Evangelicals join with scientists in fight against global warming
By Robert Marus
WASHINGTON (ABP) -- A new alliance
between prominent evangelical leaders and their secular scientific
counterparts to fight global warming is drawing bipartisan support
in Washington -- but also has some evangelical detractors.
A coalition of 28 scientists,
theologians, ethicists and pastors announced a new collaborative
effort on human-caused climate change during a Jan. 16 press
conference in Washington. The event marks an escalation in the
budding evangelical environmental movement and signals a willingness
for some scientists and conservative Christians to put aside their
differences over how and when creation came about in order to
prevent its premature end.
The group outlined its concerns in a
document called “An Urgent Call to Action” and addressed to
President Bush, political leaders and evangelical and scientific
communities.
"We agree that our home, the earth,
which comes to us as that inexpressibly beautiful and mysterious
gift that sustains our very lives, is seriously imperiled by human
behavior," the statement read. "The harm is seen throughout the
natural world, including a cascading set of problems such as climate
change, habitat destruction, pollution, and species extinction, as
well as the spread of infectious diseases, and other accelerating
threats to the health of people and the well-being of societies.
Each particular problem could be enumerated, but here it is enough
to say that we are gradually destroying the sustaining community of
life on which all living things on Earth depend."
The letter's signers include Eric
Chivian, Nobel laureate and director of the Center for Health and
the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School; Rich Cizik,
vice-president for governmental affairs at the National Association
of Evangelicals; NASA climatologist James Hansen, and Joel Hunter,
the pastor of a megachurch near Orlando. Hunter recently declined to
become the president of the Christian Coalition after disputes with
the group's board over broadening its focus to include
environmentalism, among other things.
Among the signers is Associated
Baptist Press columnist David Gushee, who is a Christian ethics
professor at Union University.
A rival group of evangelicals who
dispute anthropogenic climate change pooh-poohed the announcement. A
statement from the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance called the latest
announcement "just another attempt to create the impression of
growing consensus among evangelicals about global warming. There is
no such growing consensus."
Tony Perkins, president of the
Washington-based conservative group Family Research Council, said in
a Jan. 18 e-mail to his supporters, "The media seeks to spin the
story as a coalition of evangelicals, when in fact it's fueled by
only a few outspoken voices on global warming, some of whom have
used their organizations as a platform for airing personal views ….
Unfortunately, the liberal media are using some groups' mixed
message to focus away from the protection of life and marriage to
global warming, a subject on which scientists -- let alone
evangelicals -- have yet to form a consensus approach."
But the document's signers said
climate change is real, harmful and can be avoided.
"If current deterioration of the
environment by human activity continues unabated, best estimates are
that half of Earth's surviving species of plants and animals will be
extinguished or critically endangered by the end of the century,"
said Edward Wilson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, in a statement
on the collaboration released by the National Association of
Evangelicals. "The price for future generations will be paid in
economic opportunity, environmental security, and spiritual
fulfillment. The saving of the living environment is therefore an
issue appropriately addressed jointly by science and religion."
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