GreenFaith

GreenFaith is an international interfaith environmental organization and climate-justice advocacy network. It works with religious leaders, congregations, activists, and community organizers to make ecological protection a matter of religious responsibility and public justice. Rather than selling consumer products, GreenFaith operates as a mission-driven movement and support platform: it provides training, organizing resources, leadership development, campaigns, and opportunities for cooperation among faith communities and secular environmental groups. The organization was established in New Jersey in 1992 under the name Partners for Environmental Quality. Its creation followed the participation of Episcopal priest Rev. Dr. Franklin E. Vilas and other Christian and Jewish leaders in the 1992 United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. Early work combined religious teaching about stewardship with practical environmental programs. These included energy audits for houses of worship, assistance with financing and installing solar arrays, and advocacy for laws intended to reduce air pollution and greenhouse-gas emissions. The organization later adopted the GreenFaith name as its environmental and interfaith mission expanded. A major institutional development was the creation of the GreenFaith Fellowship Program in 2005. The fellowship model helped train religious and community leaders to organize locally, communicate climate issues through their own traditions, and connect spiritual concerns with public campaigns. GreenFaith describes its local chapters as “Circles.” Its network has included more than 100 Circles across regions such as North America, Latin America, Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, and the Pacific Islands, alongside religious partners in more than 40 countries. The organization has reported offices in Kenya and Germany and staff or representatives in the United States, Germany, France, Kenya, Brazil, Indonesia, and Japan. GreenFaith’s activity increased after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, when the unequal effects of environmental disasters on vulnerable communities brought climate risk and environmental justice into sharper public focus. The organization also expanded its collaborations after the 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth and after the disappointing outcome of the 2009 Copenhagen climate negotiations. Those developments encouraged faith-based groups to move beyond internal sustainability projects toward public advocacy, fossil-fuel divestment, and coordinated demonstrations. The organization’s public agenda has included urging religious institutions to invest in renewable energy, withdraw investments from fossil-fuel companies, oppose new fossil-fuel infrastructure, support a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, and demand that governments and financial institutions address climate inequality. GreenFaith has helped organize or support large interfaith mobilizations, including the 2014 People’s Climate March, the 2015 Global Climate March, the 2017 People’s Climate March in Washington, D.C., and the 2023 March to End Fossil Fuels in New York City. Its campaigns have also addressed specific projects, including the East African Crude Oil Pipeline and the Mountain Valley Pipeline. GreenFaith’s approach is explicitly theological but broadly pluralistic. Its work draws on Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Indigenous, and other religious perspectives, while also cooperating with secular climate organizations such as 350.org and Extinction Rebellion. The organization argues that religious institutions can use their moral authority, property, investments, educational capacity, and community networks to accelerate climate action. Its advocacy has increasingly emphasized the effects of fossil-fuel development on displaced communities, sacred places, Indigenous peoples, human rights, public health, and biodiversity. GreenFaith remains an active movement organization rather than a conventional commercial brand. Its public identity is built around interfaith organizing, climate justice, grassroots leadership, and the claim that faith communities should help lead a socially fair transition away from fossil fuels. Its work can face tensions both from religious groups skeptical of environmental activism and from secular environmentalists wary of organized religion, but GreenFaith presents those tensions as opportunities for dialogue and coalition-building.

