Recently, both President Bush and an oil company spokesperson, speaking to the rising gas prices, pushed for building more refineries and upping the production of oil here in the States. No mention of exorbitant oil company profits. No mention of our need to drastically reduce use of cars and gasoline, to change lifestyles. No mention of the working poor who are stuck without public transportation to jobs remote from their inner-city or inner-ring suburban homes.

Reducing dependence on the automobile will mean a lot more than raising fuel efficiency standards for cars and buying more efficient automobiles. It will need a change of lifestyle, removing frivolous car trips, using public transportation, and changing the priorities of government transportation funding. Only about 25% of the transportation dollars in most places now support public transportation, and it is hard to find public transportation to many jobs in the suburbs. The highway and automobile lobby have been effective on the national and state level. We've got to change that with loud and strong voices for public transportation.

One has to allow more time to get places using public transportation--perhaps a good thing to slow down our rushing lifestyles and get more exercise getting to and from. My elevated train route is a microcosm of society: suited suburban riders with neighborhood service workers, elderly and young, white and black, Hispanic and Asian. The trains are refreshing "bumping into" places where different people mix and find common ground in talking about the most recent delay, laughing at the antics of a child, and rolling our eyes at some loud cell phone talker.

Would that more sermons, writings, and our voices push elected officials for more and more available public transportation, for the sake of equity, for community, for our health. We would all be the better for it.

Paul Hawken, a well known environmentalist and author, comments that we may actually have to alter lifestyles and perhaps buy less, rather than simply buying green. I appreciate Hawken's sentiment, as our culture is constantly shouting at us through advertisements in all sorts of mediums to buy more. Buy more to make yourself feel good. Buy more if you are feeling good. Buy more if you are unsure of how you are feeling but because it's cool and everyone is doing it. The same strategy is being used on the eco-friendly consumer.

True environmental consciousness will challenge the way we respond to our culture of consumerism and create changes in lifestyles. I do think that you can be an environmentally conscious consumer. However, this will most likely mean being less of a consumer to begin with, and when you do have to put on your consumer hat, be critical and read between the lines of "brand organic" (as well as everyone else's) advertisements.

Reduce, Reuse, then Recycle. And if you still need something new, do your research before you hit the stores and know what all those "green labels" are/are not actually telling you.

Kim Szeto is a former Sojourners intern now working for the Community Food Security Coalition.

As the nation's second largest denomination (after the Roman Catholic Church), Southern Baptists have been given much, so their potential to do good is considerable - as is the danger of missing opportunities to do good. Sadly, until now, constituents and leaders of the 16-million-member Convention have tended to lag behind other large Christian communities when it comes to addressing the issue of environmental stewardship in general and climate change in particular. But that may be changing.

In 2007, the Convention took the positive step of passing a statement affirming the need for Baptists to care for creation, but a new group of Southern Baptists - including many notable Baptist leaders - have said the statement was too timid: it could be interpreted by "the world," they said, as "uncaring, reckless and ill-informed." Through the new declaration, "A Southern Baptist Declaration on the Environment and Climate Change," these leaders are calling Baptists to keep moving forward in care and healing for God's precious planet. Jonathan Merritt, a young leader who helped inspire the new declaration, expressed his motivation in language that resonates deeply with Southern Baptists: to trash this beautiful planet - which is God's handiwork and declares God's glory - is like tearing out pages from the Bible.

True, many SBC notables have not yet signed the new statement. But current Convention president Frank Page did, along with 43 other exemplary SBC leaders including Ed Stetzer, Larissa Arnault, David Clark, Timothy George, John Hammett, Darrin Patrick, Jonathan Merritt, and two previous Convention presidents, Jack Graham and James Merritt. Their website (www.baptistcreationcare.org) has room for additional signatories, so we may see the center of gravity shift further toward environmental responsibility in the coming days and weeks.

This step is important for a number of reasons. First, and most obviously, when a group as large and influential as the SBC accepts increasing moral responsibility for better care of the planet, the birds of the air and flowers of the field will benefit, as will all our children and grandchildren. Not only that, but by taking more seriously what I call the prosperity crisis (that our kind of prosperity is unsustainable in relation to the planet, thus reducing the prosperity of future generations), the SBC helps shift the larger evangelical community toward greater environmental responsibility. This shift has been gaining momentum in recent years in large part due to the good work of Jim Ball and the Evangelical Environmental Network (LINK).

