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| The Rev. Jim Ball is executive director of the Evangelical Environmental Network. (Photo by Angela Jimenez) |
Evangelical Recruits Fellows for Global Warming Battle
BY ALEXANDER LANE
Posted on 02/16/2006 3:28:49 PM PST by Incorrigible
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Evangelical Recruits Fellows for Global Warming BattleBY ALEXANDER LANE |
NEW YORK _ The Rev. Jim Ball has gotten 85 other Christian evangelical leaders to launch a national campaign against global warming, a feat that just might make him the most important environmentalist of 2006.
The Evangelical Climate Initiative, which Ball organized with a handful of other like-minded Christians, declared the "basic task for all of the world's inhabitants" is to cut emissions of heat-trapping carbon dioxide.
It is spreading the word in newspaper, television and radio ads; meetings with key legislators; and events at churches and Christian colleges around the country.
That has irked some influential evangelicals, who sabotaged Ball's efforts to recruit the National Association of Evangelicals to the cause last month. But it has thrilled mainstream environmentalists.
Ball and his wife, Kara, sat down in a New York hotel lobby after a recent television appearance to answer Christian critics and explain the brand of environmentalism he calls "creation care."
"Look what's going to happen to God's people, look at what's going to happen around the world and to our kids," Ball said. "Look at the projections. Millions are going to die because of global warming. Those are people Jesus loves."
Ball, 44, was born in Baton Rouge, La., but his family lived in several Southern states during his childhood.
Ball said he felt called to become a minister at 19. He earned a bachelor's degree in psychology from Baylor University in Waco, Texas, and a master's of divinity from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky.
A few years later, when Ball was doing graduate studies at Drew University in Madison, N.J., a fellow student told him she was interested in a "Christian approach to nature."
"I said, `Why?"' he recalled. "`Are you meaning to tell me this ant here is more important than your son?'
"She said, `Why don't you read the Bible in light of this question?"'
He did. Then he started reading about environmental degradation and came to appreciate its impact on the poor. Before long, he found himself in a national network of Christian environmentalists.
"At that time, being an evangelical and being concerned about the environment was still kind of almost crazy sounding, weird, new," he said. "People would say, `I'm so glad I found other Christians who care about this issue."'
Ball became the climate-change policy coordinator for the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington, D.C. It's a largely secular crowd, and Ball said he viewed his time there almost as "cultural anthropology" _ an effort to understand how the other half thinks.
"It was very interesting to have a reverend working in our office," said Rich Hayes, press secretary for the organization. "He was focused on the science and studying it. But even at the water cooler his Christianity was something he would bring up on occasion in a way that was much different than what you would normally hear around the office."
Ball met Kara, also an environmentalist, at a Christian rock music festival. They live in Brunswick, Md., with a dog, three cats and an iguana. Since 2000, Ball has been the executive director of the Washington D.C.-based Evangelical Environmental Network, which was founded in 1994.
The network helped develop the Evangelical Climate Initiative. Ball is one of six designated spokespeople, along with the national commander of the Salvation Army, megachurch pastors in Florida and Minnesota, the president of Wheaton College in Illinois and the executive director of World Hope International.
Among the 80 other signatories is Rick Warren, best-selling author of the "The Purpose-Driven Life"; popular televangelist Jack Hayford; and David Neff, the editor of the conservative Christian periodical Christianity Today.
The nation's largest evangelical group, the National Association of Evangelicals, was set to endorse the effort until James Dobson, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and a few other influential leaders asked it not to in a letter last month.
E. Calvin Beisner, associate professor of historical theology at Knox Theological Seminary in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., helped organize the opposition group, which calls itself the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance.
"The big news is they couldn't get a consensus statement," Beisner said in a telephone interview. "The small news is, they did get the 86 who signed it."
Beisner is an adjunct scholar of the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion & Liberty, which is partly funded by Exxon. But he said the position does not pay, and that his opposition is rooted in doubts that humans are causing climate change, and a concern that anti-global warming measures could harm the economy, hitting the poor the hardest.
Ball called that "factually wrong." He said the First World's power grid was a bad model for developing nations to copy. In fact, portable solar installations and other renewable-energy options would literally decentralize power, he said.
"This is conservative," he said, growing animated. "Stop thinking it's the hippies that love this stuff. Get with it."
