Abstract
This chapter explores a faith-based nonprofit’s organizational values through a womanist lens exploring its challenges and successes. The goal is to condense lessons learned for organizations seeking to center environmental justice with a moral framework derived from black women’s feminism. The term, womanist, originated with Alice Walker in her 1983 publication, In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose, where she coins a four-part definition for black women’s feminism. African American women theologians and ethicists adopted the definition for liberation studies where survival stories, herstories, and moral imagination of black women are prioritized. Virginia Interfaith Power & Light (VAIPL) serves as the case study. VAIPL has actualized its values and mission by working with a community that is currently mobilizing against the placement of fossil fuel infrastructure within their neighborhood. The necessity of uplifting hope, building radical community, and centering faith and caring for people as well as creation will also be explored.
This chapter is dedicated to the Rev. Robert Dilday whose sudden passing has devastated the Virginia climate justice community. Let us live out our faith by following his powerful example of compassion.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Barron, M. (2017). Remediating a sense of place: Memory and environmental justice in Anniston. Southeastern Geographer, 57(1), 62–79.
Boon, J. D., Mitchell, M., Loftis, J. D., & Malmquist, D. M. (2018). Anthropocene sea level change: A history of recent trends observed in the U.S. East, Gulf, and West Coast regions: Special report in Applied Marine Science and Ocean Engineering (SRAMSOE) No. 467. Virginia Institute of Marine Science, William & Mary, Williamsburg, VA, USA. https://doi.org/10.21220/V5T17T.
Brueggemann, W. (2014). Sabbath as resistance: Saying no to the culture of now. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press.
Bullard, R. D. (1993). Confronting environmental racism: Voices from the grassroots. Boston: South End Press.
Cannon, K. (1987). Hitting a straight lick with a crooked stick: The womanist dilemma in the development of a black liberation ethic. The Annual of the Society of Christain Ethics, 7, 165–177.
Copeland, M. S. (2010). Enfleshing freedom: Body, race, and being. Minneapolis, Minnesota: Fortress Press.
Edwards, A., & Wilayto, P. (2015). The significance of Richmond’s Shockoe Bottom: Why it’s the wrong place for a baseball stadium. African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter, 15(1), 5–17.
Faber, D. (2009). Poisoning American politics: The colonization of the state by the polluter-industrial complex. Socialism and Democracy, 23(1), 77–118.
Faber, D., & McCarthy, D. (2005). Breaking the funding barriers: Philanthropic activism in support of the environmental justice movement. In D. Faber & D. McCarthy (Eds.), Foundations for social change: Critical perspectives on philanthropy and popular movements (pp. 175–210). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Fjord, L. (2018). Union Hill community household study site and methods report. http://www.friendsofbuckinghamva.org/friends/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Fjord-Union-Hill-Community-Household-Study-12-17-18-Lakshmi-Fjord.pdf.
Food & Water Watch. (2018). Dominion energy’s undue political influence hurts Virginians and the climate. https://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/insight/fact-sheet-dominion-energy%E2%80%99s-undue-political-influence-hurts-virginians-and-climate.
Frame, R. (1996, November 11). Greening of the gospel? Christianity Today. https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/1996/november11/6td082.html.
Gross, T. (Host). (2010, July 28). Ousted evangelical reflects on faith, future. [Radio broadcast episode]. https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128776382.
Harris, M. L. (2017). Ecowomanism: African American women and Earth-honoring faiths. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books.
Interfaith Power & Light. (2020). Mission & history. https://www.interfaithpowerandlight.org/about/mission-history/.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). (2018). Global warming of 1.5oC: An IPCC special report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5oC e pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways, in the context of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development, and efforts to eradicate poverty. https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/.
Irfan, U., Roberts, D., Barclay, E., Nilsen, E., & Golshan, T. (2019, September 5). Vox. https://www.vox.com/2019/9/5/20850009/cnn-climate-town-hall-2020-presidential-democrats-winners-and-losers.