Building on this momentum, evangelical Christians, with obvious influence in the Republican party and growing participation in the Democratic party, can increasingly join other Christian communities in being strong advocates for better environmental policy in the U.S. at large, whoever is our next president and whichever party controls the next Congress. By further shifting public opinion in the nation that consumes disproportionate amounts of resources and produces disproportionate amounts of greenhouse gases, members of the SBC can play a greater role in helping our nation move from being a global laggard to a global leader in this important moment of danger and opportunity.

I frequently hear from young Southern Baptists who express deep frustration with the ethos and image projected by some of their leaders in recent years: they want their denomination to rise above the old polarities of left and right, choosing transcendent Biblical values over ideological and partisan alignments. The current and future signatories of this statement will give young Southern Baptists something to be proud of - and that's no small thing.

Brian McLaren (brianmclaren.net) is board chair for Sojourners. He writes and speaks about the intersection of faith and global crises.

At last week's New Baptist Unity Conference in Atlanta, an estimated 20,000 Baptists spanning the moderate to progressive spectrum gathered for three days of worship, fellowship, and training. Even though Southern Baptists were conspicuously missing, the conference united members of denominations from the American Baptist Convention, Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, National Baptist Convention USA, and the Progressive National Baptist Convention, among others, to collectively represent over 17 million U.S. Christians.

As the core convener and patron of the event, the longstanding Baptist Bible study leader and former President Jimmy Carter opened the conference with a challenge that strikes at the heart of division within the Baptist and Christian church at large. Carter named the wedge issues that have fragmented the church - from the ordination of women to homosexuality, abortion, capital punishment, etc. - and then asked the participants whether a shared belief in the saving grace of God through Jesus Christ and a commitment to spreading the gospel was more important than all these divisions combined. Carter compared these divisions to the ones that Paul addressed in his letters to the early church in Corinth. According to Carter, "these animosities have become a cancer that is metastasizing in the body of Christ."

The conference provided ample testimony to the ways in which Baptists are uniting across theology, ideology, geography, and race. It placed a particular emphasis on the themes of diversity, good news to the poor, and welcoming the stranger. Speakers included Rev.Tony Campolo, Marian Wright Edelman, Dr. William Shaw, Senator Charles Grassley, and Bill Clinton. While many in the media and conservative circles cynically accused the conference as an attempt to baptize the Democratic Party, the event upheld a staunch commitment to nonpartisanship and offered a prophetic challenge to both Democrats and Republicans. As an associate minister at a church that's a member of both the American Baptist Church and the Progressive National Baptist Convention, I straddle the historic black and predominantly white Baptist worlds. It was significant that this gathering took place in the seat of the South and demonstrated a genuine commitment to uniting across the racial divide. An entire worship service focused on the theme of welcoming the stranger and dealt head-on with the polemical issue of immigration - emphasizing the need for a biblically-based response characterized by compassion, mercy, and justice.

Historically, Baptists have been reluctant to engage in politics, due in part to an abiding belief in the separation between church and state. It was a Baptist minister that played an instrumental role in convincing the founding fathers that this separation represented the best way to protect religion from the interference of the state and the best way to safeguard the state from the interference of religion. Throughout the plenary sessions and workshops, I sensed a growing recognition that this separation should not lead to a fast from politics. Baptists' voices are expressing a growing desire to address the great moral issues of our time, including poverty, climate change, religious freedom, and HIV/AIDS. While real disagreements still exist, particularly around the differences between charity and justice or systemic change and personal transformation, momentum is growing favoring deeper and broader political engagement. Perhaps one of the greatest and most hopeful signs of this nascent tidal wave was on display at a luncheon featuring former Vice President Al Gore. In contrast to the Southern Baptists, who spurned Gore's advocacy to open eyes around the intensifying crisis of global warming, thousands of conference participants gave a rousing standing ovation to his now famous hour-long Power Point presentation, as Baptist leaders listened to ways in which we have shown contempt for God's creation.

