Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News – February 21, 2008
Calling climate change “the civil rights movement of the 21st century,” evangelical Christian leaders gathered at a daylong environmental conference in Longwood, Fla., Thursday.
Global warming is “an offense against God,” added the Rev. Richard Cizik, vice president of the 30-million member National Association of Evangelicals, at Northland, a Church Distributed. “America needs our biblical outrage. We as a nation will face a judgment from God if we don’t do this.”
Evangelicals are latecomers to the environmental movement, but are determined to make up for lost time and rally around the green flag, said the Rev. Joel Hunter, pastor of Northland, which served as the host congregation for the daylong event.
“We are the ones who are late to the table,” said Hunter.
An emerging national evangelical leader on environmental issues, Hunter said the goal of the conference was to “get mutually stirred up” and to “assume stewardship of this issue.”
Although the gathering was organized by evangelicals, it included speakers and participants from mainline Protestant, Catholic, Jewish and Muslim traditions.
The program featured speeches, workshops, skits and even slick videos, including one with Keanu Reeves and Alanis Morissette. About 125 participants attended, most from Central Florida, but about 35 were from half a dozen states and the District of Columbia.
“I believe that my church needs to get more involved with lending a hand to the environment,” said Eleazar Marquez, 22, a Valencia Community College student representing Restoration Christian Center in Orlando.
“I’ve learned some ways we can integrate methods this church works with to help the environment in our church,” he said.
Religious activism on the environment should be directed at both the grass roots and the national political arena, speakers said, urging everything from congregational recycling to lobbying for new legislation.
“Evangelicals have become the go-to religious community on climate change,” said Cizik. “The political center of gravity has unmistakably shifted on this issue.”
That’s a total reversal of “a mere six years ago,” he said. “It’s gone from being irrelevant to being at the center of the action.”
Cizik is often credited with popularizing the term “Creation Care,” a more politically palatable term among evangelicals than environmentalism. Action on the issue, they say, is a moral imperative.
However, Cizik acknowledged that this view is not shared by all evangelicals.
“Many within our own community are not yet persuaded,” he said, and as a result “we have gotten push-back.”
Most of the speakers, like Cizik, linked global climate change to economic inequality.
“We have to care about the poor,” said the Rev. Tri Robinson of the Vineyard Christian Fellowship in Boise, Idaho.
Robinson said that even in a red state like his the entire congregation has become mobilized in the creation care movement. Participants should be “living a life of radical faith,” he said.
Bishop Thomas Wenski, of the Catholic Diocese of Orlando, agreed.
“Those of us in wealthier countries consume more – much more – of the world’s resources, but poor often suffer the worst consequences,” he said in his keynote address.
“The poor have contributed the least to climate change,” Wenski said, but “the poor will suffer its worst consequences…Climate change is about being in solidarity with the poorest of the poor….They have no other advocate but us.”
(c) 2008, The Orlando Sentinel (Fla.). Distributed by Mclatchy-Tribune News Service.
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posted February 22, 2008 at 6:15 pm
“Global warming is ‘an offense against God,’ added the Rev. Richard Cizik, vice president of the 30-million member National Association of Evangelicals, at Northland, a Church Distributed. ‘America needs our biblical outrage. We as a nation will face a judgment from God if we don’t do this.’”
Well, while Rev. Cizik seems a bit too…enthused about this for my taste, I am glad that more religious groups are starting to take up environmental issues. Conservative, including religious traditionalists, have and continue to be somewhat suspicious of environmentalism for a long time, mostly, I suspect, because it has usually been associated with some of the more radical liberal movements. I’m glad that as conservation is becoming more mainstream, more churches are taking part in leading the movement.
God bless.
posted February 22, 2008 at 7:02 pm
Fianlly they have decided that all the fuss about global warming is a real problem…not just made up by those liberals.
Am not sure that global warming is an offense against anyone but ourselves.
posted February 22, 2008 at 7:02 pm
People get real! You do not even know for sure there is such a thing as global warming. It could very well be a natural cycle of the earth. God did not command us to go forth and save the “earth”. He commanded us to go forth and PREACH the GOSPEL – the good news that there is a way of salvation – ONE way and only ONE – through the Lord Jesus Christ and what HE did for us to save us. THAT is the job we were given. Instead you are giving “how much time and money?” to something the Lord already has well in hand.
posted February 22, 2008 at 7:19 pm
Kerri, get real! It is a scientific fact, but then if your god didn’t write about it in the Bible, I guess it isn’t happening. Natural cycle helped with emissions etc. In the story book Bible the folks had no idea that this earth is fragile and needs us to take good care of her. Pagans have always respected the earth…’bout time the Christians did too.
“If it harm none do as you will”, includes Mother Earth also.
