Interfaith group braves storm in climate change trek
By Adam Gorlick
Associated Press
March 16, 2007
NORTHAMPTON, Mass. --As the world's warmest winter on record drew to an end with a weekend snow storm, a group of religious leaders started walking across the state Friday to bring attention to global warming.
"People have been asking me what happens if it snows," said the Rev. Fred Small of the First Church Unitarian in Littleton. "I tell them: 'we walk.'"
The nine-day haul from downtown Northampton to Copley Square in Boston was planned far before forecasts called for a weekend of snow and sleet just a few days before the start of spring.
"It was windy and cold. I was walking on the front of the line and I felt like I was bow of a ship with the wind just coming into my face," said the Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Johns of the Grace Episcopal Church in Amherst, where the group warmed up on bowls of lentil and minestrone soup after walking eight miles in deep snow from Northampton to Amherst."God has given us this Eden, and our behavior is making a mess of it," said the Rev. Jim Antal, president of the Massachusetts Conference of the United Church of Christ, the state's largest Protestant denomination.
The religious walkers are part of Religious Witness for the Earth, a 6-year-old national interfaith environmental organization. Supporters include clergy from the Catholic, Unitarian, Jewish, Episcopalian, and Muslim faiths.
The leaders are calling for individuals, businesses and government entities to reduce fossil fuel emissions by 80 percent by 2050.
With most of its members based in the Northeast, it made sense for the group to walk in Massachusetts. About 1,000 clergy members are expected to take some part in the trek, which will include prayer and information sessions along the way before ending with a rally on March 24.
This falls right in line with this recent story. Global warming is a religion.
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