numbers of small communities, usually rural and low-income, no longer have a local newspaper or other public news sources. Since 2005, some 2,200 community newspapers reportedly have folded, and the number of reporters and journalists has declined by more than 50 percent. The consequences for these “news deserts” can be dire. According to the podcast, smaller communities without reliable news sources are left vulnerable and exposed, often making them targets of “dirty” industries.
UPCOMING EVENTS
Sept 28: Third Act All-In Call (Zoom), 8 p.m. EDT (5 p.m. PDT). Register here.
Oct. 2: Welcome to Third Act: Let’s Get Started (Zoom), 7:30 p.m. EDT (4:30 p.m. PDT). Register here. Next meetings: Oct. 16 and 30.
Oct. 5: Third Act Upstate New York Launch (Zoom), 7 p.m. EDT. Register here.
Oct. 17: Third Act Minnesota Launch (Zoom), 7 p.m. CST. Register here.
Oct. 19: Third Act Faith Mega-Breakout Session (Zoom), 2 p.m. EDT (11 a.m. PDT). Register here.
Send Us Your Photos and Stories
Third Acts of Faith is published the third week of each month. Please send us your news (up to 300 words) and photos by the 7th day of each month, and help keep our members updated on what you and your faith communities are doing to safeguard our democracy and beloved Earth. Send the submission to thirdactfaith@gmail.com
LETTER FROM A MEMBER
With this issue, News & Views introduces a new feature: occasional reports from TAF members about how they live out their faith in service to our planet and democracy. Our inaugural piece is from the Rev. Wakil David Matthews, an interfaith minister from Seattle who was ordained through the Sufi Ruhaniat International Order. He is a member of our Coordinating Committee.
I was privileged to attend this year's Parliament of World Religions in Chicago in August. Over 7,000 people from over 200 different spiritual paths converged to assert our acceptance of our responsibility and our passion for justice for all people and the planet. The theme was “A Call to Conscience: Defending Freedom & Human Rights.”
There were many inspiring speakers and workshops and classes every day, from many different perspectives.
I attended as a member of the Sufi community and participated in Dances of Universal Peace. We had three formal Dances of Universal Peace sessions during the week, and often two or more “pop-up” sessions either in the main areas or as part of some workshops and classes.
The Dances of Universal Peace were born in the '60s in San Francisco and were first created by a Sufi master and teacher known as Sufi Sam (Samuel Lewis). When they began, his vision was that if all of the world's religions can eat, dance and pray together, we can find peace. In the beginning, there were a half dozen dances — basically a sung chant or prayer from a spiritual path with a simple movement, usually in a circle. Currently, there are thousands of different dances and hundreds of dance circles around the world.
At the Parliament, we invited everyone to join us and often had 200 or more in several concentric circles. Seeing so many people from so many paths and places singing, moving and praying together was beautiful and inspiring.
I have heard many say that the most inspiring part of being there was the one-to-one meetings with so many people, all involved in important, inspiring and powerful work to apply their spiritual beliefs to create a better world. Everything from sustainable agriculture projects, supporting our houseless siblings, feeding children, bringing mindfulness practices into schools and prisons — and too many more to list.
It was, for me, a boost to my hope that together, we have the strength and will to truly make a change.
May it be so.
