When it comes to green careers — and planet-saving vocations — there’s a huge sector many of us overlook: faith traditions. Religious leaders from practically every tradition are now waking up to making climate change central to their theology. Today, we take a deep dive with Rev. Dr. Ambrose F. Carroll, a pastor at the forefront of a movement to “green the church” — particularly the Black church. His passion for the natural world and climate action led him to found Green the Church, an organization devoted to helping Black Churches become hubs for sustainability and environmentalism. In the sixth season of Degrees, “How to Green Your Job,” the pastor speaks with host Yesh Pavlik Slenk about his journey toward seeing himself as a steward of the planet and a faith leader. He shares the initial challenges he faced in engaging congregants and colleagues in conversations about environmentalism, and how he set out to “wake up the sleeping giant that is the Black Church.” You’ll also hear other faith perspectives on climate action, including Catholicism, Judaism, Islam and Jainism.
Rev. Dr. Ambrose F. Carroll, Sr., is the founder and CEO of Green The Church, a catalyst for environmentalism and sustainability built for and by the Black Church. Pastor Carroll serves on the National Environmental Justice Action Committee for the United States Environmental Protection Agency. He’s also been a fellow with the Atlantic Fellows for Racial Equity. He earned his B.A. in psychology from Florida Memorial University in Miami, FL, a Master of Divinity from Morehouse School of Religion in Atlanta, GA, a Master of Business Administration from Golden Gate University in San Francisco, CA, and a Doctor of Divinity from United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio.
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Who makes Degrees?
Degrees: Real talk about planet-saving careers is presented by Environmental Defense Fund (EDF). Yesh Pavlik Slenk is our host. Amy Morse is EDF’s producer. Podcast Allies is our production company. Stephanie Wolf produced this episode. Mia Lobel is our story editor. Ayo Oti is our researcher and Audrey Nelson provided fact checking. Engineering by Matthew Simonson. Our music is Shame, Shame, Shame from Yesh’s favorite band, Lake Street Dive.
YESH PAVLIK SLENK:
Early in October, Pope Francis released a papal letter. It was addressed to: All people of good will on the climate crisis.
This was actually the Pope’s second letter about climate change. The first was in 2015. But this time, his letter was marked with an unmistakable urgency. The document was essentially a plea to Catholics everywhere, in fact to people of all religions, to take climate change seriously and to do something about it. It’s not just the global leader of the Catholic Church calling climate action a religious and moral obligation. Religious leaders of all denominations and faiths are speaking to their congregations about what they can do to make a difference.
I’m Yesh Pavlik Slenk and this is Degrees: Real talk about planet-saving careers from Environmental Defense Fund.
In this season of our show we’ve been talking about How to Green Your Job. But in this episode, we’re talking about more than just careers. We’re taking inspiration from spiritual leaders who have gone on their own climate career journeys, and who are now using their platforms to spread the climate change gospel.
THEME MUSIC:
Change is coming, oh yeah
Ain’t no holding it back
Ain't no running
Change is coming, oh yeah!
PAVLIK SLENK:
Faith-based environmental activist Kori Majeed says Islam is the foundation for her climate work. She’s particularly driven by the Muslim concept of the ummah.
KORI MAJEED:
Where all Muslims are part of one huge global community. And when one part hurts, we should feel it and we should act to remedy this type of situation.
PAVLIK SLENK:
She points to the devastating effects climate change is having in Pakistan… floods and droughts.
MAJEED:
It's happening to Muslims. And so when one part of our community hurts, we should try to remedy that situation how best we can, and one of the ways is fighting climate change.
PAVLIK SLENK:
Kori is the founder of Green Ramadan, a campaign to inspire Muslims to reduce waste during their holy month of prayer, fasting, and reflection. She created that organization after witnessing high volumes of waste at her mosque during Ramadan. To her, this felt counterintuitive. The Quran itself contains text to the contrary.
MAJEED:
Allah does not love the wasters.
PAVLIK SLENK:
And it’s not just the Quran. Religious texts of all kinds are filled with language about preserving the environment.
MOSHE KORNFELD:
There's the biblical narrative of the responsibility [speaks in Hebrew], to till and to tend, to be stewards.