Blessed Be
posted February 22, 2008 at 8:08 pm
It’s good they are doing it but a lot of the proof will come in the voting. It’s good to clean up streams and build green churches but it’s vital to elect people who will get the governments heavily into it.
And Kerri’s post illustrates very well how effective propaganda paid for by oil companies because they could lose a little business has muddied the waters. And his religion-based unconcern for our world is probably way too common.
posted February 22, 2008 at 9:47 pm
Kerri,
Most of us could care less if you are going out to spread the word. Your spreading stuff written by numerous people and re-written by others to say what they want it to say.
What is true and real is that our mother earth needs our care. I bet you fill the landfills with your trash instead of recycling. I seldom put more than a small bag into the trash pile. It is good to hear of any group finally understanding the importance of this earth. It is far more important than any word of man or anyone else. It is what sustains us.
Your welcome to go off earth to some vague heaven. I will keep my soul as it is tied to this place in what ever time and space that it travels to in the future. I know I will return, hopefully next time, there will be less nonsense about the need to care for our wondrous home.
posted February 23, 2008 at 12:01 am
“Although the gathering was organized by evangelicals, it included speakers and participants from mainline Protestant, Catholic, Jewish and Muslim traditions.”
Now this is a beautiful thing and it shows that Christians will always be on the forefront of caring and change. We want to save and we do something about it not just lip service.
I can in my life time notice the change in the weather, I also have also noticed species endangered and driven to extinction. I notice the change in humans also, so the environment does affect all. Our greed and sin will do the world in eventually.
posted February 23, 2008 at 3:19 am
“Our greed and sin will do the world in eventually.”
There’s no doubt our greed is a major problem! Along with our shortsightedness.
posted February 23, 2008 at 11:10 am
Global warming is “an offense against God,” added the Rev. Richard Cizik, vice president of the 30-million member National Association of Evangelicals, at Northland, a Church Distributed. “America needs our biblical outrage. We as a nation will face a judgment from God if we don’t do this.”
BWAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAA!
Nothing is ever more comical than the fiery evangelical holy righteous indignation, huh?
Global warming IS the judgment for years of our carelessly polluting the planet with our riotous human incontinence. Judgment, even by Biblical definition, is the consistent consequences of years of indifference, folly, contempt, and fraudulent abuse of the earth’s resources. As a planet, we’re facing that curse Moses defined in detail in Deuteronomy for polluting the world. We’ve got food chains in motion that dump metric tons more pollution into the air, land, and seas just so we can enjoy exotic foods out of season. We fare sumptuously in that unsustainable manner that generates more trash, filth, and disease than we can manage. We genetically modify foods to keep poor nations in debt, and therefore enslaved to wealthier nations. We have our fill of bread. Our barns are overrun. To date, we’ve never had so much with which we’ve done so little. And, at that, we’ve raped the Earth, and still selfishly want more.
The Lord is not pleased with how wastefully and carelessly we are amused. With the consequences of global warming is He pouring out the bowl of His wrath on the heads of humanity.
posted February 23, 2008 at 11:20 am
From the article:
“Evangelicals are latecomers to the environmental movement, but are determined to make up for lost time and rally around the green flag, said the Rev. Joel Hunter, pastor of Northland, which served as the host congregation for the daylong event.
“We are the ones who are late to the table,” said Hunter.”
From cknuck:
“Now this is a beautiful thing and it shows that Christians will always be on the forefront of caring and change.”
At the forefront of being late to the table. That is a beautiful thing!
posted February 23, 2008 at 11:40 am
sinsonte good to see your post again, surely you must realize the world is late to the table when it comes to the environment movement. There were a few groups out there first but even they were late, we’ve been messing up the environment for some time.
Anyway thanks for pointing out my blunder concerning the article and by the way my ministry has been involved for some time.
posted February 23, 2008 at 12:25 pm
“my ministry has been involved for some time.”
Good for them/you.
posted February 24, 2008 at 6:00 pm
Hey, cknuck. Sorry for the snarkiness but I was remembering a time 20 to 30 yaars ago when those of us who gave up meat, fought for tougher enviromental laws, and warned against rampant consumerism were villified by many a good Christian as commie-pinko tree-huggers. Glad to see that the scales have fallen from some of your co-religionst’s eyes and that they have seen the error of their ways and have vowed to go forth and sin no more (or at least sin a little less).
posted February 24, 2008 at 7:21 pm
Me too sinsonte, I am also glad, I wasn’t always a Christian. thanks.
posted February 24, 2008 at 11:57 pm
Here’s an interesting article; an interview with an author who used to be evangelical and went back into it for a while for a book and more. Perhaps B’net will have an article about him if it hasn’t.
Anyway, food for thought for us all.
posted February 25, 2008 at 3:11 pm
It has little to do with the topic and it is one man’s view and he’s a reporter of sorts.