Iscaro, J. (2014). The impact of climate change on coffee production in Colombia and Ethiopia. Global Majority E-Journal, 5(1), 33–43.
Jennings, W. J. (2010). The Christian imagination theology and the origins of race. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Jennings, W. J. (2018, May 8). 2018 sprunt lectures #1 the land speaks: Rethinking both the private and possession [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAsKuK_XAmk&t=856s.
Leiserowitz, A., Maibach, E., Rosenthal, S., Kotcher, J., Bergquist, P., Ballew, M., et al. (2019). Climate change in the American mind: November 2019. Yale University and George Mason University. New Haven, CT: Yale Program on Climate Change Communication.
Martin, D. (2018, December 21). Stand with Union Hill Concert 12 18 2018 [Video]. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmfKSrGDitM&t=18s.
Mulvey, K., & Shulman, S. (2015). The climate deception dossiers: Internal fossil fuel industry memos reveal decades of corporate disinformation. Union of Concerned Scientists. https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/attach/2015/07/The-Climate-Deception-Dossiers.pdf.
NGO Diversity Data. (2018). Green 2.0. https://www.diversegreen.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/NGOs_30Jan2018.pdf. Accessed 20 October 2019.
Pellow, D. N., & Brulle, R. (2005). Power, justice, and the environment: Toward critical environmental justice studies. In D. N. Pellow & R. Brulle (Eds.), Power, justice, and the environment: A critical appraisal of the environmental justice movement (pp. 1–22). Cambridge, MA: MIT.
Southwest Network for Environmental and Economic Justice. (1996). Jemez principles for democratic organizing. https://www.ejnet.org/ej/jemez.pdf. Accessed 20 Oct 2019.
Unitarian Universalist Association. (2020, April 19). The Seven Principles. https://www.uua.org/beliefs/what-we-believe/principles.
United Nations Human Rights Council. (2019). Climate change and poverty: Report of the special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights. https://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/HRC/RegularSessions/Session41/Documents/A_HRC_41_39.docx.
Veldman, R. G. (2019). The gospel of climate skepticism why evangelical Christians oppose action on climate change. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.
Virginia Interfaith Power & Light. (2014). Virginia Interfaith Power & Light. https://vaipl.org/.
Virginia Interfaith Power & Light. (2018). Our air, our lives: Religious fact-finding delegation to Buckingham county report. https://vaipl.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Our-Air-Our-Lives-Religious-Fact-Finding-Delegation-to-Buckingham-County-Report-08-16-2018.pdf.
Walker, A. (1983). In search of our mothers’ gardens: Womanist prose. New York: Harvest Books.
Wallace-Wells, D. (2019). The uninhabitable Earth: Life after warming. New York: Crown Publishing Group.
Wolff, T., Minkler, M., Wolfe, S. M., Berkowitz, B., Bowen, L., Butterfoss, F. D., Christens, B. D., Francisco, V. T., Himmelman, A. T., & Lee, K. S. (2016). Collaborating for equity and justice: Moving beyond collective impact (Rep.). https://charterforcompassion.org/images/menus/communities/pdfs/2304_Wolff-Jan-NPQ-with-credits.pdf. Accessed 27 July 2018.
Wu, Y., Zhu, Q., & Zhu, B. (2018). Decoupling analysis of world economic growth and CO2 emissions: A study comparing developed and developing countries. Journal of Cleaner Production, 190, 94–103. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.04.139.
Yedes, J., Clamons, R., & Osman, A. (2004). Buna: Oromo women gathering for coffee. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 33(6), 675–703.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Harris, F.B., Crawford, K.C. (2021). A Womanist and Interfaith Response to Climate Change. In: Silvern, S.E., Davis, E.H. (eds) Religion, Sustainability, and Place. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7646-1_15
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7646-1_15
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-15-7645-4
Online ISBN: 978-981-15-7646-1
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)