PAVLIK SLENK:
That’s Moshe Kornfeld, founder and director of Colorado Jewish Climate Action. He’s quoting a passage from Genesis in the Old Testament. To him, it speaks to responsibility rather than dominion over this planet.
KORNFELD:
Judaism is a very ancient religion. And so there's a lot of texts and history that can be reimagined as environmental text.
PAVLIK SLENK:
And then there’s this from the story of Noah.
DAN MISLEH:
You know, when God said, ‘I create a covenant with you, that you will care for my creation and I will not destroy it.’ A covenant is more than a vow, it's a promise.
PAVLIK SLENK:
Dan Misleh founded the Catholic Climate Covenant in 2006. He says he launched the organization to help Catholics understand climate change and take action from a position of faith.
MISLEH:
We've been using the line that, you know, before Earth Day there was Genesis. So being grateful for God's gift of creation, and being aware of our impact has always been part of our faith.
PAVLIK SLENK:
There are also religions that don’t need a re-interpretation to find a climate message. They’re based on ties to the environment. Author and professor Atul K. Shah writes often about his religion Jainism. Similar to other Dharmic or Eastern religions, such as Hinduism, Buddhism, and Sikhism, Jainism teaches that humans, animals, plants, all of the natural world are tied together. They are interdependent.
ATUL K. SHAH:
It was understood 1000s of years ago, that animals are living beings, and so our plants and trees are living beings, and for us to live, we need not compromise their future. Given our present challenge and crisis that we are having, it would be foolish to ignore the huge wisdom that is packed inside these dharmic traditions.
PAVLIK SLENK:
Now, of course religion and spirituality more broadly is very personal. Everyone is going to come to faith practices and interpret texts in different ways. So that’s why I wanted to dig a bit deeper with one faith leader to understand how he came to see ecology as central to his theology.
PASTOR AMBROSE CARROLL:
We continue to live how we are living as we have infinite resources, and as if we can use this world up and find another one to live on. We are in for a rude awakening.
PAVLIK SLENK:
That’s Dr. Ambrose Carroll, founder and CEO of Green the Church, an organization helping Black Churches become hubs for environmentalism and sustainability. Religion has long played a key role in Ambrose’s life. His father was a traveling Baptist preacher, sharing the Gospel with different ministries around the country. His grandfather and an uncle were also clergy. He grew up in the church.
CARROLL:
Really steeped in the Black Baptist tradition, civil rights movement and things of that nature.
PAVLIK SLENK:
But initially, Ambrose didn’t see himself going down that same path.
CARROLL:
I wanted to study law. Yeah, that was kind of my thing.
PAVLIK SLENK:
That changed after Ambrose’s father died at the age of 44.
CARROLL:
And when he passed, a part of me really wanted to finish the work. And I was a sophomore in college and felt an urge, a divine unction, to preach the gospel.
PAVLIK SLENK:
That divine unction came to him in 1989. Ambrose often describes the moment as “part spiritual calling and part finishing the family business.” With this new conviction, Ambrose enrolled in the Morehouse School of Religion in Atlanta, Georgia, a historically black college and his dad’s alma mater.
CARROLL:
As I was in class, at this kind of, you know, all Black institution, there was a little white woman who sat in the front of the class, and it got on our nerves, right. We're all talking about, at that time, Malcolm X. We’re fighting the power.
PAVLIK SLENK:
Then, one day, Ambrose’s white classmate goes to the front of class, and she gives a sermon.
CARROLL:
She talked about the planet. And she challenged us that day that it should be important to us, even to ensure that the streets are not littered, that we should take responsibility. And I think that that was a spark for me, that really said that if I am a child of God, and God has given us responsibility to steward this planet, that this planet itself is important.
PAVLIK SLENK ON TAPE:
I've been in sermons where I have felt like the sermon was for me that day. Were there other students sitting in that class who were also changed by this sermon? Or did you feel uniquely touched by that message?”
CARROLL:
That word was for me. I have no idea the effect it had on everyone else. But I know that the word that day was for me.
PAVLIK SLENK:
Ambrose was moved by the idea that, as a Christian, he should be a steward of the earth. And he became hypersensitive to things like picking up litter and trying to conserve water. But even as his appreciation for the natural world grew, Ambrose didn’t see himself, or his church, as part of the larger environmental movement. At least not at first.
