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Something wonderful is happening, driven by a sense of desperate need.  Secular scientists are recognizing the need to reach out to people of faith, especially people of evangelical faith, in order to bridge the cultural divide that is now hindering our capacity to respond in love and wisdom to the global environmental crisis.  And people of evangelical faith are open.  They are willing to engage people of science.  Because God is a myth busting God, and a God who likes to shake things up.  All this wonderful turbulence and cultural quaking left me sitting in a large meeting room at Ohio State University–excuse me, The Ohio State University–with about 15 scientists, professors of astronomy, environmental science, biology, mostly, and 15 evangelical pastors and leaders.  And I must say, I felt the presence of the Holy Spirit in the room with us.

Carl Safina, the director of the Blue Ocean Institute, and I have been gathering steam to launch this thing called the Friendship Collaborative to bridge the gap between science and faith (especially evangelical faith) in order that both groups may work together more effectively to stop trashing the environment.  At the invitation of Steve Weeks at Akron University, we did held the first event there several months ago. And this past weekend, we did led another event, hosted by Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship at OSU.

So picture it: 15 scientists and 15 evangelical pastors in a room together for four hours, hearing presentations from Jim Hansen, the leading climate specialist from NASA, Cal DeWitt, a wetlands specialist from the University of Wisconsin,  and myself as the–you guessed it–evangelical presenter.

It was my turn to present early on, and the host had asked us to introduce ourselves briefly and to use two words to convey our sense of the meeting that day.  I changed my original two words to “Holy Spirit” because as we went around the room making introductions, you could feel a presence in the room that was Holy.  A presence in the room from beyond the room.  As though hovering over the room, like the Spirit hovered over the chaotic abyss before the light was spoken into it.

It was a good thing too. Because I came not as well prepared as I normally am to present.  It had been a busy week.  And I was feeling a little intimidated–wrong word–stressed, at the prospect of presenting. Because I didn’t know most of the evangelical pastors present, and my experience has been that they can be a prickly lot when it comes to talking about environmental concerns, especially climate change, operating as  most of them do, in a climate of suspicion over these concerns. And I didn’t know the scientists, most of them professors at a major University.  And it was my job to speak to both groups and somehow stake out some common ground for them to occupy.

But instead of nervousness, I felt a calm as deep as the ocean.  As though my blood pressure were 110/70, pulse 64, respirations slow and deep.  An unfathomable calm, because it didn’t–couldn’t have–originated with me.

So I just had to bear witness and began my comments by saying, “I feel in this room, over us, the presence of the Holy Spirit.”   And the evangelical pastors smiled back at me. And the scientists smiled back at me too.  And I knew we were off to a good start.

What was said by those of us who presented was important.  But not nearly as important as all of us being there together in that room for four hours.

In a recent poll, Americans were asked to name two prominent scientists–any two. Their top picks? Al Gore and Bill Gates, neither of which is a scientist.  See, I couldn’t even trust you to get the joke without pulling the punch line.

So for many of these pastors, simply to be in a room together with a bunch of scientists was a new experience. And I know for many of the scientists it was a new experience to be in the room with a bunch of evangelical pastors.  Each group committing the miracle of listening to each other–asking honest questions, giving honest answers.

I came away from the event more hopeful than ever.  Climate change is a controversial issue within the evangelical camp.  There’s more suspicion about the science behind climate change among evangelicals than there is among oil executives.  I’m guessing.  And so this has been a cause of some consternation for me, because I’m your basic recent adult convert to this concern.  And we all know how annoying adult converts to anything can be.

But I came away from the event at OSU with a little broader understanding.  The science behind climate change is complex.  Most people can’t even describe what the greenhouse gas effect is.  It took my focused attention to understand it, and most of us only have so much focused attention to give.  And we end up giving it to our kids and our spouses and our daily routines and our getting-through-life needs.

But here we are–humanity that is–faced with a global concern that requires us to develop a perspective on complex science.  All of us, that is.  Because if we’re going to do anything about climate change, we’re going to have to change, and we don’t change easily.  Scientists can’t just snap their fingers and fix this thing. They need us all to understand what they are talking about–at least a little.  And there are deep cultural divides between scientists and non-scientists.  Political divides, religious divides, social divides.

For the longest time, it didn’t matter, these divides. We could carry on our business without crossing any divides.  But those days are over.  We’ve got, according to the majority view of scientists, a global emergency on our hands called climate change.  We need to act and soon.  Our action involves change, and who wants to do that?

Naturally, there is skepticism.  The science is not easy to explain and it’s even harder to understand.  This fact alone breeds skepticism, given the natural human resistance to change.  I need not even evoke the powers and principalities here, or the vested interests–huge monetary interests–who are threatened by the changes we’re being told are needed.

So we need to get evangelical pastors and scientists together into the same room.  So that they can talk to each other directly, without having to go through Rush Limbaugh as our  scientific advisor-interpreter.  And we need someone else in the room with us when we’re talking and listening to each other.  The Holy Spirit.

Come, Holy Spirit.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 5th, 2008 at 10:26 am and is filed under environment, friendship collaborative. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.