Climate change

It's good to see Rich Cizik's picture in The New York Times. It's especially nice when it accompanies an article in which he says things like, "I don't think God is going to ask us how he created the earth, but he will ask us what we did with what he created."

Cizik runs the National Association of Evangelicals' governmental affairs office in Washington. Laurie Goodstein's article describes the NAE's evolving stance on climate change:

A core group of influential evangelical leaders has put its considerable political power behind a cause that has barely registered on the evangelical agenda, fighting global warming.

These church leaders, scientists, writers and heads of international aid agencies argue that global warming is an urgent threat, a cause of poverty and a Christian issue because the Bible mandates stewardship of God's creation. …

In October the [NAE] paved the way for broad-based advocacy on the environment when it adopted "For the Health of the Nation: An Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility," a platform that included a plank on "creation care" that many evangelical leaders say was unprecedented.

"Because clean air, pure water and adequate resources are crucial to public health and civic order," the statement said, "government has an obligation to protect its citizens from the effects of environmental degradation."

Nearly 100 evangelical leaders have signed the statement.

But — and this is a big "but" — Goodwin also acknowledges the tenuousness of this broad new position:

" But it is far from certain that a more focused statement on climate change would elicit a similar response."

I've known Rich Cizik for more than 10 years. He's a lot more conservative than I am, but he's a good man. Cizik has, over the years, been a driving force for many of the NAE's commendable political efforts — such as its focus on African AIDS, human rights in the Sudan and the sexual trafficking of young girls. I attended one conference on sexual trafficking that was cosponsored by the NAW and the National Organization for Women. Rich's willingness to work alongside groups like NOW is one of the things I admire about him.

A bit of personal history: I met Cizik while I worked for Evangelicals for Social Action. ESA is the organization founded by Ron Sider, author of "Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger." Sider was also one of the primary authors of the NAE's "Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility" (and of dozens of similar documents, manifestos and "calls" over the years).

At ESA, we worked hard to convince evangelicals that things like caring for the poor and the stewardship of God's creation were the business of Christians.

This was not an easy job. On the one hand, during my years at ESA I was inspired by the scores of people I met who were deeply committed and deeply involved in working for a more just world. On the other hand, talk of the poor and the environment continued to be met with suspicion by the overwhelming majority of the evangelical Christian subculture we were addressing.

But slowly, incrementally, a bit of our message was getting through. A 1999 Prism magazine forum on "Evangelicals and the Poor" discusses how the idea of concern for the poor — at least in an abstract, broad sense — was no longer viewed as "controversial." In the introduction to that forum, I wrote:

At a recent conference, Michael Cromartie of the Ethics and Public Policy Center stated: "It is a settled issue that ‘the least of these’ among us be treated with both charity and justice."

Twenty years ago in evangelical circles, talk of justice and the least of these would have gotten one branded as a liberal — marginalized as a dangerous, controversial radical. Statements like the one above got Ron Sider accused of being "socialist." Such talk saw Tony Campolo put on "trial" for heresy. Even speaking of something as innocuous as "sharing with the poor" could lead to accusations of being "redistributionist," i.e. "statist," i.e. "communist," i.e. "Are you now or have you ever been … ?"

Yet today, as Cromartie says, it is a "settled issue." Or, as Richard Cizik of the National Association of Evangelicals put it, "The Cold War between religious groups over the poor is over."

That's progress of a sort. But just because something is no longer automatically viewed as controversial does not mean it has become the central priority that it ought to be. As Dave Gushee wrote in that Prism forum:

No self-respecting evangelical leader would now claim to be unconcerned about the poor. And sharp ideological divisions between Christian left leaders and Christian right leaders definitely have faded …

But at this point one does not sense any kind of groundswell in which a majority of evangelical Christians become converts to making empowerment of the poor a high priority. This, I think, is due to a combination of the pressing nature of our own more immediate concerns as well as a continuing deficiency in the moral vision of the evangelical subculture.

ESA's environmental work encountered a similar kind of grudging, gradual progress. ESA was home to the Evangelical Environmental Network, a branch of the National Religious Partnership for the Environment. The NRPE arose, in part, from the efforts of astronomer Carl Sagan — a fact that didn't win us a lot of points with our evangelical audience.

Our argument that "creation care" was a biblical mandate and obligation for Christians tended to encounter one of three receptions:

1. Ideological hostility: Many evangelicals interpreted any call to protect the environment as simply a call for increased and intrusive government regulation, which they regarded as un-American and therefore un-Christian, and very probably socialist. And, yes, they would actually use the word "socialist," as in "Isn't all this hype about global warming just part of a socialist conspiracy?"

2. Otherworldy irrelevance: This world is not my home, I'm just a passin' through, so who cares about the ozone layer? And anyway, Tim LaHaye says Jesus is coming back any day now and the earth is going to be destroyed, so why worry about it? Plus, isn't all this hype about global warming just part of an international conspiracy laying the groundwork for the Antichrist's one-world government?

3. That's interesting. Tell me more.

Those first two responses are typical of the groups we tend to refer to as the religious right. The third response is more typical of mainstream evangelical groups like the NAE. Goodstein describes what this response can look like in real life:

Over the last three years, evangelical leaders like Mr. Cizik have begun to reconsider their silence on environmental questions. Some evangelicals have spoken out, but not many. Among them is the Rev. Jim Ball of the Evangelical Environmental Network, who in 2002 began a "What Would Jesus Drive?" campaign and drove a hybrid vehicle across the country.

Mr. Cizik said that Mr. Ball "dragged" him to a conference on climate change in 2002 in Oxford, England. Among the speakers were evangelical scientists, including Sir John Houghton, a retired Oxford professor of atmospheric physics who was on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a committee that issued international reports.

Sir John said in an interview that he had told the group that science and faith together provided proof that climate change should be a Christian concern.

Mr. Cizik said he had a "conversion" on climate change so profound in Oxford that he likened it to an "altar call," when nonbelievers accept Jesus as their savior. Mr. Cizik recently bought a Toyota Prius, a hybrid vehicle.

The key point here is not that Cizik had to be "dragged" to the conference on climate change. It is that he was willing to be dragged. And picturing Rich's new Prius parked in the NAE lot makes me happy.