There's been a lot of good stuff appearing in the LA Times of late. Yesterday's entertainment news featured this article about the proliferation of green thinking amongst the religious right, including a 3-part documentary series that premiers tonight entitled Is God Green?, in which born-again enviro, Bill Moyers, investigates global warming.
[W]hen it comes to broadening the reach of the environmental movement to red state America, the real savior turns out to be the Rev. Richard Cizik of the National Assn. of Evangelicals, America's most influential Christian lobbying group, representing 45,000 churches and roughly 30 million believers across the country. According to two new documentaries, it is evangelicals like Cizik who may do more to make global warming a front-and-center issue than hundreds of white-wine fundraisers in Bel-Air and Manhattan's Upper West Side.
The article takes the stance that An Inconvenient Truth was primarily a choir-preaching and ultimately niche (though high-grossing) film, and that Christian and entertainment-oriented productions like tonight's show and the forthcoming The Great Warming will better reinforce the urgency of the problem. There's room for argument around whether preaching to the choir is an obviously ineffectual approach (we've been debating this internally of late), but that aside, this is an interesting take.
But if you have faith that Jesus is coming "real soon now", as many do, the environmental movement is a waste of time. That choir has been preached to and environmentalists must move on without them. The best that can be hoped for will be if believers in the second coming are willing to get out of the way of fools who don't "get it" and not actively oppose them.
Posted by: barry on October 11, 2006 7:00 PM
To echo somewhat what Barry said, it's kind of an uphill battle, considering the way many people interpret Corinthians 3:1-3 and echoed in passages like Matthew 6:19-21. I think a lot of Christians are hostile towards environmentalism because they see it as a form of idolatry and materialism.
Environmentalism (a lot of times) tries to take pages from the Christian playbook about sin and redemption, but the problem usually is that even though there's the notion of deferred rewards, Christianity provides tangible, immediate rewards in terms of relief in facing mortality, isolation, one's regrets, and so on. Environmentalism, on the other hand, is a process of never being satisfied, always feeling like you're doing something wrong no matter what, yet there's no omnipotent, loving being to forgive you for it.
Instead of trying to convince them about the goals of environmentalists, perhaps some of us could try to learn from them why Christianity (and the major religions in general) are so successful.
Posted by: Joseph Willemssen on October 11, 2006 9:45 PM
Something else to consider is the references to humans having 'dominion' (sometimes also given as 'power') over God's creation, as stated in Genesis 1:26. Interpretation of this particular passage may also be key to seeing how many Christians approach environmentalism: is this 'dominion' a wielding of power (careless and unsustainable extraction of resources, for eg.) or is it a caring maintenance?
Something to mull over, especially when you consider the references made to this passage in the original historical foundations of many commonwealth countries like the Dominions of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and, at one time, Newfoundland.
Posted by: JustinBathurst on October 12, 2006 5:30 AM
Barry,
As an evangelical, it is easy to fall into the trap that Jesus' return is coming soon and therefore we don't need to worry about the here and now. The very first generation of Christians were convinced of Jesus' imminent return and so have some in every Christian generation since.
The bible says that God will come like a thief in the night, and that no one knows the time except God. With that in mind, it is absolutely important that Christians rise up and address this issue. If we as believers continue to hold jobs, raise families, and save for the future in case Jesus does not come tomorrow, so we must also protect the environment.
Though Christians and secular environmentalists don't share the same beliefs about the world, they must unite to try and save it.
Posted by: Chris on October 12, 2006 9:06 AM
As Paul Woodruff has written, Reverence is a bedrock of ethics, religious or secular. The opposite of Reverence is Hubris, whether claiming to know the mind of God or that there are no Mysteries.
Posted by: David Foley on October 12, 2006 9:29 AM
And what if he's already shown up and the world just failed to take notice? Maybe he's already working on implementing a more systematically sustainable society.
Many Christians today are realizing that not only does Genesis call on us to be stewards of the earth, but that the return of Jesus Christ will not mean an escape from the earth, but a restoration of the earth. I know there are passages which some interpret as indicating the earth will be destroyed by fire, but there are also those which clearly point to "heaven on earth", such as Paul's mention in the letter to the Romans that all creation is groaning waiting for mankind to be restored to their original position and the Book of Revelation describing the new Jerusalem descending down to the earth.
Posted by: Bob Royce on October 16, 2006 9:29 AM
Please note that the post above was about the religious *right*, not all American Christians. Hooking them into the dialogue of sustainability is more difficult if for no other reason than it is considered a 'left' idea. That's why people like Rev. Cizik have such an impact.
For non-fundamentalist Christians, David is right, the key idea is reverence for God's creation. In my experience, this group doesn't spend a lot of time thinking about Jesus' imminent return.
And I'm sorry Mike, but the idea is completely incompatible with a Christian worldview.
Posted by: justus on October 16, 2006 7:57 PM
Discussion on this issue in evangelical circles is abundant. As an evangelical, I thought the article was very fair. Unfortunately, the film might have been more effective if the political intentions of the producer were not what they were.
If interested, discussion on this documentary is ongoing here: The Point
worldchanging was founded on the idea that real solutions already exist for building the future we want. it's just a matter of grabbing hold and getting moving.
