Easter Meets Earth Day: A Time to Renew Our Commitment to the Land

The last time Easter occurred in the same week as Earth Day was in 2011. The occasion so concerned many Christian groups that the Catholic government of the Philippines officially postponed its recognition of Earth Day for several days, while the Media Research Center’s Culture and Media Institute told Christian worshippers that Earth Day is a holiday for pagans.

Almost fifteen years later, Christians have the chance for a redo when Easter is followed by Earth Day on April 22 — and people of faith can assert their religious obligation to be stewards of the land.

From a faith perspective, this moral awakening is the imperative of our times. Not just for the “climate denialists” who reject the idea of all forms of cleaner energy and electric vehicles. Rather, it is an invitation that is both ecological and personal for those who hold progressive views: to turn Christianity on its head, to bring what is divine and holy (Easter) smack down to earth (Earth Day). It is putting together the holy and the world, Creator and creation.

My invitation to think differently began in 2002 when the co-founder of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Sir John Houghton, invited me to Oxford University and made the dangers of climate change real for me. He converted me to climate science and encouraged me to speak out at all costs. I did, at considerable peril, becoming the bete noir of evangelical Christianity and losing my posting but not my calling.

A journey of the heart is what I struggle with every day. I look at the “weather” -– tornadoes ripping apart towns in the Midwest, rainfall in deluges that sweep away parts of western North Carolina, wildfires that destroy major parts of Los Angeles – and there is despair.

And that brings me to the crisis too few of us see: the shrinking of American farmland, which puts the food supply and rural communities at risk. Think about this: Between 2001 and 2016, the nation lost 2,000 acres of farmland every day – 11 million acres – due to development and climate change, according to the American Farmland Trust. Even worse, AFT projects that without some new thinking and different actions, the loss of farmland will jump to 18.4 million acres by 2040, equivalent to the size of South Carolina. This will cause the loss of 115,000 farms, 263,000 lost American jobs, and $11 billion in farm output.

But that is just the beginning of the loss to this country. In 2023, America’s farms directly contributed $222.3 billion to the U.S. economy. Yet, the overall contribution is a magnitude greater because farming is what makes food and beverage manufacturing, food and beverage stores, food services and eating/drinking places, textiles, apparel, leather products, forestry and fishing. In fact, the Agriculture Department’s Economic Research Service calculated that collectively, these outputs from farming contributed roughly $1.537 trillion in value to the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) in 2023.

We know how climate change impacts farmlands. Rising temperatures, altered precipitation patterns, increased extreme weather events, and water scarcity lead to reduced crop yields, livestock losses, soil degradation and changes in agricultural productivity. There is also the terrible problem of food insecurity, where rising prices and decreased supplies of nutritious food cause some to go hungry.

The confluence of Easter and Earth Day tells us this is the time to pay attention and realize the Earth itself suffers. It lives and dies, and so do we.

But in joining in solidarity with the land, we have a heavenly calling. The disciples asked: “How then shall we live?” In her book God of Earth, Kristin Swenson answers, “Live as if it’s a relationship.”

But this reality gives no one any excuses. A wise person put it this way: God ain’t fixin’ nothin’ we won’t fix ourselves. What’s at stake is attitude, our attitude, and whether we will listen to the voices calling us to a new relationship with the Earth. Even in the face of declining farmland and ecological destruction, the recognition of God being among us and urging us on is powerful. It supplies hope and courage to take a stand.

Reverend Richard Cizik, a graduate of Denver Seminary, is executive director of Evangelicals for Democracy. He grew up out West as the son of a farmer, with a grandfather and great-grandfather who were ranchers and ingrained in him a great love of the land. Cizik is known for having popularized the term "creation care" and is considered one of the earliest pioneers of the evangelical climate change movement.

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