The conference recognized the difficulties that lie ahead in sustaining this movement. Organizers seem committed to avoiding the creation of a new organization or reinventing the wheel. I have been struck by the degree to which Baptist denominations lack a substantial staff presence in Washington, D.C., working to influence public policy and advocate around Baptist concerns. While most mainline churches have full-time policy staff and Washington-based offices, Baptists are often under-represented. This is not to equate a presence in Washington with policy change, yet a more mobilized constituency of 17 million Baptists would have a profound degree of influence. One concrete outcome of this New Covenant Baptist movement would be to combine efforts and resources across these Baptist denominations to establish a joint advocacy presence to better represent the voices of progressive and moderate Baptists across the country. A Baptist constituency united around shared biblical values and a focused agenda on common ground issues like ending poverty would represent good news for the church and our nation.

Adam Taylor is director of campaigns and organizing for Sojourners.

The Archbishop of Canterbury posted his New Year's message on YouTube - inviting everyone making a resolution in 2008 to keep asking, "What world do we want to pass on to the next generation?" Filmed between a recycling center and the Canterbury Cathedral, Archbishop Rowan Williams said:

In a society where we think of so many things as disposable, where we expect to be constantly discarding last year's gadget and replacing it with this year's model - do we end up tempted to think of people and relationships as disposable? ... If we live in a context where we construct everything from computers to buildings to relationships on the assumption that they'll need to be replaced before long, what have we lost? ... God is involved in building to last … God doesn't give up on the material of human lives ... and God asks us to approach one another and our physical world with the same commitment ... God doesn't do 'waste' ... .

Rose Marie Berger is an associate editor for Sojourners.

The watered-down energy bill passed by the Senate on Thursday raised fuel-economy standards by 40 percent—not a bad thing. Congress also boosted the production of biofuels to 36 billion gallons per year by 2022—and 21 billion must come from something other than corn-based ethanol, which is good since it takes more fossil fuel to make corn ethanol than corn ethanol saves. According to a study by Cornell University, "Ethanol production using corn grain required 29 percent more fossil energy than the ethanol fuel produced." Sadly, Congress also gutted the portion of the bill that would have required utility companies to provide at least 15 percent renewable power and the part about increasing taxes on Big Oil.

For more on the inside story on biofuels, read Elizabeth Palmberg's "Do the Math: Don't buy the corporate agrofuel greenwash" (Sojourners, January 2008).

Rose Marie Berger is an associate editor for Sojourners.

"We have the ability to solve this crisis and avoid the worst of its consequences, if we act boldly, decisively and quickly", said Al Gore in is Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech. He called on the U.S. and China, the worst polluters, to stop blaming others and take action "or stand accountable before history for their failure to act." God calls us to care for creation and the generations to come; we, too, will stand judged if we do not rouse from our doze and not only call for action on the national scene, but set an example with our own actions.

I was recently in Germany at a gathering of Catholics and Protestants discussing what kind of Europe they wanted, especially around the issues of peace, environment, and human suffering. I was heartened by the signs of making a difference of the long time efforts at the issues of peace and environment. One of the outcomes of the meeting was to call on the Church to set an example of care for the environment in every new building project they do, making sure they were energy efficient, used solar or thermal technology, etc. I hope we challenge the Church here in the U.S. to set an example, not only in new construction efforts, but in retrofitting our buildings, in encouraging parishioners to walk more, (drive less), to re-use, etc.

Bethel New Life, a faith-based community development corporation on Chicago's west side, built a "smart, green building" at a major transit stop in the community, cutting energy usage in half with a green roof, solar panels, super insulation, etc. Bethel recently received the GOLD LEED rating for environmental excellence, a first in a low-income community. The building, connected to the transit platform, houses a day care center, employment services, a community-focused bank, and community owned businesses - a coffee shop and sandwich shop, among others. This development had been a long and tortuous effort - in assembling the funds, acquiring building permits, and finding contractors who could do things differently. It is a great example of intentional development that creates multiplying impact on community and environment.

Mary Nelson is president emeritus of Bethel New Life, a faith-based community development corporation on the west side of Chicago. She is also a board member of Sojourners.

The new 2007-2008 UN Human Development report is focused on "Fighting climate change: Human solidarity in a divided world." According to news stories, the report clearly links overcoming climate change with global poverty:

"The poorest countries and most vulnerable citizens will suffer the earliest and most damaging setbacks, even though they have contributed least to the problem," the report says.
…

As the world's richest countries bear the greatest responsibility, the UN Development Programme called on them to bear the largest burden in cutting emissions and in providing financial aid to the poor.

