| Add these theologians to the 30 million Americans in the National Evangelical Association (NAE) - which released its own climate change warning before the 2004 election called "For the Health of the Nation." Even the Catholic Church, with 65 million Americans and 19 percent of the world's population, is weighing in. Pope Benedict XVI spoke forcefully on the issue:
"[Industrialized nations] are not morally free to repeat the past errors of others by recklessly continuing to damage the environment….Preservation of the environment, promotion of sustainable development and particular attention to climate change are matters of grave concern for the entire human family. No nation or business sector can ignore the ethical implications present in all economic and social development."
It's suddenly apparent that religious leaders recognize stewardship over the earth as a moral imperative. However, the thinking is not yet unanimous, and, as with many religious issues, unanimity seems unlikely.
Religions lack a consensus on matters from male-female equality to contemporary evolutionary theory. On gender relations you might see a scriptural battle between Eve the Apple-giver and Paul's Letter to the Galatians:
"Before this faith came, we were held prisoners by the law, locked up until faith should be revealed. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise." (Galatians 3:23, 28-29, NIV)
When examining modern evolutionary theory an easy contrast is made. Pope John Paul II said evolution is compatible with Biblical instruction about our Creator. Conversely, there is a cottage industry of museums for adults who will not entertain that possibility, museums showing animatronic dinosaurs on Noah's Ark (Creation Museum in Petersburg, KY) and dinosaur fossils dated back to the time of the Pharaohs (Liberty University Museum in Lynchburg, VA).
The squanderers believe that the world has plenty when God so desires, we have Free Will to allocate our resources, and any planetary crisis our misappropriations create is the ordained will of the Lord. As evidence, they cite the first chapter of Genesis, saying, "God blessed them and said to them, 'Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.'"(Genesis 1:28, NIV)
These squanderers omit that after people subdued and ruled the land they also began to chew through God's gift to humanity in a way that even Jesus found distasteful. Perhaps the angriest Jesus is seen in the Bible is His confrontation with the Pharisees in Matthew 23. After calling them a "brood of vipers," He asks how they will escape being condemned to hell. (Matthew 23:33) The word Jesus uses for hell is Gehenna, an open pit of garbage near Jerusalem that was perpetually burning. A landfill serving as a smokestack was the vivid picture that humanity's greatest Teacher chose when He had to explain hell. Also, the fact that he leveled this accusation against the Pharisees shows that even Jesus' tormentors recognized the evil.
The conservationists say that since the Fall of Man from Eden, God charges humanity with a life of labor and toil, cultivation and preservation of His planet until the end of time. The scriptural tradition for this school begins only a few verses later, in the second chapter of Genesis, which says, "The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it." (Genesis 2:15, NIV)
The squanderers tend to huddle together and shake each other's hands to prove their position. They frequently cite the Cornwall Declaration, signed by theologians of several faiths and denominations, as a universal consensus that speaks for Christianity itself. The Cornwall Declaration is rife with soft language punctuated with bogus, incredulous, unsubstantiated claims about the reality of the planetary crisis. A passage from it states: "Some unfounded or undue concerns include fears of destructive manmade global warming, overpopulation, and rampant species loss."
As a counterpoint, the archconservative and conservationist Rich Cizik, the NAE's Vice President for Governmental Affairs, talks about the nature of faith and the limitations of expertise. Cizik believes that if pastors and theologians want scientists to come to them for scriptural interpretation, they must be willing to trust the empirical tests of the scientific community. He became convinced that global warming deserved his attention when he read a survey the magazine Science conducted of peer-reviewed articles written between 1993 and 2003 that included a keyword "climate change." None of the 928 articles, published in peer-reviewed journals, broke the consensus. It could be clearly stated, then, that if a dissenting voice has any basis to claim that climate change isn't happening it should publish facts in a scientific journal and go straight to Sweden to claim the Nobel Prize.
Are evangelicals like Rick Warren and Rich Cizik staying true to the Bible? The Cornwall Declaration implies no. Some of its signatories - such as Dr. Calvin Beisner - say so explicitly. Yet Cizik does not shy away from the discussion. Answering the challenge, he pointedly told Bill Moyers in 2006:
"Look, there were people who said, 'Stay true to the Bible,' in the battle over abolition and slavery in America. And both sides said, 'I appeal to the Bible.' Was one side right and one side wrong? Of course. Why? Because at times we allow our political judgments to get ahead of our Biblical value systems."
Is that a challenging statement? Yes. However, the opposition can be equally specious (claiming Hurricane Katrina was a value judgment from God, as Dr. Beisner has). The matter is not approaching conclusion, but the sides are beginning to firm up, from national figures to small-town pastors. Like the abolition movement, it is beginning to appear that this is a generational conflict that will not be repressed.
If you're interested in the God is Green movement, please help me get attention for it by voting "thumbs up" on my debate question, below:
Link: http://www.10questio...
(Cross posted to other fine blogs, such as www.StreetProphets.com) |
