Event: God, Migration, and the Climate Crisis

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Where does faith fit into the understanding of climate change and humanity’s role in it? How can faith communities mobilize to help those affected by climate displacement? What can people of faith do to protect our planet and those living on it?

These are just a few of the topics Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service addresses in “God, Migration, and the Climate Crisis,” a virtual expert panel. Moderated by LIRS CEO Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, the session includes celebrated environmentalist and New Yorker columnist Bill McKibben, ethics and climate justice expert Dr. Cynthia Moe-Lobeda, and Pastor Tommy Richter, who saw firsthand the effects of climate change on his congregation in a remote Alaskan village.

Join us to explore the intersection between climate displacement and faith, which includes discussion of religious participation in public discourse and policy on environmental issues, faith-based sources of environmental knowledge, the reality of climate displacement and ways it will continue to affect faith communities, the call to environmental advocacy, and religion’s role in articulating new forms of social justice.

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Meet Our Experts

Bill McKibbin

Bill McKibben is an author, environmentalist, and activist. In 1988 he wrote The End of Nature, the first book for a common audience about global warming. He is a co-founder and Senior Advisor at 350.org, an international climate campaign that works in 188 countries around the world.

Pastor Tommy Richter

Pastor Thomas Richter (ELCA) is the former pastor of Shishmaref Lutheran Church, the northernmost outpost for Lutheran ministry. At the mission church in Alaska, he experienced the effects of trying to Pastor a community being affected by climate change and possible displacement firsthand.

Dr. Cynthia Moe-Lobeda

Dr. Moe-Lobeda is a Professor of Theological and Social Ethics who has worked in Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America, consulting in theological ethics, moral agency and hope, public church, faith-based resistance to systemic injustice, the Bible and ethics, and climate justice as related to race and class. She is a co-founder of Seattle University’s Center for Environmental Justice and Sustainability and of the new Center for Climate Justice and Faith at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary.

Meet Our Moderator

Krish O’Mara Vignarajah

Krish O’Mara Vignarajah is the President and CEO of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service – a former refugee herself, Krish served in the Obama White House as Policy Director to Former First Lady Michelle Obama, and at the State Department as Senior Advisor under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of State John Kerry.