Posted on 06/27/2007 9:38:27 AM PDT by Alex Murphy
It's right there in Genesis I. After creating all the critters, God instructs humankind to "fill the earth and subdue it, rule over the fish in the sea, the birds of heaven, and every living thing that moves upon the earth." Later, when Noah's crew finally get shore leave, God says of the fish, birds and beasts, "They are given unto your hands."
Subdue, rule: These injunctions have long been taken by literalist believers as something akin to 007's license to kill: Nature is ours to despoil. God said so.
Fact-based concern about animal extinctions or deforestation was mere scientific mechanism; social action to prevent environmental damage was godless humanism. In the eyes of many of the conservative faithful, pro-environment views became linked with other liberal stances like those on abortion and homosexuality.
The absence of support among this huge population – the faithful — has greatly impeded progress on environmental policy. And for many believers, the stigma begat a painful personal conflict, pitting concern and reverence for the natural world against the desire to abide by prevailing church doctrine.
That's changing fast. Religious people of any persuasion now have many opportunities for – and moral support for — faith-based environmental action.
Among the leaders in this process is Interfaith Power and Light, a nationwide organization with chapters in 23 states, including our own. The Vermont branch was founded in 2003 and is now a growing alliance of individuals and congregations. Governed by a board of directors of diverse faiths, VtIPL offers activities to engage the faithful individually, as congregations, or in "eco-teams." Its newsletter features a calendar of action opportunities, tips for cutting energy use and carbon emissions, and spiritual discussion of environmental issues.
Wes Sanders, VtIPL's vice president, leads eco-teams in discussions of "The Low Carbon Diet" by David Gershon, and then helps participants work through its carbon emission-reduction program. Other board members make presentations on climate change to congregations and conduct free energy audits of religious buildings.
IPL is part of a growing national movement in which believers engage in moral consideration of environmental issues and take action as a form of religious practice.
The National Religious Partnership for the Environment (NRPE) believes that "environment is fundamentally a religious issue" and urges the faithful to "bring a moral voice to debates" on environmental policy. Their website at www.nrpe.org provides links to other faith-based organizations, and suggests actions related to food and agriculture, energy, sustainable economics, water, and climate change.
The Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life works to engage Jews in initiatives such as resisting oil drilling in the Artic Wildlife Refuge and fighting climate change. COEJL's website at www.coejl.org provides citations from Talmudic texts as rationale for environmental action and hosts discussion forums; COEJL programs help synagogues improve energy efficiency and cut harmful environmental impacts.
The Environmental Justice program of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops "calls all Catholics to a deeper respect for God's creation and engages parishes in activities that deal with environmental action." Its initiatives, many of them described at www.usccb.org, help Catholics become "faithful stewards of God's creation."
That principle — stewardship — is the movement's spiritual foundation. Often distilled by the term "creation care," the idea is that our concern for the environment stems from a moral obligation to honor the creator's work.
That's where debate has been wrapped around the axle: How do we interpret words historically translated as "subdue," "rule," "dominion"? Increasingly, these translations are being challenged on a linguistic, moral, and practical basis.
Probably no other denomination has been more resistant to environmental values — and as torn by differences of opinion about them — than the Evangelical churches. Embedded in the so-called "red states" and strongly conservative demographic groups, these churches have been slow to change.
But even they are evolving. Green Evangelical leader Richard Cizik, a literalist believer and staunch pro-Bush Republican, translates God's command to humans as "to watch over and care for" the natural world and all living things.
The Evangelical Environmental Network offers a straightforward rationale for creation care: "Because we worship and honor the Creator, we seek to cherish and care for the creation." And, according to their Web site at www.creationcare.org, despoiling the creation is a sin. The EEN's "Declaration" cites seven environmental degradations, including animal extinction and alteration of the atmosphere, as untenable attacks upon God's own handiwork.
I don't participate in any organized religion, but I see great hope in the enlistment of religious commitments in the cause of environmental preservation. Perhaps, aided by the energies of the faithful, we'll begin to realize the sweet vision of Psalm 96: "Let the heavens be glad and the Earth rejoice; let the sea and what fills it resound; let the plains be joyful and all that is in them; then let all of the trees rejoice."
OK, Mr. Hecht, show me one piece of evidence proving that what you are saying is true. One piece. Come on, Mr. Hecht, just one. . . I thought so.
God didn’t make the Earth fragile.
I don’t have the transcript, of course, but when I was a guest singer at an Evangelical church in Texas last year the sermon was all about how the “wacky tree hugging liberals” had it wrong about the earth...it was ours to use and rule over, the resources there for as long as they lasted and it all didn’t matter because we were all going home to JEEEEESUS, amen. It made me sick.
As a libertarian, I don’t understand why the conservative viewpoint is so often anti-environment. I think clean air, water, soil, oceans, with protected green space and parks and truly wild areas....are a right, and when a company or government or individual pollutes or spoils these, then it affects me directly and my rights to these things. You want to talk liberty? How about the liberty to have clean air and water and food? Pretty basic to me. And I also think honoring the Creator means not shitting on the amazing earth He created. Just a thought.
Blackfish
I like the approach that Theodore Roosevelt took: He was truly a conservationist and appreciated all that nature had to offer, yet he still believed in using natural resources in a prudent manner.
It’s meddlin.
I won’t get into your hegelian dialectic. Conservatives are pro-environment and anticommunist. Communists bleat about the environment while obsfucating and feathering their own nests.
Uber-environmentalism is an excuse to institute socialism. As you said, we evangelicals are not “unhinged abusers” of the environment!
As a libertarian, I don’t understand why the conservative viewpoint is so often anti-environment. .."
I have news for you. There are plenty of shallow, biblical illiterates on the right and on the left who "...engage in what I will call "trailer park scholarship" .... Who are these people trying to kid? Their scholarship, as a whole, is reckless and pitiable; what they know, they have learned from reading a few popular books with no conception of the broader issues and fields at hand. .. "Why did God make the Bible so hard to understand, then?" It isn't -- none of this keeps a person from grasping the message of the Bible to the extent required to be saved; where the line is to be drawn is upon those who gratuitously assume that such base knowledge allows them to be competent critics [or commentators] of the text, and make that assumption in absolute ignorance of their own lack of knowledge.."
If you want to know how those who hold to a biblical worldview regarding how we should take care of our environment, you may find out here:
Exactly. We like clean water as well as the next guy but we don’t believe in the zero-tolerance, fad based, watermelon enviro-stalinism that the leftists enjoy chirping about so much. That’s why that poster was so obviously going for the Hegelian Dialectic —
1) You conservative christians are a bunch of animal killing litterbugs
2) No we’re not.
3) Then accept Globull Warming and every other fringe fad to come down the pike and bow down to the gaia worshipping leftist social gospel “christians.”
4) My response: Screw you. (not YOU, but the leftists.)
:-)
Furthermore, as you may be able to tell, to me being Christian doesn’t mean being required to always act “nice.” I think it’s much more attractive to the unchurched if we just keep it real.
Amen! 29 years in the Army - last 10 as a chaplain, taught me that!
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