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Letter from AmericaCrisis? What crisis?Readers of a certain ilk may recognise the reference to an album from the aged rock group Supertramp: ‘Crisis? What crisis?’ The picture on that album ironically captured a man sunbathing with icons of industrial waste in the background. For many today, the American establishment’s refusal to act on warnings of global warming has a similarly absurd, ostrich-like head in the sand feel. It would be funny if it were not so tragic. Megachurches and the environmentAt least, that view of a crisis requiring urgent response is the drumbeat of a new evangelical initiative from some of America’s most prominent megachurch leaders. The web page is http://www.christiansandclimate.org/ and the endorsements come from such leading lights as Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church and author of The Purpose Driven Life. However, this initiative has also stirred up a response, written to the American National Association of Evangelicals to prevent them officially endorsing the Evangelical Climate Initiative (ECA), from luminaries such as James Dobson of Focus on the Family and Chuck Colson, otherwise colleagues and co-labourers with many of the signatories of the ECA. Nor is this developing debate falling into neat theological camps. Rick Warren has his supporters and detractors, yet also endorsing the climate initiative are lesser-known but significant leaders from Reformed movements with the Southern Baptist Convention. I always find it revealing when church discussions go public to at least listen to the secular commentary. The media blogosphere appears to observe party politics in the background. Afraid of losing influence with the right leaning Republican Party’s stance on climate, some conservative evangelicals are not quick to jump on the climate bandwagon. Others, like leftie evangelical Jim Wallis, or the just less politically concerned, wish to distance ‘evangelicals’ from appearing similar to single issue groups dominated by shrill concerns with abortion or homosexuality. Surely, justice, poverty, the world’s looming crisis, is a legitimate evangelical issue too. Comment on complexityWhatever the complexities of the networks that support these kind of new initiatives, several matters seem needful of comment from a biblical standpoint. First, do we really want (anyway) to have Evangelical (note the capital ‘E’) designated as an ‘issue’ group, related to one or other or more social matters? Is not the whole point of being an evangelical that we focus on the evangel, the gospel of Jesus Christ? Should we not seek readjustment when being an evangelical is not entirely commensurate with being evangelical, if you see what I mean? Second, though, while the gospel cannot be identified with social concerns, it also cannot be divorced from them. Jesus’s parable of the Good Samaritan must put this matter beyond dispute for a biblically-minded E(e)vangelical. On the other hand, while the gospel cannot be divorced from social concerns, the gospel must also be distinguished from them. Jesus did not announce, ‘The time has come. The kingdom is near. Repent and change the climate’. His message was, ‘Repent and believe the good news’. To add a further complexity, there seems, to this historical theologian by education (!), to be a genuine scientific disagreement not as to the fact of global warming but as to its cause, and therefore what actions it is advisable to take. By all means write in and correct me, but there appear to be genuine scientists who wonder whether global warming is more a, perhaps unstoppable, natural environmental cyclical change, than a product of modern industrialisation. So what are evangelicals to think and do? I’d like to say follow your conscience (Romans 14, etc.), but maybe that’s a cop out with the lives of vast millions potentially at stake. Instead, perhaps, at least in principle, it’s not that difficult. Preach (and believe) the gospel and love your neighbour. Now, that’s radical. Josh Moody,
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