For too long, he said, it has been scientists, environmentalists and Democratic politicians sounding the alarm on global warming. Ball said he believed he and his fellow evangelical messengers would be more credible to Christians.
"They're going to say, `OK, this isn't a bunch of liberal claptrap cooked up by enviros to wreck the economy,"' he said.
Many of those enviros, however, are quite pleased to have prominent evangelists on their side. For years, they have found the millions of evangelical Christians in America to be a largely unreceptive audience.
"We don't have as much experience working together as we should," said Dale Bryk, who works on climate change for the Natural Resources Defense Council. "I think this is great."
As if to prove their conservative bona fides, the signatories to the Evangelical Climate Initiative lauded Christian efforts to "protect the unborn" and "preserve the family and the sanctity of marriage."
And though they favor mandatory, not voluntary, curbs on carbon emissions, they said the measures should be business-friendly and market-based.
Ball likes to turn the popular question "What would Jesus do?" into "What would Jesus drive?"
For his part, Ball drives a hybrid. But he showed little appetite for delving into a larger political discussion of, say, whether Jesus would cut taxes or invade Iraq. And he would not say whom he voted for in 2004.
"The Evangelical Environmental Network is a nonpartisan organization," he said. "I don't disclose my own personal politics."
Feb. 16, 2006
(Alexander Lane is a staff writer for The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J. He can be contacted at alane@starledger.com.)
Not for commercial use. For educational and discussion purposes only.
I don't see how being a Christian and an environmentalist are ever in conflict. It's very apparent that it is mankind's responsibility to be stewards of the earth and all it's inhabitants.
However, believing that the sky is falling is not particularly Christian; it's simply being a rube.
None-the-less, I hope Rev. Ball is bringing his message of Christian environmentalism to places like China, India and Russia where environmental disasters are state sanctioned. If he's only concentrating on the US and US lawmakers, he'd better be able to state why God's environmental covenant only applies to us.
By the way, here is the real site for What Would Jesus Drive?!
"Obviously, God drives a Plymouth, because, "Hell hath no Fury. . .""
If all these bleeding heart liberal "Evangelicals" would spend as much effort at spreading the Gospel as they do with this nonsense, they would reap a much better reward.
Money wasted on environmental concerns while mens souls are dying.
A minister is convinced that human actions can undo what God hath wrought. Hillarious.
(from a previous thread)...
link to an article on the topic...names prominent supporters of
the Evangelical ClimateInitiative and the major evangelicals
that haven't signed on:
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2006/106/34.0.html
Hey, it beats offending someone by preaching the Gospel, doesn't it? (No, it doesn't).
Why do I get the feeling that these "evangelicals" have hijacked the term, and actually spend very little time spreading the Gospel?
Global warming is the least of my worries now days.
Stupid Evangelicals Ping.
I was going to ask why he didn't just pray hard on it.
As the poster stated, we should be good stewards of the earth but that does not mean running around half-cocked about something beyond our influence or control. He, of all people, should know that.
Conservationism is being a good steward. Environmentalism is a cult.
Amen, brother. I just resigned my membership in the Evangelical's Club.
(from a previous thread)
Well, the National Association of Evangelicals aren't a part of this:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1570114/posts
Looks like the envirowackos managed to peal off a few of the evanglical
leaders to their group.
Probably promised them lots of trips to lots of conferences in
lots of cool places around the globe.
Flying in planes burning TONS of fossil fuels, thus emitting great
gobs of particulates and greenhouse gases.
You must live next door to me, the temperature fell from from 68 down to 36 in four hours this afternoon.
The real truth is,evangelicals are not really christians!Almost every denomination has trouble with them because they only embrace christianity when it conforms to their deluded "new age" thinking.
Because it is probably true. Sadly.
I have yet to met a Reverend, preacher, etc. that I would trust. To a person they have all been less than trustworthy.
Did these evangelicals get mugged by Algore?
It applies to all environmentalists really.
There's no reason that China, India and other devoloping nations should escape polution restrictions in the Kyoto Treaty.
It's because India and China have told the watermelons (Green on the outside, Red on the inside) to "stick it!"
The real goal is to restrict US productivity down to European levels!
No one has ever heard of these phonies.
I refuse to worship it.
They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
Romans 1:25
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