Christians Bring Hope for the Planet

By Melanie Griffin, Sierra Club 

Let’s face it, to dedicate
your life to protecting the planet from basic human behaviors like greed
and power and selfishness, you’ve got to be an optimist at heart. 
You have to believe that you can make a difference with your life –
that there is hope.

Even in these dark days for
our public health and wild heritage, I believe there is real cause for
hope.  It seems that help is on the way from a “higher power.” 
Everyday, I hear about Christians, Jewish leaders and other people of
faith joining the struggle to protect creation.

I’ve been a “professional
environmentalist” for 25 years now.  While the right wing paints
a picture of environmentalists as negative obstructionists and prophets
of doom and gloom, I don’t fit that description and neither do most
of my environmentally inclined friends. 

It’s true we are forced
to spend a lot of our time “stopping” things – hazardous waste
dumping, irresponsible development, oil drilling in America’s Wildlife
Refuges and the like.  And if you’re paying any attention at
all to the current trends and predictions about global warming, or to
the Bush Administration’s unraveling of decades of basic environmental
safeguards, you probably wonder how a career conservationist ever gets
out of bed in the morning.   

But let’s face it, to dedicate
your life to protecting the planet from basic human behaviors like greed
and power and selfishness, you’ve got to be an optimist at heart. 
You have to believe that you can make a difference with your life –
that there is hope. 

Even in these dark days for
our public health and wild heritage, I believe there is real cause for
hope.  It seems that help is on the way from a “higher power.” 
Everyday, I hear about Christians, Jewish leaders and other people of
faith joining the struggle to protect creation.  At the local level,
congregations are greening their houses of worship with energy efficient
technologies and natural lawn care, and even some high profile politically
conservative evangelical leaders are speaking out about global warming
and the extinction crisis.   

The media is all abuzz about
these strange bedfellows and unnatural allies.  But I don’t find
the growing religious engagement in environmental issues all that surprising. 
As a committed Christian myself (I’m head elder at my church, consider
myself “born again” and would call myself an evangelical if I didn’t
think it would clear the room) I wonder what has taken this alliance
so long to come together. 

A survey of Sierra Club members
found that nearly half attend worship services at least monthly, they
just don’t necessarily talk about their spirituality at Club meetings. 
And most of the members of my church will tell you that they gain real
insights into God when they are out in the natural world.  They
feel a sense of connection with the Creator when they enjoy creation,
and they feel that it’s part of their calling to protect it.  

Whether this Christian environmental
movement is a new alliance or simply many people like me finally putting
the two separate halves of their lives together, it just makes sense. 
The themes of responsible stewardship, loving your neighbor (including
future generations) and activism on behalf of the poor (who are most
affected by polluting facilities) are age-old biblical principles. 

In particular, I am hopeful
that Christians and other people of faith can join together to bring
healing to our nation, especially in these politically divisive times. 
It’s so sad that some Christian leaders spend their time trying to
divide people, instead of working to promote unity and solutions. And
it’s downright crazy that they have managed to turn the care of our
planet into a partisan political issue. In my humble opinion, these
folks need to step away from the politics of pride and power and realize
that something is terribly amiss when Jesus’ followers are working
on the side of the powerful and the rich, instead of the poor and suffering. 

I also believe that environmentalists
need to reject those that preach cynicism and anger and instead tap
into the optimism and hope that I believe fuels us at our deepest levels. 
And those of us who pray need to get over being shy about sharing the
spiritual reasons for our activism.  Together, people of faith
– Democrats and Republicans – can bring hope to a hurting planet. 
We can care for creation as God intended.  At least I hope so.

Melanie Griffin is Director
of Sierra Club’s Partnerships Program in Washington, D.C.