On March 31, we gathered in protest because the stakes for wildlife, people, and the future of the Endangered Species Act could not be higher. For the first time in more than 30 years, the Trump administration convened the Endangered Species Committee, often called the “God Squad,” to grant a sweeping exemption from the Endangered Species Act for offshore oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.
For more than 50 years, the Endangered Species Act has been one of the strongest and most effective laws in the United States for preventing extinction. It has helped protect wildlife on the brink and safeguard the habitats that sustain all life. The March 31 protest was about defending that legacy and standing up for a future where decisions about endangered species are guided by science, transparency, and responsibility.
But our gathering was also about something deeper. It was about values.
We were honored to be joined by Avery Davis Lamb, Executive Director of Creation Justice Ministries. Creation Justice Ministries works to educate and mobilize Christians to protect, restore, and rightly share God’s creation.
Avery Davis Lamb brought an essential perspective to the March 31 protest. At a moment when endangered species and fragile ecosystems are under increasing threat, faith voices help remind us that this work is not only political or scientific. It is also moral. It asks what kind of people we want to be, what kind of world we want to leave behind, and whether we are willing to act with care toward the living world entrusted to us.
That perspective matters.
We are grateful to Avery Davis Lamb for standing with us and for bringing the voice of Creation Justice Ministries to this moment.
Full remarks from Avery Davis Lamb are below:
“At Creation Justice Ministries, we represent 39 Christian communions and denominations, with
collectively over 100 million members.
Many of these Christians are honoring Holy Week this week.
Throughout this Holy week, Christians around the world tell and retell the story of a peacemaker
king—Jesus—who was crucified by the political powers of his day.
Put to death by a council that sought to silence his radical, good news.
It’s not lost on me that this same week the so-called God-squad convenes to determine which of God’s creatures are expendable.
Once again, just like that week over 2000 years ago: A council of political leaders gathers to decide what lives and dies.
At the end of this week, we will commemorate Good Friday, the day that Jesus was crucified. As Jesus hangs there on the cross, his final words are:
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
And then: silence.
Silence.
The silence of a call ringing out that is not returned.
I can’t help but think of the call of the Rice’s whale.
I listened to one of the calls of the Rice’s whale last week. It is called a long-moan call. It’s gorgeous, a bass vibrato of a call.
I listen to it and imagine it saying to us: “my friends, my fellow creatures: why have you forsaken me?”
I listen and I wonder, will this call go out into silence?
Will there be a day when the last Rice’s whale long-moan calls out into the water and is not returned?
Why have you forsaken me?
This week, it is not only Christ who cries, “Why have you forsaken me?” Creation is crying it too.
We find ourselves, right now, in a Good Friday moment.
We know that the death and extinction of these creatures – that the extinction of the Rice’s Whale, America’s only endemic whale, is a real possibility.
And yet I hope. Because Good Friday is not the end of the story.
I look toward Easter Sunday, when we learn: resurrection is possible.
And for these species, I know that restoration is possible.
We know the Endangered Species Act works.
The Act has prevented 291 species from going extinct.
291 species whose calls continue to ring out.
291 species whose lives continue to proclaim the glory of God.
291 species who reveal a different piece of the love and nature of God.
The Endangered Species Act is proof that resurrection is not mere belief. It is something we can practice.
14th Century Mystic Priest and Theologian Meister Eckhart once wrote: “Every single creature is full of God and a book about God. Every creature is a word of God. So full of God is every creature.”
So full of God is every creature.
So full of God is the Rice’s whale.
So full of God is the sperm whale
So full of God is the Gulf Sturgeon
So full of God is the Hawksbill, and Kemp’s ridley, and the leatherback, and the loggerhead.
So full of God is every creature that is threatened, endangered, and faces extinction that to lose one is to lose a piece of God.
These creatures are the real God-squad.
I believe that resurrection is possible. I believe that restoration is possible.
But look: we cannot celebrate Easter while continuing to crucify creation.
So to those meeting today, claiming the authority to decide what lives and dies, I say this: That is not your role. That is not your power.
And when you take it, you are playing God.
And we know how that story ends.
You have a choice before you right now: to participate in extinction, or to participate in resurrection.
The Endangered Species Act has already shown us what resurrection looks like: 291 times over.
So what will you do: Choose life? Or be remembered as those who silenced it.
I pray you’ll make the right choice”
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