And, as is true with so many of the big issues facing us,

"The world lacks neither the financial resources nor the technological capabilities to act," the UN report said. "What is missing is a sense of urgency, human solidarity, and collective interest."

At its board meeting last month, the National Association of Evangelicals formally named Leith Anderson as its president. Anderson is senior pastor of Wooddale Church in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, and has been serving as interim president of the NAE for the past year.

I've had the opportunity to spend some time with Leith Anderson. I believe he is the kind of leader most needed these days, both for the NAE and for the wider evangelical community. He has both the heart of a pastor and the passion of a prophet, and he finds ways to be true to his convictions and be committed to bridge-building.

In a recent interview with Christianity Today, Anderson spoke of the NAE and public policy,

There is no shortage of evangelicals that have passion about every topic in contemporary life. The challenge here is not to find people who are interested. There are plenty of people who are interested. It's, How do we unite evangelicals in understanding what the issues are and having a moral perspective in how we approach them?

And, in developing that moral perspective, he noted

We have a document that is called "For the Health of the Nation." They are seven priorities that the NAE organizes around in terms of being a public voice.

[The document] relates to religious freedom, sanctity of human life, human rights, and creation care. It was first issued in 2003 and then reaffirmed by the NAE in March of this year. What we're doing is organizing many of the activities of the Washington office and the association around each one. These are big topics like justice and compassion for the poor and the vulnerable.

On immigration reform, one of the most controversial issues in America today, Anderson said,

I'm hoping that in the future we are also going to be able to engage more on the issue of immigration in America. It's a pressing issue that the country needs to unite around. We need to have a biblical voice. We need to recognize this is a high concern for the Hispanic community, which has a large numbers of evangelicals within it. Hispanic churches are the fastest growing in the nation and immigration is a top priority. Up to this point, NAE has not made any formal statements on it. I just anticipate this will be a growing priority and concern which fits under the topic of justice.

I congratulate Leigh Anderson on his new position, and look forward to working with him.

I have had some respectful debate with Chuck Colson in the past, but I can't help but applaud - with a standing ovation, actually - his recent statement about the environment. True, his statement could be cynically judged as an attempt to help certain evangelicals save face - in particular, evangelicals who have been anti-environment on the basis of not believing the growing scientific data about global warming - too often supported by truly sketchy biblical proof texting. But in the interest of saving the planet, and saving millions of lives in it, I'm all for anyone saving face who needs to do so. We are, after all, in a faith that is all about saving love.

Colson says:

But for Christians, the question of global warming should not stop us from identifying a critical worldview issue here—one on which every Christian can, or should, agree: and that's the importance of good stewardship toward the rest of creation. There are things we can do now to be good stewards that do not require us to get all of the answers that are going to come on global warming.

Later, he asks:

Can you think of one instance where Scripture praises excessive consumption or waste?

And concludes:

I can't ... Working with institutions to reduce their energy usage ... is good stewardship. And it does not depend on what the scientists eventually can prove about global warming. It is all laid out for us already in the scriptures.

Chuck is spot on. The truth is, large sectors of our religion have become "worldly" in a subtle but powerful way: we have been guilty of an unholy but socially acceptable syncretism between our faith and consumerism. One can't help but applaud Colson's desire to address this compromise.

In my recent book, Everything Must Change, I describe our consumerist system as "insane and suicidal," tempting us to:

act as though the resources we consume are infinite and the wastes we produce are invisible. Just as our bodies consume food and produce excrement, in this economy we consume trees and produce smoke, consume clean air and produce smog. ...

Socially ... we consume time and produce fatigue; consume art and talent and produce entertainment and amusement; consume work and leisure and produce paychecks and heart attacks. And ultimately we consume communities and produce extended families; consume extended families and produce nuclear families; consume nuclear families and produce individuals; consume individuals and produce consumers; and finally, consume consumers themselves and produce disembodied fragments called 'wants' and 'needs' and 'markets' and segments' and 'anxieties' and 'drives' that the economy consumes and excretes and reconsumes in a kind of cannibalistic ferment or rot.

A social system thus based on consumption and excretion, I conclude, can aptly be described as an "excrement factory." One can only thank God that Colson is adding his voice and influence to a call for a better way of living - a life of careful stewardship rather than careless consumption and excretion. May we, as Colson says, "stop arguing long enough to start being good stewards today." Amen, Chuck Colson!