GreenFaith began in New Jersey in 1992 as Partners for Environmental Quality. Its founding followed the United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, which influenced Rev. Dr. Franklin E. Vilas and other Christian and Jewish leaders to create an organization connecting religious responsibility with environmental protection. The early program was practical as well as theological. It supported energy audits and renewable-energy projects at religious facilities, helped organize financing and solar installations, and advocated legislation addressing air pollution and greenhouse-gas emissions. During its first two decades, GreenFaith developed an approach centered on stewardship, congregational education, and interfaith cooperation. The GreenFaith Fellowship Program, launched in 2005, became an important leadership-development mechanism. It trained participants to organize within their own religious communities and local areas, communicate environmental issues through faith traditions, and build relationships with environmental and civic organizations. The organization’s public profile grew after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The disaster highlighted how climate-related hazards can affect poor and historically marginalized communities disproportionately. GreenFaith also benefited from wider interest in faith-based environmentalism after the 2006 film An Inconvenient Truth. Following the failure of the 2009 Copenhagen climate negotiations, the organization and allied faith groups increasingly emphasized public mobilization, fossil-fuel divestment, and stronger political pressure rather than limiting their work to institutional efficiency projects. Fletcher Harper joined GreenFaith in 2002 and became its executive director. An Episcopal priest and religious environmental advocate, Harper helped guide the organization toward a global movement model. In 2015, he published GreenFaith: Mobilizing God’s People to Protect the Earth, a book based on interviews with people from different faith traditions about religious experiences of nature and ecological responsibility. Under this broader model, GreenFaith combined training programs, local organizing Circles, international campaigns, and interfaith demonstrations. GreenFaith participated in or helped organize major climate mobilizations during the 2010s. It was involved with the 2014 People’s Climate March, organized a 2015 Global Climate March involving approximately 20,000 people worldwide, and led the Una Terra, Una Famiglia Humana march in Vatican City. It also joined the 2017 People’s Climate March in Washington, D.C. In 2018, it worked with the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies’ Bhumi Project to encourage Hindu climate action. These activities reflected its effort to make climate advocacy accessible through multiple religious traditions rather than treating environmentalism as a single-denomination concern. By the late 2010s and early 2020s, GreenFaith’s campaigns increasingly targeted fossil-fuel finance and infrastructure. In 2019, it organized a Washington, D.C., protest aimed at financial institutions associated by activists with fossil-fuel projects and immigrant detention. In Ghana, a 2022 interfaith roundtable contributed to the Keep It In The Ground Ghana campaign, which sought to limit further fossil-fuel development while discussing a transition to renewable energy. The organization also called for a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty and supported local actions against banks, pipelines, and other institutions involved in fossil-fuel expansion. GreenFaith’s international advocacy has included criticism of the East African Crude Oil Pipeline. In 2023, it published a report alleging that construction had disturbed more than 2,000 gravesites in Uganda and Tanzania. TotalEnergies, the project’s constructor, issued a public response disputing the allegations. GreenFaith subsequently publicized a letter from eight African faith leaders criticizing alleged displacement, threats to sacred places, environmental harm, and human-rights concerns connected with the project. The organization has continued to link climate policy with racial, economic, Indigenous, and community justice. In 2024, GreenFaith participants opposed the Mountain Valley Pipeline, helped develop a People’s Climate Justice Budget for Queens, collaborated with Australian religious climate advocates, and participated in the Summer of Heat on Wall Street campaign. Its work remains focused on building a distributed, multi-faith movement in which religious leaders and local communities use moral authority, collective action, institutional investments, and public protest to accelerate a just transition away from fossil fuels.

• 2024

  Summer of Heat on Wall Street

  [1]GreenFaithen.wikipedia.org

  GreenFaith participated in an interfaith campaign targeting financial support for fossil-fuel expansion, including a protest at Citibank headquarters.

• 2023

  East African Crude Oil Pipeline report

  [1]GreenFaithen.wikipedia.org

  GreenFaith released a report alleging impacts on gravesites and sacred places along the East African Crude Oil Pipeline route.

• 2022

  Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty advocacy

  [1]GreenFaithen.wikipedia.org

  GreenFaith organized religious leaders to support an international treaty framework limiting new fossil-fuel development.

• 2017

  People’s Climate March in Washington, D.C.

  [1]GreenFaithen.wikipedia.org

  GreenFaith was among the organizers of the Washington, D.C., climate march.

• 2015

  Global Climate March and Vatican City mobilization

  [1]GreenFaithen.wikipedia.org

  GreenFaith organized global participation in a climate march and led the Una Terra, Una Famiglia Humana march in Vatican City.

• 2014

  People’s Climate March participation

  [1]GreenFaithen.wikipedia.org

  GreenFaith helped organize interfaith participation in the People’s Climate March.

• 2005

  GreenFaith Fellowship Program launched

  [1]GreenFaithen.wikipedia.org

  The fellowship program introduced a structured platform for developing faith-based environmental leaders and organizers.

• 2005

  Hurricane Katrina intensifies climate activity

  [1]GreenFaithen.wikipedia.org

  The environmental and social effects of Hurricane Katrina helped increase GreenFaith’s organizing and public climate work.

• 2002

  Fletcher Harper joins the organization

  [1]GreenFaithen.wikipedia.org

  Episcopal priest Fletcher Harper joined GreenFaith and later became its executive director.

• 1992

  Founded as Partners for Environmental Quality

  [1]GreenFaithen.wikipedia.org

  Rev. Dr. Franklin E. Vilas and other New Jersey Christian and Jewish leaders established the organization after attending the United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.

A global interfaith climate-justice movement that translates religious teachings and community networks into grassroots environmental organizing, public advocacy, and campaigns against fossil-fuel expansion.

• Leadership development · 2005

  GreenFaith Fellowship Program

  A training and leadership-development program designed to prepare religious and community leaders to organize climate and environmental campaigns in their own communities. The fellowship model emphasizes public communication, interfaith cooperation, grassroots mobilization, and linking ecological concerns with justice for affected communities.