CARROLL:
For us, as, you know, African American people, sometimes when we are not careful, religion pulls us away from the planet. And really, you know, have a combative relationship with the planet, that the planet and everything on it is ruled by things that are wicked and our souls and our spirits will one day be free from it becomes a part of the theological fabric.
PAVLIK SLENK:
The Black church has, at times, provided an escape from the realities of living in a racist society. Ambrose describes it as “growing up in a world of they.”
CARROLL:
They took out all of the banks from the community. They closed the grocery store. They lynched us out of Arkansas and Mississippi. They put the freeway through our community. I come from a people who received the reality of a Jesus Christ through a slave Bible that told them, ‘Slave, obey your master.’ You see? So until we back that up and say, ‘Oh, yes that’s the Bible, but that's not what the God I serve believed. So those are difficult pieces, have to be done in loving patient ways. But until we address that, we won't be able to steward the planet because some of our theology pits us against the planet.
PAVLIK SLENK:
Ambrose knew there was a lot of work to be done. But the seed that had been planted in him during divinity school had taken root. And a climate conscious message would more subtly make its way into his burgeoning ministry.
CARROLL:
I was ordained in 1994, at the Beth Eden Baptist Church in West Oakland, California. And then a year later, I became the youth pastor of the Third Baptist Church in San Francisco. So my ministry was geared towards young people. And I don't think I would have articulated my ministry in that way because the language of the Black church itself is not environmentalism. There are things that we did with the seniors, and having our seniors tell us how they, you know, what, use old clothing and things of that nature to recreate, and to make these beautiful quilts. We didn't call that sustainability. But that's what it was. We talked about food and the importance of eating healthy food and of growing food. But again, it was not in a climate concerned language.
PAVLIK SLENK:
It would be more than a decade before Pastor Carroll would make more direct ties with the environmental movement. We’ll hear how that happened, after a break.
BREAK
PAVLIK SLENK:
Welcome back to Degrees: Real talk about planet-saving careers from Environmental Defense Fund. I’m Yesh Pavlik Slenk.
When we left Pastor Ambrose Carroll’s story, he had recently become the youth pastor at the Third Baptist Church in San Francisco. The church is located near San Francisco’s famous Haight-Ashbury, a hub for the 1960s counterculture movement. Pastor Carroll remembers an Earth Day celebration across the street from the church. He says there were dozens of young people gathered outside the building. They called him over.
CARROLL:
And they said, ‘Come on up.’ And I entered this whole other world having no idea what Earth Day was. It was a celebration and a party of which the young preacher partook. And it was perhaps multicultural. But there was no conversation between what was happening on Earth Day and what was happening at that African American church.
PAVLIK SLENK:
These two neighboring institutions had not had any kind of real connection, at least not one that Pastor Carroll had witnessed up to that point.
CARROLL:
So you talk about people who have grown up and who existed, you know, right next to each other geographically, but still, who lived in totally different worlds. Totally different dimensions.
PAVLIK SLENK:
These divisions are hard to breach. And while the Earth Day Party in Haight-Ashbury brought Pastor Carroll one step closer to making climate action a central part of his personal theology, it wasn’t until 2009 that he saw a clear path toward making it part of his ministry. That was the year he came across a book by news and political commentator Van Jones. It’s called “The Green Collar Economy,” and it’s full of ideas on how to solve both socioeconomic inequities, as well as climate problems.
CARROLL:
As I read that book, I felt that Van Jones had articulated for our generation that big tent issue.
PAVLIK SLENK:
Facing climate change head on and understanding how the crisis disproportionately affects lower income populations, that was the big tent issue. This was the next social movement to fight for, and Pastor Carroll wanted to be a part of it. Soon after reading that book, Pastor Carroll became a fellow in Van Jones’ Green for All program. He says, as a fellow, he met people of different races, nationalities, backgrounds and industries, like teachers who were creating curriculum on these ideas and people in the business sector thinking about green jobs and workforce development.
CARROLL:
I said, ‘This is a broad frontier.’ And soon after, I noticed that there were a lot of people in the fellowship, but not a lot of people who were practicing faith as I practice faith.
PAVLIK SLENK:
Pastor Carroll eventually found his community in the form of an organization called Interfaith Power & Light. At the time, he was living and working in Colorado.
CARROLL:
Sally Bingham came to town and she was on fire.
