Why Evangelicals Will Become the New Environmentalists

Pastor Ken Wilson is co-founder of a project that brings evangelical pastors together for a day with environmental scientists to discover common ground.

Courtesy: Thomas Nelson Inc.

(ANN ARBOR Mich.) - You've probably noticed a shift in the American religious landscape. Evangelicals who have been known to affix the adjective "whacko" to the term "environmentalist" are starting to go green. Calls to return to the biblical heritage of environmental stewardship are pouring from leaders like Richard Cizik, the Vice President for Governmental Affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals, Rick Warren, the author of The Purpose Driven Life, and Bill Hybels, the voice for over 6,000 churches in his Willow Creek Association.

What began as a trickle and has swelled into a steady stream is bound to become a flood as evangelicals in America become the new environmentalists. We will bring new energy to address the growing global environmental crisis of a warming climate, an alarming extinction rate, the rapid loss of land that can grow crops, and over a billion people without clean drinking water.

Why am I so sure? Because evangelicals love to rediscover biblical truths that have been long neglected in the church and dive into these truths with passion. Good stewardship of God's green earth is a hallmark of faithfulness to the earth's creator. The Bible is shot through with this emphasis, but many evangelicals have been blind to it for cultural reasons. Once we start seeing it again, there will be "aha" moments spreading like wildfire among us.

The fact is most evangelicals are suspicious of environmentalism because many environmentalists are secular in orientation and view abortion on demand as an important tool for slowing population growth. But evangelicals are sophisticated enough to realize that pro-choice environmentalists can be wrong about abortion but right about the need to protect the environment. (We may even come to realize that hindering condom distribution in AIDS ravaged Africa is no way to be pro-life.)

And credit where credit is due, evangelicals are undergoing a re-awakening to environmental concern because scientists, including secular ones, are reaching out to us to say, "We need your help." For the first time in a long time evangelical leaders are meeting face to face with scientists for real dialog. The scientists and the evangelicals are finding they have more in common than either group realized. They are in the process of blowing stereotypes of each other out of the muddy waters of media-managed myths.

Carl Safina, a secular environmental ocean conservationist, has partnered with me to gather two such groups--one at the University of Akron and another at The Ohio State University--after attending one ourselves in Georgia. We find that when the scientists and evangelical pastors get together for a day, they come away shaking their heads and saying, "I was wrong about those people." They start listening to and learning from each other and God's good earth or the environment--call it what you will--is the better for it.

After all, the founder of Christianity had a rule that summed up his reading of the Law and the Prophets (his Bible): do unto others as you would have them do unto you. When scientists who are alarmed by the way we're treating the planet and evangelicals who realize that human beings have a built in capacity for mischief get together and listen to each other, good things are bound to happen. But even better, God things are bound to happen. And Lord knows, the creation has been groaning for this day to arrive for a long time.

Ken Wilson is pastor of Vineyard Church of Ann Arbor and author of Jesus Brand Spirituality: He Wants His Religion Back. Together with Carl Safina, author of The Blue Ocean, he is co-founder of The Friendship Collaborative, bringing evangelical pastors together for a day with environmental scientists to discover common ground for the sake of caring for it better. (see: friendshipcollaborative.org).