2019 Town Hall: on Welfare & Poverty

Pete Buttigieg: Every religion says we should care for our neighbors

BUTTIGIEG: Let's talk in language that is understood across the heartland about faith. If you believe that God is watching as poison is being belched into the air of creation, and people are being harmed by it, countries are at risk of vanishing in low-lying areas, what do you suppose God think of that? I bet he thinks it's messed up. You don't have to be religious to see the moral dimensions of this, because, frankly, every religious and non-religious moral tradition tells us that we have some responsibility of stewardship, some responsibility for taking care of what's around us, not to mention taking care of our neighbor. And eventually it gets to the point where this is more about specific people suffering specific harm because of what we're doing right now. At least one way of talking about this is that it's a kind of sin.