PAVLIK SLENK:
Reverend Sally Bingham is the founder and president of Interfaith Power & Light.
BINGHAM ON CSPAN:
I believe that the scientists are today’s prophets. And I think we need to listen to them and we need to pay attention to what they are saying.
PAVLIK SLENK:
This is Rev. Bingham speaking at the Spirit of Christ Catholic Church in Colorado in 2009. I should note that she’s also on EDF’s board. C-SPAN captured the audio you’re hearing, in which she speaks about how scientists want the faith community’s help.
BINGHAM:
The scientists can create, discover and give us the science. But we have to be the messengers.”
CARROLL:
Man it was fantastic. I found my tribe, people from every faith talking about the environment.
PAVLIK SLENK:
He was overjoyed to see people of faith doing this work. He also couldn’t help but notice how few people of color he saw at that 2009 conference. He reflected on all the experiences he’d had where his environmentalist desires didn’t connect with the people in his community. And this time, he decided to do something about it.
CARROLL:
And so we set out to wake up the sleeping giant that is the Black church on these issues of environmentalism and sustainability.
PAVLIK SLENK:
The following year, Pastor Carroll launched his own faith-led climate effort. Green the Church is a nonprofit that helps Black congregations make their physical buildings more eco-friendly. It also takes a theological approach to climate action, encouraging Black churchgoers to engage in environmental justice issues and initiatives.
CARROLL:
When we started Green the Church, we started with three pillars. We wanted to amplify what I call Green Liberation Theology. And we wanted to promote sustainable practices, be that food sovereignty or build efficiency or wellness, getting out into nature. And the last one is building power for political and economic change. And so we wanted to ensure that the Black church had a place to have its own language, its own table about how we care for the planet, how we take responsibility, and how we relearn who we have always been.
PAVLIK SLENK:
Now of course this is a really tall order. We’re talking about trying to dismantle two of the biggest crises of our time: racism and climate change. But Pastor Carroll has a lesson to teach about that, too.
CARROLL:
So listen, I come from a family of preachers. And I heard my uncle and my cousin, and my brothers and my dad all preach the same sermon. They call it, ‘Do what you can.’ They talk about our grandmother, who had 10 children in a time where they were sharecropping on family-owned land, and talked about not having much in the cupboard. But she gets some flour, some water, and they are talking about the beauty of the biscuits that she made. And how those biscuits and that molasses tastes so good. And the message was, ‘Do what you can and then believe in the grace of the Divine for the rest.
PAVLIK SLENK:
Since its founding, Green the Church has grown to a network of more than 2,000 congregations nationwide. And the pastor says a big part of his work now is shifting the narrative. He not only wants Black communities to see themselves as stewards of the planet. But he wants them to see themselves as stewards who can actually build power and create real, lasting change.
CARROLL:
For marginalized people, I think that is one of the most powerful notions and oftentimes, I think it's a place that we're not necessarily as comfortable with as we should be.
PAVLIK SLENK:
So how is he and Green the Church doing that right now? They’re doing things like fighting against petro-chemicals in the state of Louisiana. They’re also doing a lot of work around energy efficiency when it comes to the churches’ physical buildings. Pastor Carroll thinks they can have a lot of impact with that work
CARROLL:
We don't own a lot of skyscrapers in this country. But we own an awful lot of church buildings. And all of them have to be retrofitted for clean air and clean water.
PAVLIK SLENK:
This is, in fact, another part of the pastor’s redress. Decades ago, Black farmers owned millions of acres of land in the south. But they were driven off of that land and forced into urban centers.
CARROLL:
We could not buy homes. But our mothers and fathers, our foreparents, they sold chicken dinners and sweet potato pies, and they bought church buildings. We want to make sure that we maintain these buildings. We want to make sure that we help lay the infrastructure for EV charging and solar in these urban environments. And we want to make sure that our members and friends who do own homes and property, that they also go solar. We want to really be empowered, so that we understand our responsibility to be stewards.
PAVLIK SLENK:
Pastor Carroll also hopes to send the message that people are mighty. And that we have the capacity for greatness if we choose to see it.
CARROLL:
It is to have that intention, and to really, you know, play your part and trust in whatever is larger than you. And so Green the Church is always an invitation to grow, to dialogue, to open up and to move towards what Martin King and others call the beloved community, where all human beings come together for the sake of all sentient beings on this planet.
