Spring holidays offer possibilities for bringing earth care together with religious observance. Here are some resources to help you consider sustainability as you prepare for Passover or Easter, or to celebrate Earth Day in your faith community.

Passover (April 12-20)

As Jews observe Passover, there are many resources to connect to the earth and practice sustainability. Former TAF member, the late Rabbi Ellen Bernstein, wrote a haggadah entitled The Promise of the Land that centers the Passover story in the natural world. Focusing on the very soil out of which Judaism grew, this haggadah explores the Seder’s earthly grounding and ecological meaning.

The Jewish environmental group Adamah provides online resources for considering sustainability throughout the eight days of Passover. You will find activities, rituals, recipes, and tips, including several haggadah supplements.

With Dayenu, Adamah also created a Climate Action Shabbat Guide to help families and congregations take meaningful climate action and align Shabbat practices with sustainability and Jewish values throughout the year.

Easter (April 20)

Christians can also keep earth care and sustainability in mind as they celebrate Easter. Derrick Weston reflects on the implications of Jesus’ death and resurrection for all creation in this blog post, and the National Catholic Reporter offers tips for celebrating a creation-conscious Easter. The Creation Justice Ministries website has a hub of resources, where you can search by theme or liturgical season and find sermon ideas, scripture reflections, songs, and prayers.

To continue your sustainable focus through the year, Creation Justice Ministries offers 52 Ways to Care for Creation 2025, with actions for every week of the year, including Holy Week, Easter, and Earth Day. Their 2025 resource, The Power of God: From Extractive Theology to Transformative Faith, can help your congregation think about God’s power and how we interact in the world. Download it for free from their website.

Earth Day (April 22)

The theme for this year’s Earth Day celebration is “Our Power, Our Planet.” As Third Act is doing with its plans for Sun Day (September 20-21), Earth Day is focusing on the need to transition to renewable sources of energy, which have become the most cost-effective sources of power. The transition will create jobs, eliminate the need to import fossil fuels, and avoid the health hazards and greenhouse gas emissions that come from burning fossil fuels.

The Earth Day website provides toolkits, fact sheets, sample petitions and press releases, and guidelines with samples prayers and sermons for faith communities. A map of Earth Day events around the world can be filtered by “faith,” so you can locate an action near you or post one that you are organizing. For Earth Day events sponsored by other Third Act Working Groups, visit thirdact.org/working-groups/events.

Also focusing on renewable energy, Creation Justice Ministries will host an Earth Day prayer service based on their 2025 resource, The Power of God: From Extractive Theology to Transformative Faith. Held online on April 22 at 10:00 AM PT / 1:00 PM ET, the service will lead participants into a time of prayer and reflection, centered around seven original pieces of music produced for the resource. Register here.

Sustainable Woodstock is hosting an Earth Day conversation with advocate and activist Rev. Mariama White-Hammond on Wednesday, April 23 at 3:00 PM PT / 6:00 PM ET on Zoom. Pastor and Founder of the New Roots AME Church in Dorchester, MA, Rev. White-Hammond is former Chief of Energy, Environment and Open Space for the City of Boston. Read more about her and register for this virtual presentation with Q&A online.

In addition the United Church of Christ will hold its Annual UCC Earth Day Summit  on Saturday, April 26, on Zoom, from 11:00-2:00 PM PT / 2:00-5:00 PM ET. The Jim Antal Keynote Lecture (named for TAF member Rev. Dr. Jim Antal)  will be delivered by Katharine Hayhoe, one of the world’s leading climate scientists and an evangelical Christian. Dr. Hayhoe will be joined by a panel of frontline grassroots leaders. Learn more and register here.

Faith communities can also search these websites, which include Earth Day resources, including those from past years:

• Creation Justice Ministries offers resources to help Christian congregations observe Earth Day in worship and through the life of your church.
• United Methodist Creation Justice Tips for April include ways to show love of God by loving earth, and can be shared in church newsletters, bulletins, or social media and in your personal communications.
• Interfaith Power & Light has a map for climate action events through the month of April, and resources from previous years.
• For additional religious events, visit One Earth Sangha or the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology.

As “Summer of Heat” continues in New York, Third Actors are taking action in their own communities during Elders Week, July 8-13. From Augusta, ME, to San Francisco, and from Minneapolis to Broward, FL, elders will host rallies, demonstrations, sing-alongs, and other events to pressure Wall Street banks to stop using our hard-earned retirement savings to fund the climate crisis.

