July 2025 News and Views
July News and Views
TAF NEWS
July General Meeting Highlights Stories of “Going Solar”
As we get ready for Sun Day, TAF’s General Meetings are designed to equip individuals and communities of faith to stand together in support of the transition to solar, wind, geo-thermal, and other sources of clean energy. Our next meeting, on July 22 (4 PM PT / 7 PM ET) will focus on clean energy, as we hear from folks who have experience with sustainable homes and communal solar projects that communities can build on for Sun Day.
Our speakers include Kathy Simon, from Oakland, California, who was an “early adopter,” getting her first solar panels in 2006 and buying an electric car in 2019. After being part of a Stanford study on the harmful effects of burning natural gas in the home, she has gotten completely off natural gas, installing heat pumps in place of her gas furnace and hot water heater. Kathy is excited to share some of the things she learned, and, most of all, how straightforward it is to make these changes, which benefit both our health and the climate.
Two members of the TAF Coordinating Committee will also share their stories. Ruah Swennerfelt, a Quaker, lives in the woods of Vermont in an all-electric home. She and her husband are homesteaders on lands that once were home to the Abenakis. Dan Terpstra, a founding member of Third Act Faith, is passionate about solar, having recently shepherded an installation at his church. He is currently working on getting approvals for "balcony solar" projects in both Nashville and East Tennessee.
Hearing from these renewable energy supporters will showcase their individual efforts and encourage you to start thinking about how you can be a part of the transition away from fossil fuels.
Read details and register for this General Meeting on our website. We hope to see you then!
Panelists Share Ideas for Congregational Engagement with Sun Day
As panelists at our June General Meeting pointed out, Sun Day (September 21) ties in well with religious holidays that month, offering rich possibilities for celebrating creation and partnering with others. Gathering online on Tuesday, June 24, this panel of faith leaders led a conversation about how congregations can engage with Sun Day, facilitated by Third Act Faith Coordinating Committee member and Refugia Faith author Debra Rienstra.
Hannah Shultz, Program Director of Georgia Interfaith Power and Light (IPL), shared ideas for how congregations can engage more deeply with nature and initiate a commitment to sustainability. She encouraged folks to reach out to other organizations and faith groups, helping to build interfaith ties.
Rabbi Nina Cardin, an author and environmental activist, talked about the connections between Sun Day and Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, which falls on September 22 this year. She offered practical steps that Jewish families and communities can take to focus on sustainability in September and throughout the year, including a fun idea for the Rosh Hashanah dinner that could involve the whole family!
Sun Day also falls in the middle of the Christian Season of Creation (September 1-October 4). Debra and her husband, Rev. Ron Rienstra (filling in for panelist Avery Davis Lamb, who was ill) explained this season and how congregations could observe it and make connections to Sun Day. Ron shared the Season of Creation liturgy that their church created, which we have added to our page of Religious & Spiritual Resources for Sun Day.
During a lively Q&A, those attending the meeting shared their own plans for Sun Day, helpful organizations and conferences they know of, and suggestions for those seeking Sun Day ideas.
You can read details about the meeting on our website, and view a video of the full meeting on our YouTube channel.
TAF Is Counting Down to Sun Day
We are counting down the weeks to Sun Day, a day of action on September 21 celebrating solar and wind power, and the movement to leave fossil fuels behind. Third Act is a lead sponsor in a coalition of grassroots groups that hopes to mobilize millions of people that weekend with the message that the transition to solar energy cannot be stopped.
To help TAF members prepare, we’re sending a specific task or ask each week that individuals or congregations can use to help plan their actions for Sun Day.
We send these out via Substack, to make sure we catch all our subscribers, and also post them on Facebook, Bluesky, and Instagram.
The first three weeks tasks were:
12 Weeks: Share a poem or short reading that celebrates the power and beauty of the sun.
11 Weeks: Talk with your congregation or spiritual community about Sun Day and plan how you will observe it, using our online resources.
10 Weeks: See if Third Act has a regional working group in your area and reach out about how you can become involved in events they’re planning.
We love the sun poems and readings you shared with us, and have included them as part of our online collection of resources for Sun Day. You can continue to send short readings or poems about the sun or any other resources we can share with TAF members by emailing us at faith@thirdact.org.
TAF Events to Help Build Community Continue in August
TAF continues to offer opportunities for our members to gather and to build community. On Tuesday, August 5 at 4 PM PT / 7 PM ET, Martin Wagner leads another session of Joanna Macy’s Work That Reconnects, this one on the theme “Seeing with New Eyes.” Read details and register online.
Our second Coffee Klatch will be on Thursday, August 14 at 10 AM PT / 1 PM PT, with no agenda except to get to know each other. There’s no need to register, but you will find details and the link to the Zoom room online.
Please note that in order to guarantee a confidential space, these experiential gatherings will not be recorded.
TA CENTRAL NEWS
Third Act Central has launched a Sun Day website, where you will find links to all of Third Act’s Sun Day-related content, from blogs and other resources, to upcoming events. This page pulls content from the Third Act working groups’ micro-sites, so you will see all of TAF’s Sun Day posts as well as what other working groups are doing for Sun Day.