Brian McLaren (brianmclaren.net) is board chair of Sojourners, and author of Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crises, and a Revolution of Hope.

Last week, the Nobel committee announced its annual Peace Prize, awarding it jointly to Al Gore and the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It is a significant recognition for Gore, who has been transformed from a presidential candidate who lost (even though he won) into an environmental evangelist who has changed public opinion on the threat of global warming. His response to the award was that he will use it to continue his work to increase awareness of "a true planetary emergency" and press the world's nations to combat its threats. "The climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity," Gore told the press.

Gore spent years slogging through presentations to small audiences with a slide show. Now the slide show has become an Academy Award-winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, and its author has won a Nobel Prize. His deep and passionate commitment led to his persistence, and that persistence is beginning to show results.

The issue of climate change was there all along, but it took the research of an international committee of scientists and an evangelist who publicized their research to make a difference. Critics say Gore is alarmist, but that's always the role of an evangelist. There is doom to come if you don't change your ways. But redemption is always possible with conversion leading to a change of mind and heart – that leads to a change in direction and life choices. Many of our most effective social change movements have been spurred by spiritual transformation.

There is more and more evidence that the warnings are not exaggerated. The polar ice caps are melting at a shocking rate. In September, the Guardian reported that in one week an area nearly twice the size of the UK had melted in the Arctic. In fact, I recently heard that over the past year, an area as large as the U.S. east of the Mississippi melted. It is indeed a crisis of biblical proportions.

I congratulate Al Gore for the Nobel Peace Prize. He deserves our gratitude and thanks. But more importantly, we need to respond to his altar call and change our lifestyles before it is too late and the doom is upon us.

Last week, I wrote about U.N. Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon's speech to a dinner hosted by the National Association of Evangelicals and the Micah Challenge. While the main part of his speech was on the challenge of meeting the Millennium Development Goals, he closed by linking that to "another moral imperative" – acting to stop global warming.

On this Blog Action Day for the environment, the words of the Secretary General are worth emphasizing. He noted that

Climate change affects us all, but it does not affect us all equally. Those who are least able to cope are being hardest hit. Those who have done the least to cause the problem bear the gravest consequences.

He cited the dependence of "hundreds of millions of people in Asia and the Americas on mountain snow and glaciers for their water," and the catastrophic threat as the ice and snow melt. Growing droughts in Africa due to climate change threaten the lives of those dependent on subsistence agriculture for survival. Then came his call:

We have an ethical obligation to right this injustice. We have a duty to protect the most vulnerable. Without a strong global effort against global warming, we will fail in achieving the Millennium Development Goals and the implicit human right to economic justice and development.

Without a strong global effort against global warming, humankind could even be wiped out, along with other species. Our earth is God's creation. We are its custodians. We can no longer look the other way.

The good news is that people and institutions of faith all over the world agree. This gives me great hope.

There is now a strong consensus among scientists and the religious community, including evangelical leaders, that while the hour is late, we still have a chance to make a difference. If we are to honor the biblical commandment to be good custodians of God's creation, we have no choice.

Perhaps I am dumb, but I had never connected flicking a switch to turn on the lights with increased asthma in children, higher levels of mercury in the Chesapeake Bay (and the need to stay away from eating too much fish), mountain top removal in West Virginia, and global warming. Over the past few weeks I have been working on a book project and had to look more closely at our use of energy as it relates to global warming. I never knew that the primary consumer of energy in the U.S., and the largest producer of greenhouse gases, is the electricity generation sector (39 percent of both). These amounts are then allocated to other economic sectors based on retail sales. I should not have been surprised to discover that we use more electricity in our homes than in any other area, including industry. Taking a step further, I found that 57 percent of the fuel my energy provider uses is coal - the most polluting of the types of fuel available in terms of greenhouse gas emissions - not only affecting global warming, but contributing to ground level ozone (air pollution). These plants also emit small particulate matter which can get into lungs, causing increased asthma and other lung disorders.

