GTUx and United Nations' Faith for Earth Coalition Announce Partnership to Offer Content at Intersection of Spirituality and Climate Justice
BERKELEY, CA – February 8, 2023 – The Graduate Theological Union and United Nations Environment Programme’s Faith for Earth Coalition are pleased to announce a new partnership leveraging the GTU’s innovative and popular new digital learning platform, GTUx. Guided by each institution’s commitment to positioning faith-centered communities and institutions to help address the climate crisis, GTU and Faith for Earth’s natural alignment will take shape in the delivery of wide-ranging content offerings at the intersection of spirituality and climate justice as hosted and distributed by GTUx.
Faith for Earth is a coalition of the United Nations Environment Programme that recognizes the impact that the spiritual and ethical teachings of the world’s wisdom traditions can have on local and global approaches to protecting the environment. By strategically engaging with faith-based organizations, Faith for Earth is tapping into ancient and modern religious and spiritual teachings to achieve shared advocacy and sustainability goals.
“We are calling on everyone — countries, cities, the private sector, individuals, and faith-based organizations — to engage with the Coalition for integrating faith, values, and ethics, as well as the incredible social and economic power of faiths in global environmental policies, for driving momentum to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and to protect and sustain life on Earth,” said Dr. Iyad Abumoghli, Founding Director of the Faith for Earth Coalition. “We are pleased to partner with a platform like GTUx, which has a shared goal of reaching a motivated, spiritually driven audience that is eager to put learnings into action”
With a rapidly growing user base of more than 7,000 learners, GTUx is a donation-based digital learning platform with global reach that was launched in March 2022 to help situate questions of spirituality and religion at the nexus of some of the most critical issues of our time.
This collaboration builds upon the ongoing success of the GTU’s Sustainability 360 Initiative and the Center for Climate Justice and Faith, as well as strong engagement with content that GTUx has already developed in this area, including the popular offering Ecospirituality: Environmental Pathways to Healing.
“Religious and spiritual traditions have served as mechanisms for meaning-making for millennia, and we recognize that this need becomes increasingly pressing — and just as relevant as ever — as we engage with an issue like climate change, which is poised to change the nature of life as we know it,” said Sephora Markson, Chief Strategy Officer at the GTU and GTUx Executive Lead. “We are proud to partner with such an esteemed and values-aligned organization as UNEP’s Faith for Earth in our shared goal to help a broader public engage in that meaning-making process through learning, and then catalyze that learning to create change.”
Content offerings released through this partnership will be available for learners at gtu.edu/x beginning in the spring of 2023.
# # #
About Faith for Earth
The Faith for Earth Coalition or “UNEP Faith for Earth” is a global programme of the United Nations Environment Programme designed for the strategic engagement and partnership with faith-based organizations to collectively achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and fulfill the objectives of the 2030 Agenda.
About the Graduate Theological Union
The Graduate Theological Union (GTU) is one of the world’s most comprehensive centers for religious education, and one of the largest and most diverse partnerships of seminaries and graduate schools in the United States.
More than a consortium and academy, the GTU is a dynamic laboratory that provides scholar-innovators with a staging ground to reimagine the future of interreligious life. An education with the GTU equips leaders to translate learning into action that will have tangible impact in the world.
Since its founding in 1962, the GTU has been at the forefront of interreligious education and dialogue. The work of our eminent alumni, students, and faculty across cultures, traditions, and technologies continues to create new pathways to a truly pluralistic future.
Discover more about our programs and the work of our alumni and community at gtu.edu.