Perhaps it’s the wacky winter — northern towns with little snow, daffodils pushing their fragile stems up way too early.
Perhaps it’s President George W. Bush, calling during his State of the Union Address for the United States to reduce its use of gasoline by 20 percent in the next decade.
Perhaps it’s just time for people of faith to begin paying closer attention to environmental concerns.
When the National Association of Evangelicals issued recently an “Urgent Call to Action,” joining with a group of scientists to call for addressing environmental problems ranging from habitat destruction to global warming, that just added more momentum to what has becoming an increasingly hot issue.
Environmental concerns — once considered more a liberal than a conservative issue — are drawing increasing attention from people of faith across theological lines.
This concern isn’t entirely new. In 2002, for example, Jim Ball, an American Baptist minister and executive director of the Evangelical Environmental Network, drew headlines by asking publicly, “What Would Jesus Drive?” in an attempt to draw attention to the implications for gasoline consumption in the choices Christians make of which vehicles to drive.
In recent months, Presbyterian churches have joined an estimated 4,000 congregations around the country that have held screenings of Al Gore’s documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth,” which frames global warming in moral terms.
And they’re discussing environmental concerns ranging from pollution to habitat threats to renewable sources of energy, often framing the conversation as a matter of stewardship of the earth.
Rebecca Barnes-Davies is coordinator of Presbyterians for Restoring Creation, founded in 1995 as a grassroots group working for environmental wholeness. With global warming much in the news and evangelicals calling for environmental involvement, she’s sensing an increasing willingness of congregations to take up environmental questions.
“Presbyterians are getting involved, asking questions, asking for resources at a much higher rate in the last six months,” Barnes-Davies said. “I don’t know if that’s because there are more people across the spectrum asking for it or it’s just higher profile. … But we’ve seen a pretty drastic increase in people who are worried, particularly about climate change.”
In the past, the stereotype may have been that environmentalists were tree-hugging liberals — but more and more, that stereotype is wearing thin, as evangelicals become increasingly active in environmental issues.
“Some people worry that in their church, they’re the only one” concerned about these things, Barnes-Davies said. “They have a heart for God’s creation, but don’t know how that fits into mission or stewardship. We think it fits hand-in-hand. … People wonder if you can be conservative and care about the environment. And more and more are thinking, ‘Yes, you can.’ “
In October 2004, the National Association of Evangelicals laid the foundation for a faith-based environmental effort when it adopted “For the Health of the Nation: An Evangelical Call to Civil Responsibility,” a statement including a section on “creation care.”
A PBS documentary called “Is God Green?” featuring Bill Moyers, examined the increasing involvement of evangelical Christians in the environmental movement, and the response from conservative Christians who contend that environmental problems are not as dire as some claim them to be.
At the Vineyard church in Boise, Idaho, an evangelical nondenominational congregation, Pastor Tri Robinson helped create a ministry called “Let’s Tend the Garden,” describing environmental stewardship as a “biblical mandate.”
Vineyard urges Christians to become involved in everything from recycling and energy conservation, to cleaning up highways and the Boise River, to working with the U.S. Forest Service to build and maintain hiking trials.
Increasingly, as at Vineyard Boise, people of faith are identifying environmental concerns and taking care of the earth as a “moral issue,” connected to religious traditions.
For example, a network of nonprofit environmental groups called Interfaith Power and Light challenged congregations to screen “An Inconvenient Truth” last October and to discuss global warming.
About 4,000 congregations responded — including First Church in Bend, Ore.
The session of First Church has signed a covenant with Oregon Interfaith Power and Light, promising to conserve energy at the church, to educate members about energy conservation, and to support the use of renewable energy sources.
About 400 people from the church and the community came to see “An Inconvenient Truth” last fall, and another 400 people came to a presentation in December by Oregon’s secretary of state, Bill Bradbury, using a PowerPoint presentation Gore has prepared.
Inspired by that, the congregation has created a “Green Team” to focus on environmental concerns, ranging from personal energy consumption to the use of resources at the church. The congregation has done a garbage audit to see how much waste it’s producing; put recycling bins in every office; and focused attention on how many paper plates are being used at Wednesday night youth dinners.
People are being asked to bring their own coffee mugs to use at the Sunday fellowship time, rather than using disposable cups. The congregation is building partnerships with other community groups involved in energy and environmental issues.
And First is encouraging people to sign up for a “green energy” program from Blue Sky Energy in Oregon. For every church member who buys energy from that company, which utilizes renewable energy sources, the congregation gets $20, which will go into a fund to explore use of solar and other renewable energy sources at the church.
Mike Tidwell, a member of Takoma Park Church in Maryland, also is executive director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, which works on climate change and other environmental issues.
His congregation takes environmental concerns seriously. For several years now, Takoma Park has been completely wind-powered, Tidwell said.
“Faith without works is dead,” Tidwell said. “It’s not enough just to be educated” about climate change and to stop with that. “We have no time. We have less than nine years to really turn this energy economy around, according to leading climate scientists.”
For Tidwell, taking care of the environment is definitely a moral issue.
“I talk about climate change as a moral issue all the time,” he said.
“Creation is a gift” from God, Tidwell said. “It’s sacred. It’s not ours to destroy. It’s immoral, it’s wrong, to destroy it through climate change.”
For the most part, environmental advocacy is bubbling up from the grassroots — from individuals and congregations. But there are efforts as well to network people and passion around particular topics.
Presbyterians for Restoring Creation, for example, is involved in a campaign to reduce the use of bottled water, in part because of “all the plastic that is getting out into the environment …” Barnes-Davies said.
At Rose City Park Church in Portland, Oregon, a small congregation, the Creation Care team has started a battery-recycling program, held adult education programs on environmental issues, and encouraged the use of fair-trade coffee at church events.
A local farmers market takes place near the church, and produce not sold there is offered for sale at Sunday morning fellowship time or donated to a soup kitchen if it’s not sold.
In some congregations, an emphasis on environmental concerns can be somewhat controversial — some see it as more a political than a church issue.
But Koski, the pastor at First Church in Bend, says that people of differing political viewpoints often share a concern for justice.
He likes to quote Amos 5:24, “Let justice roll down like a mighty stream,” all over God’s earth.