Over the summer Third Act is transitioning from Every Action, a CRM (constituent relationship management) for nonprofit orgs, to Action Network, a platform that gives Third Act working groups more autonomy, better tools, and easier communication. TAF’s Dan Terpstra and Wakil David Matthews are part of the transition team, so they will be helping the rest of us learn how to make the most of the new capabilities we will have with Action Network. We hope to make the transition as smoothly as possible for you, our members!
RELIGIOUS ENVIRONMENTAL NEWS
In its 50 states/50 Fixes series, The New York Times features the work of the Evangelical Environmental Network in Indiana (free link), where churches are adding solar panels, planting vegetables and native plants, and organizing Indy Creation Fest, a day of education and family-friendly activities in Indianapolis. Whereas some evangelical Christians shun environmental action, these churches are framing it as stewardship and caring for God’s creation. Volunteer Hannah Miller says of her church’s green team, “The common thing that brought them together was seeing creation care as an integral part of the way that they express their love for God and their love for people,”
GreenFaith made the NBC News in June when it helped to launch Families Over Big Oil — a national campaign exposing how Senate Republicans are pushing a reconciliation bill that guts healthcare, food assistance, and clean energy, while giving away $18 billion in new tax breaks to fossil fuel companies. Read details here.
“Living on Earth” host Steve Curwood interviewed Rev. Mariama White-Hammond on Juneteenth about the significance of that holiday and how her faith informed her work as the former chief of environment, energy, and open spaces for the city of Boston, and her current position as pastor of New Roots African Methodist Episcopal Church in Dorchester, Massachusetts. Speaking to our interconnection with other species, White-Hammond says, “our ability to survive is … tied up in how we treat our non-human siblings, and it is a moment in which humanity really needs to become its best self. We have got to be better than we have been in the past, and definitely better than we are being right now. And that is spiritual work.” This wide-ranging conversation ends hopefully, as she claims that Juneteenth “is about continuing to have hope, continuing to lean in, even in the face of brutality, even in the face of oppression, even when you have been done very wrong, you do not allow it to crush your spirit.” Read the full interview here.
From Bill McKibben:
Bill McKibben remembered television journalist Bill Moyers, who died June 26 at age 91 and who was also an ordained Baptist minister. McKibben wrote about Moyers “first because he was a friend and an integral if quiet part of the climate fight, but also because I think—more than almost anyone else—he puts our strange moment in stark relief. In the wake of today’s grim Supreme Court decision imperiling American citizenship for millions, he exemplified what a citizen could and should be.” McKibben described Moyers as having “a deep empathy, a deep curiosity, and a deep commitment to reality as the basis for understanding the world,” and claimed that no one “used the impoverished medium that is television with as much grace and skill.” Read McKibben’s entire reflection on his Substack newsletter The Crucial Years.
CLIMATE GOOD NEWS
The passage of the Republican budget bill signals something like American independence from decency, reducing safety nets for poor families who depend upon Medicaid and food assistance. It also signals independence from climate rationality, gutting the Inflation Reduction Act that had dramatically spurred improvements in clean technology, manufacturing, transportation, and homes. Everyone who intends to take the rebate for a new or used electric vehicle must do so by September 2025. Those wishing to take federal tax credits for home efficiency and clean energy must do so by December. Next year and beyond, though, these important household updates are still available, still cost effective, and still crucial.
Climate heroes continue to encourage hope. The Climate One podcast on June 6 featured “Three Big Thinkers with No Room for Doom”: Third Act’s own Bill McKibben along with Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, marine biologist and author of What If We Get It Right: Visions of Climate Futures, and Alan Weisman, author of Hope Dies Last: Visionary People across the World Who Are Fighting to Find Us a Future.
Both Johnson and Weisman present promising developments for mitigating climate change. Weisman discussed, for instance, progress of nuclear fusion research and plans for fusion electric plants smaller than current coal-fired ones. The state of Virginia is already contracting with developers for this technology.
Johnson, who points out that we already have most of the solutions we need, underscores the importance of implementation. Her book is filled with dialogues with innovators in all fields, as well as hopeful statistics about the direction clean energy is going in hearts and minds in the U.S. and globally. Please take a break from daily news to be refreshed with stories of groups working everywhere for a thriving future.
UPCOMING EVENTS
If you want to make sure you don’t miss any TAF events, click on this link to add our Google Calendar to your account. We’ll keep it updated, and you can find details and registration links on our website.
July 22: TAF General Meeting: Sustainable Homes and Communal Solar. (Zoom), 4:00 PM PT / 7:00 PM ET. REGISTER HERE.
July 24: Hope & Joy Series: The New Story: Reflections on Thomas Berry, the Sisters of the Earth, and More — A Conversation with Gail Worcelo. (Zoom), 4:00 PM PT / 7:00 PM ET. REGISTER HERE.
July 28: Welcome to Third Act: Let’s Get Started. (Zoom), 4:30 PM PT / 7:30 PM ET. REGISTER HERE.
August 5: The Work That Reconnects—Seeing with New Eyes. (Zoom), 4:00 PM PT / 7:00 PM ET. REGISTER HERE.
August 14: Coffee Klatch. (Zoom), 10:00 AM PT / 1:00 PM PT. JOIN ZOOM ROOM.
We encourage you to visit thirdact.org/events to see the full list of Third Act events, including virtual and in-person events that geographic working groups may be holding in your area.
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