PAVLIK SLENK:
OK listeners. So what does all this have to do with your green job search? The thing is, spirituality, faith, religion, believing in a cause like environmentalism, these are all deeply personal and individual experiences.
MISLEH:
Faith, religion helps us answer the big questions right. A spirituality that resides in the heart and not just in the head.
PAVLIK SLENK:
This is Dan Misleh, of the Catholic Climate Covenant, again.
MISLEH:
That's a different starting point than a scientific starting point. That would say we're putting too much greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere and the plant is going to heat up and it's going to be really too bad for everybody. Whereas I would come at that and say, ‘Oh, I'm culpable. You know, I'm responsible for that as a Christian, as a Catholic. My faith tells me, I have a responsibility to care for this creation.
PAVLIK SLENK:
And here’s why this heart-versus-head motivation is so important. Religious communities have the capacity to massively move the needle forward on the climate crisis. One well-known climate activist recently told Inside Climate News that faith and spiritual leaders around the globe may be our best shot at, quote, “getting a hold on things.” He said we need climate leadership in that sector to speak to people’s hearts on this issue. Moshe Kornfeld of Colorado Jewish Climate Action agrees.
KORNFELD:
Faith communities have sort of a built-in organizing platform. They have congregations, they have networks of congregations. They're there sitting ready to be organized and energized.
PAVLIK SLENK:
He also says a church, synagogue, temple, mosque, any house of worship is more than brick and mortar.
KORNFELD:
It is a symbolic building, designed in a certain way to express its values to its congregants and to the broader community. My hypothesis is that it can have a powerful impact on not only its own community, but in the wider community.
PAVLIK SLENK:
Maybe you’re a faith leader yourself, or you work at a religious institution. Or maybe you’re just a regular congregant with some ideas to share. You can inspire change there. You can ask your fellow congregants to embrace greener faith practices. Like what Green Ramadan founder Kori Majeed did.
MAJEED:
We have forgotten how to live in harmony with the rest of creation. So in Islam, there is Allah, and Allah created creation.
PAVLIK SLENK:
She saw something at her mosque that didn’t align with her religious and environmental beliefs. She decided to make a change, starting small with her own family, creating a zero-trash Iftar kit that includes reusable, sustainably made items like a water bottle, cloth napkin and utensils. That way, her family wouldn’t produce waste from the meal they ate at their mosque after fasting all day.
MAJEED:
And it became our Ramadan tradition. And through that we started having discussions in our community, people asking me, why are you doing that? And these were important discussions that needed to be had.
PAVLIK SLENK:
That family Ramadan tradition grew into a big passion project for Kori, encouraging Muslims around the world to adopt more sustainable traditions.
In the end, your green job search starts much closer to home. I like ending on that idea, because it speaks to something essential we’ve been trying to do with Degrees, to help you find your place in climate work. Maybe spirituality will help you get there. But even if you aren’t a religious or spiritual person, you clearly believe in a higher cause. And I hope today’s episode inspired you in some way. I’m going to borrow some words from Pastor Carroll now: ‘do what you can.’
PAVLIK SLENK:
That's it for this episode! Coming up next week, we’ll speak with Betony Jones, Director of the Office of Energy Jobs at the Department of Energy who says that there are a lot of green jobs right around the corner:
BETONY JONES:
We have $62 billion to invest in clean energy deployment. And that is across 72 different programs, 60 of which are completely new programs. We're really looking at how are those investments going to be made in a way that supports job growth in the US and good quality jobs that people really want.
PAVLIK SLENK:
Be sure to check out the rest of season six of Degrees on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you're listening now. Share this podcast with a friend. Also don’t forget, check out our Green Jobs Hub. There you’ll find all the resources you need to jumpstart your green career search.
Degrees is presented by Environmental Defense Fund. Amy Morse is our producer. Podcast Allies is our production company. Stephanie Wolf produced this episode. Mia Lobel is our story editor. Ayo Oti is our researcher. Engineering by Matthew Simonson.
Our music is Shame, Shame, Shame from Lake Street Dive. And I’m your host, Yesh Pavlik Slenk. Stay fired up y’all.
Change is coming, oh yeah
Ain’t no holding it back
Ain't no running
Change is coming, oh yeah!