Whole Life Times: God’s Green Earth

February 2007 | Features

God’s Green Earth

In houses of worship across the nation, new converts to the eco-gospel are asking fellow parishioners to have a little faith in the environmental movement

By Elizabeth Barker

Last year, more than 4,000 congregations across the US held free screenings of Davis Guggenheim’s An Inconvenient Truth, convincing at least half a million church- and synagogue-goers to spend 100 minutes of quality time with former vice president Al Gore. Before starting the film, many screening attendees joined in a group prayer, asking that God “remove the barriers that will make it hard for us to hear and feel what is true — our fear and our guilt, our ideology and our self-interest.” And it looks like someone was listening: After the screenings, the Regeneration Project — the San Francisco-based interfaith ministry responsible for bringing An Inconvenient Truth to all those houses of worship — received thousands of thank-you letters from viewers vowing to fight global warming.

“Many of the letters said, ‘Thank you for making this available to us. I would have never gone to a theater and paid to see Al Gore, but I’m so grateful that I saw this movie,’” recalls Reverend Sally Bingham, president of the Regeneration Project and director of environmental ministries for Grace Cathedral. Those expressions of surprised gratitude were often followed by promises to live greener, with one man revealing, “I thought I’d done everything I possibly could do to lessen my ecological footprint, but after watching An Inconvenient Truth, I’m going to stop using warm water to wash up.”

Like that letter’s author, many Bible-abiding Americans are taking action to cool global warming, a matter that Bingham calls “the most important moral issue of our generation.”

“Over the past few years there’s been an increase in the number of religious groups working to protect the environment,” says Lyndsay Moseley, spokesperson for the Sierra Club’s Environmental Partnerships Program. “They’re doing everything from installing compact fluorescent light bulbs in churches to lobbying, and it’s got the potential to have a huge impact.” Often using the term “creation care,” this new breed of eco-phile considers environmental stewardship a means of practically applying faith. “I’ve long had a really passionate sense that the people in the pews, the ones who profess a love for God, are the ones that should be protecting God’s creation,” says Bingham. “And now that we’re beginning to see the effects of our bad behavior — the contamination of our water, the severe storms — people of faith are realizing that we have a responsibility to care for what God gave us, not exploit it.”

Make no mistake: That divine devotion to the planet doesn’t signal an across-the-board adoption of the liberal agenda. Largely pro-life, against same-sex marriage and opposed to stem-cell research, most faith-driven eco-stewards aren’t seeking to hitch onto the mainstream environmentalist movement. “A lot of people of faith look at the environmentalist community and are concerned that its members are only focused on the secular earth and don’t have a deeper regard for why we should care for it,” says LeeAnne Beres, executive director for Earth Ministry, a Seattle-based group that works to connect Christian faith with environmental protection. Still, both Beres and Moseley have noticed a growing tolerance of treehugger types in recent years. “In the past, people of faith may have been held back by the stereotype of the typical environmentalist,” says Moseley. “But they’ve become much more willing to get involved with environmental issues, instead of leaving them to the left and liberal. There’s a recognition that we don’t have to agree on everything in order to agree on this.” In fact, a little — or a lot of — disagreement may actually help benefit the cause. “Environmentalists are seen as left of left, but because our organization’s mission has deep roots in theology, we can talk to and persuade both sides of the aisle,” Bingham points out.

What Would Jesus Drive?
Over on the far right, evangelical Christians began widely preaching creation care with the 2004 release of “For the Health of the Nation: An Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility.” Drafted by the National Association of Evangelicals and distributed at 50,000 churches, the manifesto asks NAE’s 30 million members to “shape their personal lives in creation-friendly ways: practicing effective recycling, conserving resources, and experiencing the joy of contact with nature.” The government, meanwhile, is urged to fulfill its “obligation to protect its citizens from the effects of environmental degradation” by encouraging fuel efficiency and sustainable use of natural resources, reducing pollution, and providing for the proper care of wildlife and their natural habitats. Shortly after the paper’s release, Pat Robertson pronounced on The 700 Club that “some of the evangelicals are being used by the radical left to further their agenda. And if you look further in the agenda of some of the radical environmentalists, they want to shut America down.” Undeterred, eco-minded evangelicals have continued to go green with campaigns like What Would Jesus Drive?, a call for Christian communities to curb global warming by walking and biking more, making neighborhoods more pedestrian-friendly, and supporting research for alternative transportation technologies.

In the evangelical community and beyond, embracing the environment in the everyday — whether it’s through driving less, choosing organic food or taking shorter showers — has become the cornerstone of creation care. One of Earth Ministry’s principal programs, for instance, focuses on “the three areas in which individuals can personally have the greatest beneficial impact on creation’s well-being”: transportation, food and home maintenance. “We take each issue and incorporate it through an entire Sunday worship service, so that the prayers, the hymnals, the sermon and the Sunday School lessons are all woven with that particular ecological imperative,” explains Beres. “If we’re addressing transportation, for example, we might talk about the benefits of walking, biking or carpooling to church, and give the congregation members a way to measure the pounds of carbon emissions they’re sparing by not driving.”

Some eco-stewards are making change happen on both a personal and political level. “A lot of churches aren’t that comfortable with activism, but some are writing letters to congress, calling their senators and speaking out about issues like mercury and power plant pollution,” says Moseley. While Earth Ministry regularly works to get its members involved in lobbying on ecological issues, the Regeneration Project may next take action to explore the link between human health and the environment. “If we’re going to profess to be pro-life, we have to be pro-healthy-life,” says Bingham. “And right now we have babies born with all these toxic chemicals in their bodies.”

With more and more congregations printing their bulletins on recycled paper, selecting sustainably grown palms for Palm Sunday, and serving only fair-trade coffee at functions, God’s green earth may continue to gain a growing number of once-unlikely advocates. “A lot of the time, people hear all this bad news about what’s happening with the environment, and it doesn’t compel them to do anything,” says Ellen Bernstein, author of The Splendor of Creation. “But with this approach, getting involved can be so joyful. When you strive everyday to care for the environment, all the little things in life become more drenched in meaning.” For eco-minded Christians like Bingham, that joy and meaning serve as endless inspiration in the struggle to stop global warming. “I’m continuously conscious of the awesome beauty of nature,” she says. “If in my lifetime I can help to keep it beautiful, then that brings me closer to God.”

Elizabeth Barker is a Los Angeles-based freelance writer and beauty director for the style blo g NoGoodForMe.com. Her work has appeared in Body & Soul, Plenty, Natural Health and Kiwi magazines.

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