I'm not sure where my company's coal comes from, but whether is from West Virginia, Pennsylvania, or some other location, my use of electricity, as well as that of my friends and my church, are what drives the energy company to utilize this coal to produce the energy we demand. I grieve for the loss of mountain tops that change the appearance of the area where my mother was born; for the fact that some of the local people there no longer have clear drinking water because of the run off caused by coal extraction processes, that wildlife no longer has a home. I am sad that the fish in the Bay are sickening, that the climate is changing, that we have bad air days because of ozone, and that asthma rates are growing. I wonder why this area has such a high cancer rate. All these things seem out of my control. They are happening around me, generated by forces I cannot see or relate to. But then I turn on the television, the dishwasher, the air conditioner. I am part of the picture. What I do does affect how the mountains look in West Virginia. It may be a small part, but there is a definite connection.

Part of the solution is cleaning up power plant emissions; part may be in finding new fuels. But the part that I have the most control over, and responsibility for, is my own use of energy. Some suggest changing light bulbs, others using more energy efficient appliances, letting the sun and wind dry clothes outside, turning off computers and other equipment that have standby modes, and using electricity to keep tiny bulbs burning. It is, in fact, very empowering to understand that by a flick of a switch I can make a statement about how I care for the mountains of West Virginia. It may not be much of one, not sufficient for the need, but at least it is immediate and accessible to me, my friends, and everyone else as well.

Ginny Vroblesky is the former national coordinator of A Rocha USA.

According to the World Wildlife Fund, each of us needs about 2.5 acres of arable land to be sustained with needed food. Then we need to add another two acres or so - enough land to sustain the plants and animals that keep our ecosystem balanced and fertile. So, each of the 6.7 billion human beings requires, at minimum, 4.45 acres of fertile land.

But the math stopped working in the latter part of the previous century. The fact is, we're using about 5.44 acres per person on average, which exceeds the carrying capacity of our planet. And these numbers are skewed by our disproportionate ecological footprint as Americans - we require over 23 acres per person to sustain us at the standard of living to which we have become accustomed.

Perhaps we can be forgiven for developing this unsustainable lifestyle because we didn't know what we were doing. But now, as the information becomes available - and increasingly incontrovertible - we have a new responsbility and opportunity. And here is my firm belief: whatever the pleasures that come from living an unsustainable, and therefore unwise, life, the pleasures of living a wise and sustainable life will be far greater.

I was speaking on these topics recently, and a woman told me she wrote a note to her husband during my talk, saying something like, "You got me up at 7 a.m. to hear some guy make me feel guilty for being a successful American? Thanks a lot!" But she told me later, with some emotion, that by the end of the talk, she felt God had spoken to her. "The Holy Spirit washed over me," she said. She was genuinely excited about the chance to learn to live better, and to seek a higher kind of success than we have achieved so far - a wise success, a good success, a sustainable success.

This is true in my own life. When I was researching my most recent book, I kept adding some small choices to my life to adjust my lifestyle to what I was learning. For example, we set a moratorium on incandescent bulbs in our house. Whenever one blows, we're replacing it with a compact flourescent, and it feels fantastic to do so. I took about an hour and built a composting bin in my back yard, and it's really enjoyable to add biodegradable kitchen scraps to it each day. These are small things, but I think if you try them, you'll agree: this isn't drudgery and painful sacrifice.

As the psalmist said, "You show me the path of life. In your presence is fullness of joy; in your right hand are pleasures forevermore." I think it was Jane Goodall who said something like this: "You thought the age of reason was good? Wait until you see the age of love!" And I would add, "You thought the age of consumption and waste was good? Wait until you experience the joy of the age of sustainability and wise use!"

In Deuteronomy 15, God promised the people that if they lived according to the Lord's ways, there would be enough for everyone and "there will be no one in need among you." This is the dream: that we learn to live "in the ways of the Lord" so that there is enough for everyone and the planet is well-cared for, flourishing and green, full of birdsongs, and teeming with life, to the glory of God.

Brian McLaren's new book is called Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crises, and a Revolution of Hope.

Here's the word from the physical world: On Sept. 10, scientists studying satellite images of the Arctic reported that sea ice covered 4.32 million square kilometers of the north. The old record, set two years before: 5.34 million square kilometers. Mark Serreze, an Arctic specialist at the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Centre at Colorado University in Denver, said, "It's amazing. It's simply fallen off a cliff and we're still losing ice." The Arctic has now lost about a third of its ice since satellite measurements began 30 years ago. At the moment, an area of ice the size of the United Kingdom melts each week.

