Re: Is climate change an Evangelical issue?

Description: Why shouldn't creation care, which is Gods command, be just as important as other issues today?

Question: Where should climate change rank in the order of evangelical priorities?

Transcript: I just happen to think it’s one of a host of important issues. Are they all important? Yes. You know I believe protecting the family, and protecting the unborn, and yes, even protecting the planet deserves a priority. Because I don’t see what good it does to say we’re going to protect the traditional family, if in the meantime the planet is in peril itself. Does that make sense? I don’t think so. So why shouldn’t climate change . . . Why shouldn’t creation care, God’s command, be just as important? I mean does it deserve a lesser importance because it’s caring for the earth? Well that is a kind of biblical heresy. In history gone by, it was known as gnosticism. It was to separate matter from spirit and say the spirit matters . . . matter itself. The earth doesn’t matter. And that a heresy. It’s biblical heresy. And so I happen to put these priorities at an equal level. I think they’re all important.

Question: What do you say to evangelicals who rank the priorities differently?

Transcript: Yeah by whose definition? Self-appointed leaders who happen to have ministries that are singly focused on those issues, such as protecting the family or the unborn? They say that this is the only priority we should have? Well I happen to believe that the leaders of the nation’s largest evangelical association which I work for, the National Association of Evangelicals, has said in a historic document called “For the Health of the Earth” . . . or “For the Health of the Nation” that all of these issues are important, including caring for the earth. And so I happen to think that the document just mentioned, which says all of the principals enumerated in Scripture are important, is the way to go. I mean to say otherwise is to say, well, some of the Scripture is ordained. Some of it is inspired, and some of it isn’t.

I call that by the way “Dalmatian theology” because it says, “Well the Bible is inspired in spots.” So it’s inspired in spots. It says that we should care for all creatures including the unborn; but it’s not inspired when God says care for the earth and protect it? Well of course that’s wrong. All of it is inspired.

Question: Why are evangelicals split on climate change?

Transcript: It’s hard to know. Historically speaking, the early Christians were affected by a neo-Platonism that divided matter and spirit. So the spirit – the soul – was important; but matter – the body –wasn’t important. Well that because kind of Gnostic heresy. The reformers, the great 16th century reformers . . . Well the earth was just a platform, a place where the great salvation story played out. And then in more recent decades New Age religions and others cast doubt, you see, on the authority of the Scriptures. And so today what explains it? Well a lot of different things; but fundamentally I think Christians need to know you have no excuse. You have no excuse. It’s in the Word of God. And if God says care for it, I would suggest it would be dangerous to do otherwise because He will hold us accountable. So how we’ve gotten into this precarious predicament today where, well, the issue belongs to the greens or to the one party not the other. I think that’s all just a form of human co-op; a form of abnegation of responsibility. A kind of “devil may care attitude” that’s sad. And it will not . . . it will not be tolerated by God.

Question: Where has the evangelical community embraced the issue climate change?

Transcript: Oh it comes in a variety of forms, but look. When the nation’s most influential evangelical leaders, the presidents of 39 colleges, the pastors of our largest mega churches, the heads of the NAE come forward and say in the Evangelical Climate Initiative that this is God’s business to care for the earth, I think that’s a signal moment in history. I’ve even heard the former Vice President Al Gore and President Bill Clinton . . . I’ve heard them say that when the evangelicals came out to speak about the climate change – global warming – that’s when things began to change. Why? Because evangelicals have been the conservative moral custodians of our cultural climate. And when these conservatives say this, then the public begins to pay attention. Now that’s Al Gore and Bill Clinton. And arguably they could take a lot of credit. Al Gore’s movie or whatever. And I’m sure they have played an important role. They absolutely have. That is the movie An Inconvenient Truth. But we, the evangelicals . . . when we spoke on this issue, I think the public began to pay attention.

Question: Could this lead to morally untenable alliances?

Transcript: I don’t know that this is a fear that evangelicals should be afraid of. For example, the late Francis Schaffer who was a theologian and a pop psychologist, and one of the foremost articulators of the modern right to life movement . . . Schaffer was an environmentalist too, and he had no contradiction between caring for the unborn and caring for the earth – saw none and showed, you see, that you could be both. And after all you must be both. Why do I say that? Because it’s not possible for the leaders of the Right to Life movement to say with a straight face that they are pro-life and care about the unborn if they’re willing to tolerate . . . You see mercury poisoning that impacts one out of six babies born in America – six hundred thousand impacted by mercury poisoning that comes from coal burning utility plants. It’s not possible with a straight face to say that you are a pro-life leader and deny that this is occurring and be unwilling to do something about it. If you do that, I would say you’re a hypocrite. If you say you are a pro-life leader, and you fail to recognize and act on this essential truth – that the unborn are impacted by the environment in ways that have consequences for generations – for you to do and say that I think shows nothing less than hypocrisy.

Recorded on: 6/25/07