Third Act Faith folks are taking part in these actions and also stepping up during SOH’s Faith Week, July 29-August 3. To provide spiritual grounding for these and other SOH events, TAF has prepared a recorded contemplative service, designed to speak across traditions and address the ethical and spiritual dimensions of climate activism.

Rev. Dr. Jessica McArdle created the recorded contemplative service. Including interfaith chants, prayer, and petitions, the recording provides an immersive guided forest meditation. Designed to invite participants to experience the natural world’s refreshment, the recording’s intent also underscores the earth’s fragility and our summons to safeguard what has been entrusted to us.

An environmental and social justice activist, Jessica is also a practicing contemplative with twenty-five-plus years’ of experience in ordained ministry, including interfaith chaplaincy. She also serves on the Environmental Ministries Team of the Southern New Conference of the United Church of Christ, which supports greening local congregations and enlisting faith communities to protect democracy. She blogs at thespiritualactivist@blog.

The contemplative service is available on TAF’s YouTube channel for individuals or congregations taking action during Elders Week, Faith Week, or any of the 12 weeks of Summer of Heat. We invite anyone anywhere to view our virtual service as a way to engage in prayer and solidarity with those taking action in New York and across the country.

If you do not live close enough to New York to take action on Wall Street, visit Third Act’s Summer of Heat page to locate an action near you during Elders Week, or to see how you can take part from home.

On August 1, as part of Faith Week, members of TAF will join people of faith from GreenFaith, Dayenu, Earth Quaker Action Team, and XR Mindful Rebels for a day of food, song, art, and meaningful spiritual practice in Citi Plaza. If you can be there in person, register here.

Again there are options for those who cannot be in New York. On August 1 at 1:00 PM PT/4:00 PM ET, GreenFaith is hosting a Virtual Action Hour, to flood Citibank with phone calls. In the meantime, you can sign this letter calling on Citibank to do the right thing: stop funding fossil fuel expansion in the Gulf South, invest in clean energy, and reverse the environmental racism that they have been bankrolling for years.

IN HIS OPENING COMMENTS at Third Act Faith’s recent ‘Sacred Right to Vote’ panel, Rev. Jim Antal connected voting to the two prongs of Third Act’s work: climate and democracy. First he said, for most of older Americans’ lives, we have taken for granted both a stable climate and a stable democracy. Second, acting on behalf of both are “the two most responsible ways for a person of faith to show their faithfulness.”

Many of us, especially in Third Act Faith, see caring for God’s creation as a sacred act, but Antal questioned why protecting voting rights is not viewed the same way. He connected the idea to a foundational theological cornerstone for Abrahamic faith traditions: because human beings are created in the image of God, every person matters and has a sacred right to vote. 

Access to the truth is also a sacred right, and is critical to a functioning democracy, but, Antal said, “if truth is compromised, corrupted, displaced or discarded, we lose our moral compass, and we are left with no idea what matters.” Just as we have normalized the increasing frequency of climate disasters, our pulpits are silent about gerrymandered districts and barriers that often make voting more difficult in predominantly black districts. 

Antal urged people of faith to talk about the threats to democracy as a moral crisis, and encouraged clergy to preach about it. We all must commit to telling the truth, not just to counter the flood of disinformation, but because “truth is the foundation of hope,” and hope, he said, “is the most important contribution people of faith can and must make in a time such as this.”

PROMPTED BY QUESTIONS FROM ANTAL, the three religious leaders joining him on the panel touched on points he had raised. Mubarak Elamin of OneAmerica Votes said that as an immigrant he could speak to the importance of democracy from both sides. Having lived under authoritarian regimes, he noted that the first thing they do is to take away people’s freedom by controlling the narrative, and controlling both their personal and public lives. He described such a situation as “the absence of democracy and what people cherish about America.” 

Panelists connected protection of democracy to the moral imperative to address oppression. As Rev. Carol Devine of Blessed Tomorrow said, “As a Christian, I’m called by Christ to care for the most vulnerable.” Congregation Beth Elohim’s Rabbi Stephanie Kolin described the power that large corporations have, especially big oil. “But on election day, Exxon doesn’t get to walk into a voting booth and pull a lever,” she said. “Voting is what makes elected officials accountable to us and our families and the most vulnerable of this earth.”

ASKED TO SPEAK ABOUT RELIGIOUS RESISTANCE TO POLITICAL ACTIONS,  Elamin said that Muslim communities with large immigrant populations are just learning about the American political system, and specifically IRS regulations that prevent religious communities from endorsing particular candidates. Before bringing politics into their spiritual space, an imam must consider such questions as, “Is the community ready for a political conversation? Is this a political conversation or a spiritual conversation? How do you tie those two?” 

