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faith/climate change/Y2K
After attending a retreat with top environmental scientists and evangelical leaders (I was representing Vineyard because the national director couldn’t make it), I found myself working on a project to remind evangelical pastors that environmental stewardship is a normative part of Christian discipleship. Sounds pretty obvious. Except that a few big time evangelical leaders have for some reason decided that climate change is bogus and somehow a problematic issue to tackle from a faith perspective. (Utterly baffles me: even if the minority view that climate change isn’t caused by human activity is correct, you’d think a person of faith would want to err on the side of considerate use of God’s creation rather than abuse–especially since everyone agrees that the burning of fossil fuels creates pollution that harms the poor disproportionately, drives up the price of oil, filling the coffers of nation states that are none to0 friendly to missions, etc.) Anyway, we got word today that one of the largest and most influential church networks is happy to distribute the booklets.Isn’t it odd that so many in my faith community eagerly hopped on the Y2K bandwagon, but when you have a growing body of scientific evidence–a massive body of evidence, building steadily for the past 30 years–that climate change is serious business, suddenly there’s all this concern about raising a false alarm. A sense of proportion hasn’t been our strong suit lately. Too many pastors listening to too much talk radio for their science.
February 1st, 2008 at 7:32 am
Bill Hybels preached “Can Our Planet Survive?” last weekend at Willow Creek Church (one of the largest churches in the nation, if you haven’t heard of it). He said it was the first time in 35 years he’s preached on creation care! Better late than never.
http://media.libsyn.com/media/vineyardvideo/m080127bigquestionspt2.mp3
February 1st, 2008 at 11:14 am
Ken - congratulations on getting the booklet distributed.
You draw an interesting parallel between Climate Change and Y2K. One would think that people who believe the pages of Revelation would be jumping all over this one, wouldn’t you? I suspect the difference is this: Y2K and other gloom & doom scenarios all can be blamed on someone else. Climate Change lands in our own laps, and we don’t like that so much…
February 2nd, 2008 at 7:20 am
Ed, Hadn’t thought of that, but yes of course–always easier to acknowledge a problem not of our own making. Plus which the “Y2K” threat would have upset our economy–nothing rallies us like a threat to our sacred cow. Just stupyfiying to remember how the Y2K thing took on such apocalyptic proportions. I remember being heavily lobbied by people in the church to mobilize the church to prepare for Y2K by long-time believers in the church, but rarely lobbied to do the same for the more demonstrable environmental threats by the same faith veterans.
February 2nd, 2008 at 7:21 am
Don, “A lie travels half way round the world while the truth is putting on its shoes”–no one can charge our faith tribe (myself included) from jumping on any bandwagons early! ken
February 11th, 2008 at 6:51 pm
This global warming stuff is a political ploy, and you are useful idiots being used by the powers that be to keep the myth alive.
February 16th, 2008 at 6:50 am
Don’t believe it,
So who are the powers that be who are keeping the myth (of climate change?) alive? Scientists? The environmental lobby? How does their power compare, for example, with the power of the oil industry which spent multi millions of dollars to sow mistrust of the scientific consensus? Check out some of the primary political figures who have agreed with you that climate change is a fraud and see where their campaign funds have come from. How powerful do you think the lobby groups are that represent the power plants, compared to say, the Sierra Club. Follow the power and you’ll have a sense of where the “powers that be” are exercising their influence.
ken
February 20th, 2008 at 8:53 am
Facts are facts, but truth is subjective, depending on who you are and how many times you’ve heard it. Or at least that’s what we’re taught in the political PR game. Tell them a lie 9 times in a row and they will believe it, even if they know the facts show it to be false. And we see evidence of that everyday–especially when it comes to Climate Change.
I agree with Ed–the real problem is that this requires I do something, that I make a personal change. And we all love answers where other people make the difficult changes and I stay on my comfortable high horse.