Americans working at the interface between religion and care for the global environment have a new spring in their step these days. The reason is a paradoxical one. Donald Trump’s decision to pull the country out of the Paris accord on climate change has galvanised green-minded congregations, and even those who have not hitherto been especially green, to think harder about what they can do for the planet. The effect is especially noticeable on America’s West Coast, a bastion both of environmentalism and of unconventional forms of religion.

The president’s move has “rallied people, and they are saying they can’t let this happen”, says the Reverend Sally Bingham, an Episcopal priest who is also the point-person for the environment in the diocese of California. She is the founder of Interfaith Power and Light an association which groups congregations and faith communities in at least 38 American states. Since well before the Paris summit that led to a new global accord, her movement has been inviting parishes and individuals to make their own commitments to reducing their carbon footprint, with a view to becoming carbon neutral by 2050. Since the withdrawal announcement, at least 7,000 people and associations have responded to a campaign entitled “We’re Still In”, which proclaims that federal policies will make no difference to their determination to help keep the world from warming.

Religious groups are not alone, of course, in pledging to make their own contribution to reaching the Paris goals, whatever the White House may do. America’s leading mayors and some state governors have made a similar response. California’s Governor, Jerry Brown, has pledged to convene an international “climate summit” in San Francisco in September 2018 with a view to bolstering the Paris agreement; he insists that Mr Trump “doesn’t speak for the rest of America” when he opts out of global efforts to mitigate warming. But Ms Bingham says the churches have been in close tandem with, and often ahead of, secular authorities in asserting that curbing carbon can and must go ahead regardless. She expects Grace Cathedral (pictured), the stronghold of the Episcopal Church in San Francisco, to be an important venue for next year’s summit.

Further up the West Coast, in the state of Washington, there is a similar spirit of exuberant militancy, honed by long experience and fired up by recent events. About 500 religious communities have signed up to Earth Ministry, a Seattle-based initiative which combines practical advice on how to make a congregation greener in its own behaviour with lobbying over broader environmental issues, both local and global. Last year, seven member churches on Whidbey Island teamed up to root for a bill designed to outlaw certain chemicals that were deemed hazardous to children. The group is involved in a campaign to curb coal exports from Washington’s ports, and it opposes the erection of new oil infrastructure in ecologically sensitive parts of America’s northwest. Jessie Dye, the Ministry’s outreach director, says it has made a gradual move from local self-improvement to advocacy; people realised that switching light bulbs and recycling, important as that sort of thing was, would not be enough.

Such activities would be anathema to the hard core of white conservative evangelicals who were a significant part of Mr Trump’s electoral base. In one version or another, they broadly affirm the president’s argument that the Paris accords are unfair to America and will compromise its economic growth, boosting the country’s competitors. The picture is mixed: about a decade ago, a segment of America’s evangelical leadership became converts to the idea that global warming was an urgent problem. But Willis Jenkins, a religious-studies professor at the University of Virginia, has argued that the persistence of an eco-sceptical evangelical lobby may have emboldened the president to walk away from Paris.

Albert Mohler, a powerful figure in the evangelical world, has asserted that much environmental discourse runs counter to Christian thinking because it regards homo sapiens as a problem rather than as a species with a divine calling to exercise dominion over the earth. A particularly vitriolic form of anti-environmental religious thinking, a series of videos entitled “Resisting the green dragon”, warns that concern about the planet is a smokescreen for an effort to take over and control the lives of Americans.

But Ms Bingham insists that these days, it is becoming easier to win over religious people, including evangelicals, who may not have developed any strong views about the environment either way. Such people may still find terms like “climate action” a turnoff, but they are open to persuasion that care for God’s creation is a religious duty. “If you believe in loving your neighbour, you don’t pollute your neighbour’s air,” she says. “And there is almost nobody who thinks that as a religious duty, we are supposed to wreck Creation.”