The other panelists cited the political nature of both Christian and Jewish foundations. Jesus was super political, Devine pointed out, and Kolin said there is no more political document than the Torah, calling it “our most formative narrative – a story of Moses going to Pharaoh and speaking truth to power and a people raising themselves up out of oppression to become free.” That theme continues throughout the Hebrew Bible, especially the prophets.

Speaking to religious fear of politics, she said that politics comes from the word polis, the center of Greek society where the people would decide how to live together with fairness and compassion. Given those roots and the “beautifully political” nature of Jewish texts, we should not give in to current fear of political action that can lead us to turn against each other. We cannot “allow this current definition of politics to sully what is unbelievably beautiful.”

RESPONDING TO ANTAL’S FOCUS ON TRUTH AND HOPE, Devine noted that searching for truth can make us uncomfortable: “God doesn’t call us to a “rainbows and butterflies kind of hope but one that is really grounded in justice….We can’t have hope that isn’t grounded deeply in our faith; that is a truth that we can stand on,… and that comes from who we are, whose we are, and how we’re called to live.”

Elamin referred to hope as the light that guides us in working for a better world, which Kolin echoed in her comments. After describing the vision of peace and justice in Micah 2:2-4, she said:

So what do truth and hope have to do with each other? I think it has something to do with that vision and our ability and commitment and courage to imagine the future as we want it to be, the future that is inclusive….And if we don’t arrive at the place that we so deeply hoped for, then we didn’t follow a true path…Did we listen to each other? Did we dream something up together that would work for people, that would care for the vulnerable, that would break down the structures of racism and homophobia and anti-Semitism and xenophobia? Did we do the thing? Did we find the truth in humanity? And if we did, are we pointed towards a vision of greater hope for all people? And if we’re not…then we haven’t really found our shared truth.

ANTAL AND THE PANELISTS GAVE THE AUDIENCE CONCRETE STEPS religious individuals and communities can take in protecting the sacred right to vote. Antal pointed to the group Faiths United to Save Democracy, which targets religious communities to take political action in ten key states. Even those who live in other states can learn about the issues and find resources they can apply anywhere, he told us.

Other suggestions:

• Read recent books about the threat to democracy, such as Jim Wallis’s The False White Gospel.
• Write postcards to voters by taking part in Third Act’s postcard project with Activate America. 
• Encourage young people to register and to vote through Third Act’s intergenerational voter registration initiative Senior to Senior. 
• Make sure you are registered to vote and know where your polling place is.
• Offer rides to seniors or others who need help getting to the polls.
• Train to be an election worker through A More Perfect Union.
• Have a conversation with somebody who’s been told that their voice doesn’t count.
• Learn how to deep canvass and invite people to remember that their stories matter. 
• If you are qualified to do so, challenge unfair voting laws in the courts.

Watch the video of the panel here.

As a follow-up to the panel, Third Act Faith will be offering a workshop for clergy in late August on preaching an election sermon. Watch for details to come. 

By Trisha Tull, TAF Coordinating Committee Member

Have you ever participated in a postcard writing drive? It’s an easy way to help get out the vote. First, go here to read about it and sign up. It will take you to a page where you choose which campaign you’d like to write for and how many postcards you wish to write. Second, buy or make a stack of blank postcards: here are ideas for printing out Third Act postcards, or simply go to your local post office and buy blank ones there. Optional third step: Host a live or virtual postcard writing party. Or for the true introverts, skip step three and go to step four: Watch for the email with addresses to write to, then hand write and mail your cards. You can also post a pic on social media to spread the idea. It’s easy and fun, and you can use your favorite pen.

Along with promoting democratic political processes, Democratizing Energy is central to Third Act’s work. This means promoting renewable energy in our power grid and helping prepare buildings and transportation for the renewable energy, zero carbon future through the Inflation Reduction Act. Third Act is now promoting a Letter to the Editor campaign to publicize the need for your state’s public utility commission (the utility regulatory committees in each state, sometimes called by other names) to transition all the state’s utilities to renewable energy. You write the letters based on tips on the website and with help from Bill McKibben’s LTE tutorial, and your letter will be sent to several local papers. This requires more depth of research and creativity, but it can be very effective.

And the best thing about both of these actions is being a faith-based activist even without leaving home!