The growing environmental crisis in the (Mexican) Gulf, following the breakage of the BP oil pipe, is doing something unexpected to evangelical environmental concerns: there is a developing tenderness.
Dr. Moore, Senior Vice President of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, writes winsomely and captivatingly about his epiphany after his recent exposure to the issue in the Gulf area (http://www.russellmoore.com/2010/06/01/ecological-catastrophe-and-the-uneasy-evangelical-conscience/).
Liberal agenda?
For some reason, being willing to say that polluting things is bad, makes people sick, and ruins peoples’ lives can sound to some ears like a ‘liberal’ agenda. I’m not sure why. Well, I could have a go at explaining it, extrapolating from various historical antecedents and shifts in emphasis from a God-centred gospel to a social gospel, or that tendency for the discussion to be hijacked by those with Mother Earth, Gaia, ‘crunchy’, organic, no-deodorant kind of agendas. But, on the other hand, millions of barrels of oil spilling into the sea is a problem in no uncertain terms; it kills people and cultures, destroys habitats for God’s creation. And more.