Bill McKibben wrote the first book for a general audience about global warming, The End of Nature, way back in 1989. His new book is Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future .

In an encouraging shift away from the status quo, many Christian groups are taking a more focused look at stewarding God's creation. A few notable references to biblical environmentalism have been popping up in the news lately. On the recently aired CNN series "God's Warriors," Richard Cizik explains "creation care," a conservative evangelical approach to being a greener church. Two weeks ago, the pope took to a stage in Italy in green vestments to declare Sept. 2, "Save Creation Day," and beseech Roman Catholics to make "courageous decisions" to spare the earth from destructive and irresponsible development trends.

Theologically, the Torah provides plenty of fuel to go green. In fact, humanity is bound to the earth in ways that we may never fully appreciate.

• Genesis 2:7 tells us that God formed us from the very earth we inhabit (man = earth + breath).
• The Hebrew word "adam" (Strongs # 121 and # 122) is the root of the word for earth; Adamah (# 127), tying the reddish hue of dust to the color of blood.
• Through the sabbatical system (Shemitta in the Jewish tradition), both man and creation are entitled rest at a six to one ratio (Leviticus 25).

We can also learn from the Hebrew Bible rich applications of social uplift through proper stewardship of the earth in the form of the Jewish tradition of Peah. In Leviticus (19:9-10, and 23:22) the Israelites were told to leave the edges of all their fields and the fallen fruits "for the poor and the stranger (JPS)." Additionally, the socially engaging agri-practice of the Ma'aser Ani (the 'poor tithe' in the Jewish tradition) was a tenth of a landowner's crop set aside for the less fortunate during the third and sixth years of the seven-year sabbatical cycle.

The increasing trend of environmental awareness in the Christian faith is both hopeful and historically rooted. Wendell Berry, a modern prophet who speaks boldly of our responsibilities to the Creator's handiwork, recognizes that creation includes both the world around us and the people who live upon it. He writes, "Creation is not in any sense independent from the Creator, the result of a primal act long over and done with, but is the continuous, constant participation of all creatures in the being of God (Christianity and the Survival of Creation, 1992)." As the central achievement of God's design, we have both the honor and responsibility to protect the rest of creation, and to return to a green orthodoxy.

Logan Laituri is a six-year Army veteran with combatant service in Iraq during OIF II and experience with Christian peacemaker teams in Israel and the West Bank. He is an active member of Iraq Veterans Against the War and currently resides in Camden, New Jersey, in an intentional Christian community called Camden House, where he continues to seek ways to wage peace wherever he goes. He blogs at courageouscoward.blogspot.com.

Like Joel Hunter, I was skeptical of the meeting on the "Green Gospels." “Oh, no. Another group that believes all you have to do is convince Christians that the Bible says to care for creation, and they will do it.” I guess, after working in this field for the past decade, I was wary.

But the meeting was fascinating. Martin Palmer had convened a similar event earlier this year in the U.K. He invited atheists, non-believers, and others not familiar with the Bible. Apparently they were eager to explore what the gospels might reveal about our relationship with the natural world. It took them only 10 minutes to become immersed in the gospel of Mark, sifting out what it might have meant for Jesus to ride on an unbroken colt. It took us all morning to begin. Perhaps it is because we who are so steeped in the Bible, who have explored it for years, need more than inspiration. We need examples, to see that other people have put their beliefs into practice. One of the goals of the Green Gospels is to draw together these types of stories, both from 2000 years of Christian history, and modern efforts. It was amazing to seriously consider what the story of Jesus and the colt or Jesus and the fig tree say about Him, His relationship to the natural world, and how it affects us.

Martin Palmer surprised me with a comment that the U.K had experienced three environmental collapses within historical times. I usually think of these as future events we need to avoid. One collapse coincided with a huge volcanic eruption, blocking sunlight for several years. This was about the time the builders of Stonehenge stopped their work. The third event was the fall of the Roman Empire. The Benedictine Order of monks was active at this time. Benedict taught that a monk’s life had three priorities: prayer, study, and work. They were to go into the most wasted places and rebuild the ecology. They changed a devastated Europe by planting trees, digging new steams and lakes, restoring forests, composting and reviving the vitality of the soil. I looked around the table and there were modern Benedictines. Not monks, but people who were putting their beliefs into practice. Bring on the green gospels. We need these stories. We need to steep ourselves in scripture until it flows out into deeds.