• Local organizing network

  GreenFaith Circles

  Local chapters that connect faith leaders, congregations, and activists around climate-justice work. Circles provide a community-based structure for organizing demonstrations, education, renewable-energy advocacy, fossil-fuel divestment, and campaigns against harmful infrastructure.

• Educational and advisory resources

  Faith-community environmental resources

  Guidance, training materials, and campaign resources that help religious institutions address energy use, climate change, environmental justice, investment decisions, and public advocacy through their own theological and community traditions.

• 2024Mountain Valley Pipeline opposition

  United States

  GreenFaith and 350.org supporters protested in Charlotte, North Carolina, against the Mountain Valley Pipeline and its Southgate Extension.

  Source
• 2024People’s Climate Justice Budget

  United States

  A GreenFaith imam and pastor collaborated on a model budget for Queens, New York, presenting environmental-justice spending as a moral and public-policy obligation.

  Outcome. The proposal described one billion dollars in example state spending for environmental justice.

  Source
• 2024Ten Days of Climate Action

  Australia · International

  GreenFaith collaborated with Australian Religious Response to Climate Change on coordinated actions calling for a rapid fossil-fuel phaseout, a just transition, and accountability for climate-related damage.

  Source
• 2024Summer of Heat on Wall Street

  United States

  GreenFaith was among the organizers of the Summer of Heat campaign, which challenged Wall Street financing of fossil-fuel projects through interfaith demonstrations.

  Outcome. On July 30, 24 faith leaders and supporters were arrested after chaining themselves to Citibank’s New York headquarters.

  Source
• 2023East African Crude Oil Pipeline advocacy

  Uganda · Tanzania · France

  GreenFaith challenged the East African Crude Oil Pipeline through research, public advocacy, and demonstrations, including a 2023 action in Paris conducted with Extinction Rebellion.

  Outcome. GreenFaith’s report prompted eight African faith leaders to sign a letter condemning alleged harm to graves, sacred places, communities, and ecosystems. TotalEnergies disputed the report’s allegations.

  Source
• 2023March to End Fossil Fuels

  United States

  GreenFaith joined approximately 500 participating groups in the New York City March to End Fossil Fuels.

  Source
• 2022Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty advocacy

  International

  GreenFaith organized religious leaders to advocate an international treaty preventing further fossil-fuel expansion.

  Source
• 2022Keep It In The Ground Ghana

  Ghana

  Following an interfaith roundtable in Ghana, GreenFaith-supported organizers developed a campaign focused on limiting fossil-fuel projects and planning a transition to renewable energy.

  Outcome. The campaign emerged from a series of conversations about Ghana’s pathway to a just transition.

  Source
• 2019Washington financial-institutions protest

  United States

  GreenFaith protested financial institutions in Washington, D.C., over alleged support for fossil-fuel projects and immigrant detention.

  Outcome. The protest included remarks by Jane Fonda.

  Source
• 2018Bhumi Project collaboration

  International

  GreenFaith collaborated with the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies’ Bhumi Project to mobilize Hindu communities around climate change.

  Source

Showing the 10 most recent.

• 2022

  Support for a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation TreatyStrategy

  Background

  GreenFaith argued that climate action must address the expansion of fossil-fuel supply, not only emissions from existing energy use.

  Action taken

  It organized religious leaders to publicly support an international treaty limiting new fossil-fuel development.

  Aftermath

  The initiative became part of GreenFaith’s international climate-policy advocacy ahead of the United Nations climate conference in Egypt.

  Source

• 2009

  Shift toward stronger public climate mobilizationStrategy

  Background

  The perceived failure of the Copenhagen climate negotiations encouraged faith-based organizations to take more assertive positions on climate policy and fossil-fuel investment.

  Action taken

  GreenFaith expanded its emphasis on activism, interfaith solidarity, and fossil-fuel divestment.

  Aftermath

  The strategy contributed to later participation in large climate marches and campaigns against fossil-fuel finance and infrastructure.

  Source

• 2005

  Launch of the GreenFaith Fellowship ProgramStrategy

  Background

  GreenFaith sought to develop a larger base of trained religious and community organizers rather than relying only on institutional environmental projects.

  Action taken

  The organization created a fellowship program focused on leadership development, local organizing, and faith-based climate advocacy.

  Aftermath

  The fellowship became part of GreenFaith’s broader movement-building model.

  Source

1. 1GreenFaithen.wikipedia.org
2. 2GreenFaith official websitegreenfaith.org