Climate Change, Climate Justice, Climate Action: Essential Understandings

[Note: Friends, this is a potential article for publication in August. In the meantime, it is only for the access and convenience of members of the Council of Bishops Training Team. The “Essential Understandings” correspond with the “Learning Outcomes” and are linked to the expanded content of each one. They are in the order of the current Modules, but with a note about which Learning Outcome each corresponds to. (Confusing? Cathy will help us out here.) The Introduction to this article includes our Learning Outcome 1 (Theology) as well as the “Context” and “Objectives” statements that we had listed in our origninal Content Document. Please let me know if I need to change anything.] Sharon

In this article, members of the UMCJM Coordinating Team clarify some of their essential understandings about climate change, climate justice, and climate action in hope that it will stimulate discussion and action among United Methodist leaders, agencies, jurisdictions, conferences, churches, and church members about this critical issue.

Climate Change, Climate Justice, Climate Action

The great lesson that our blessed Lord inculcates here…is that God is in all things, and that we are to see the Creator in the glass of every creature; that we should use and look upon nothing as separate from God…who pervades and actuates the whole created frame, and is, in a true sense, the soul of the universe. John Wesley, “Upon Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount” as quoted in The Social Principles of the United Methodist Church: The Community of All Creation

Today’s devastation of the earth is profoundly related to a loss of the sense of the sacred value of God’s creation, God’s intention for creation, and our role in it as children of God and children of the earth. God’s creation is our context. We are dependent on God for life and breath and all things, and it is through creation that God nurtures us. We are a part of the interconnected community of all creation, kin to all human and otherkind. Because creation is our context, climate change is also our context, because it threatens creation and exacerbates other social and ecological problems. For many, climate change is background, but for those experiencing fossil-fueled disasters or whose regions are becoming uninhabitable, it is foreground. Climate change will move progressively into the foreground for our churches as the planet continues to warm, disasters increase and intensify, and demands for just and compassionate responses multiply.

Creation’s desecration has reached a point where the church’s response can’t rest solely on a theology of creation but must also include a theology of redemption that proclaims justice, equity, liberation, and care for all God’s children, especially those who are most vulnerable. The existential threat of climate change to many forms of life on earth, including human life, requires a rigorous response that emerges from the core of the gospel, a gospel response based on love of God and neighbor that meets falsehood with truth, distress with comfort, suffering with compassion, and complacency with action.

The mysterious creation-centered passage in Romans 8:18-25 portrays creation groaning “as in the pangs of childbirth,” yearning to be set free: “We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved (22-23a).” This text assumes that the earth and its creatures have their own voice and agency. It portrays our fate as humans tied up with the fate of the rest of creation. We participate in its suffering. We participate in its hope. Creation’s groans are our groans, and in them we discern the very voice of God, perhaps calling us to listen to and partner with Earth’s regenerative capacities.

Essential Understandings

To address climate change faithfully, it is essential that we develop and articulate a rigorous theology that makes clear the biblical and Wesleyan theological mandate to act in communion with and for the wellbeing of the community of all creation as a core Gospel requirement. The following understandings are also essential. Click on the links to read each of the reflections:

Climate Change: An Urgent Challenge: (Module 1, Learning Outcome 2) Comprehend the scientific facts regarding the current harms and projected dangers facing humans and planetary systems at the 1.5-degree threshold of global temperature rise.

Climate Change: A Systemic Problem: (Module 2, Learning Outcome 3) Climate change is rooted in unjust global systems, it amplifies multiple other injustices, and thus requires systemic analyses and decolonial responses.

Climate Justice: Fairness, Equity, Participation: (Module 3, Learning Outcome 5) Advocate for climate justice with communities disproportionately harmed by, but least responsible for, climate change and fossil fuel pollution.

Climate Justice: To Comfort the Afflicted and Afflict the Comfortable: (Module 4, Learning Outcome 4) Communicate with prophetic urgency the need to respond faithfully to the climate emergency with a clear, relatable, and compassionate proclamation.

Climate Action: Toward a Rapid and Just Transition: (Module 5, Learning Outcome 7) Support by word and action the urgent need for a fair global phaseout of fossil fuels and a just and rapid transformation toward conservation, restoration, and renewable power, including widespread fossil fuel divestment and reinvestments in goods and services that further a clean and just energy future.

Climate Action: Relief, Resilience, and Mitigation: (Module 6, Learning Outcome 6) Develop regional learning and action plans that take account of the common but differentiated responsibilities of each region, and provide institutional support and infrastructure to empower church leaders, facilitate local creation justice actions, and amplify grassroots movements.

Submitted by:

Additional Resources:

The United Methodist Social Principles The Community of All Creation and other United Methodist Statements about Creation Justice
The United Methodist Creation Justice Movement website, with newsletters, webinars, annual conference teams and more
Love in a Time of Climate Change: Honoring Creation, Establishing Justice, a Wesleyan approach to climate change and climate justice by Sharon Delgado

Maybe if it’s in August:

In September 2025, the Coordinating Team of the United Methodist Creation Justice Movement (UMCJM), with concern and hope for people and creation, wrote an Open Letter to The United Methodist Council of Bishops, calling on them to make clear the existential threat of the climate crisis and the urgent need for climate action. The Council responded positively by posting a pastoral letter calling on the church to prioritize creation care. The UMCJM and the Council of Bishops continue to move forward in our communications on this critical issue of our time.

A Training for the Council of Bishops on climate change, Speaking Up for Climate Action, is being developed by the UM Creation Justice Movement in collaboration with Garrett’s Center for Ecological Regeneration. The above understandings will be included in the training.