Ginny Vroblesky is the former national coordinator of A Rocha USA.

Highly suspicious. That’s what I was.

I was invited to a meeting whose participants were considering proposing something along the line of “Green Gospels.” After all, I am an evangelical, and being involved in anything that has to do with treating the scriptures with a particular perspective carries with it the danger of perverting the original intent.

Pleasantly surprised. That’s what I was when I attended the meeting with Christians of impeccable spiritual and intellectual character. Under the able leadership – and delightful English wit and accent – of Martin Palmer (secretary general – that title always sounds like an oxymoron to me – of the Alliance of Religions and Conservation), the panel outlined the task. We were to provide a commentary that would feature the centuries-old writings of Christian teachers, leaders, and poets as they thought through the relationship of God and creation. We also could uncover the context within which Jesus taught and the gospel writers wrote.

The emphasis on environmental appreciation is a recent one, you say? Au contraire! We who care about learning what scriptures have to do with nature are part of a long line of theological and intellectual contemplatives.

Just last week someone stopped me in church and said, “Pastor, our small group wanted to do a study on what the Bible says about protecting the environment. But I looked under my topical index and could only find one passage!” Ah, there’s the rub. There is so much historic context (much of it Jewish writings) that underlie the scriptures we have that most of us are unaware of how often the created world is referenced in the Bible.

And the problem is not just a denotative, analytic ignorance. It is a lack of passionate engagement. The gospels are not just concerned with creation as a background fact; creation is a source of inspiration. Therefore, who better to add to the commentaries than poets and mystics rather than just technical biblical scholars?

So we will see this project through. Maybe Christians won't be the only ones inspired by learning more about the scriptures we have. Maybe those more interested in reading about the environment will be inspired to know its Creator.

Rev. Joel C. Hunter is the senior pastor of Northland church in Longwood, Florida. The "Green Gospels" gathering was hosted by Conservation International.

(Click here to read the first part of this series.)

In my search for an ethically made bra, I came face to face with the two distinct worlds of justice issues. There are those who are passionate about caring for the environment and then there are those who seek justice for people, and it appeared that ne’er the twain shall meet. I found the sites where collective groups of women in Africa made clothing for fair wages, but used cloth made with environmentally unfriendly practices. Or I found clay-dyed organic cotton bras, but had no clue to how they were made. After e-mailing the company, I might hear back that they care about their employees (whatever that means), but there was no concrete certification that fair practices are used.

Granted, there were a small handful of companies that carried lines of trendy organic fair trade t-shirts designed for the emo crowd. They’re cool, but I needed a bra. Eventually I found a site in the U.K. that carries organic, ethically hand-stitched lingerie. But I needed everyday wear, not five-minutes-in-the-bedroom wear. And I wasn’t willing to pay their $100 price tag either. I knew this endeavor would require more funds than the typical sale bin at the mall, but I had my limits. There has to be a balance between saving a buck at the expense of a worker in a third world nation and throwing one’s money away on luxury items. (And no, I don’t see being an ethical consumer a luxury, just part of living out that whole loving one’s neighbor thing.)

Then finally, after a couple of weeks of fruitless searching, I stumbled across Rawganique.com. It's a business based out of an off-the-grid island in Canada where they grow their own organic food (eaten vegan and raw), power their computers with solar and wind energy, and promote their products as “a quiet, old-fashioned retreat from the hecticness and rampant chemicalization that are characteristic of the modern, conventional world.” It looked promising. As I researched further, I discovered that their clothing met all of my criteria—they care about the environment and people. And they sell bras (which are actually cheaper than those I typically buy at the mall—ethical and affordable!). Mission accomplished: I found my justice bra.

But why, I have to ask, did I have to dig up some hippie commune sort of place in order to find this? It’s great that they are doing this, but with all the attention justice issues are getting these days, one would hope that ethical shopping would have become a bit more mainstream. What’s the deal? Is it just easy to talk about this stuff and never actually live it out? What will it actually take for us to change the injustices in our economic system and shop for a better world? That’s what I want to know.

And in case you were wondering, I really like my new bra.

Julie Clawson is a church planting pastor in the Chicago area and the coordinator of the Emerging Women blog.

(Click here to read the first part of this series.)