Is Religious Environmentalism Taking Hold?

In creating the EnergyBible.com Website one of our goals was to provide the broadest and most complete perspective on the issues of energy use and renewable energy. Towards that end we have included within the site information about moral and spiritual perspectives on the environment because we have found that for many of us issues such as global warming, energy use and environmental stewardship are not simply political issues, they are moral ones. So from time to time on this blog we will be talking about what is going on in the world of faith-based organizations as they, like us, struggle to find the best solutions for out planet moving forward. This week there was a lot happening on that front.

Most of the major religious organizations have been debating envionmental issues for some time. However, as the scientific realities of global warming have begun to sink into our consciousness many organizations are seeing pressure from within to begin to become more actively involved in addressing environmental issues. This was the case with at the Southern Baptist Convention this week . The Southern Baptist Convention is a conglomeration of Southern Baptist churches and they have a yearly meeting, which (just to add to the confusion) is also called the Southern Baptist Convention. This week at their annual conference 44 of their leaders made a significant departure from the Southern Baptist Convention’s official stance on global warming by backing a declaration calling for more action on climate change, saying its previous position on the issue was “too timid.”

In many ways this action represents a major step forward in the area of religious environmentalism. The Southern Baptist church is a huge organization with over 16 million members and is the largest denomination in the United States after the Roman Catholic Church. Moreover, the Southern Baptist Church has always been extremely conservative when it comes to environmental issues. This may be about to change given that its current president, the Rev. Frank Page, signed the initiative, “A Southern Baptist Declaration on the Environment and Climate Change.” Two past presidents of the convention, the Rev. Jack Graham and the Rev. James Merritt, also signed. These church leaders stated that “We believe our current denominational engagement with these issues has often been too timid, failing to produce a unified moral voice,”

As recently as 2007 the Southern Baptists passed a resolution which took a very skeptical view of global warming. In contrast, the new declaration says that “Our cautious response to these issues in the face of mounting evidence may be seen by the world as uncaring, reckless and ill-informed. ”The document also urges ministers to preach more about the environment and for all Baptists to keep an open mind about considering environmental policy. The leaders said that current evidence of global warming is "substantial," and that the threat is too grave to wait for perfect knowledge about whether, or how much, people contribute to the trend.

Because the Southern Baptist Convention is an aggregation of individual churches such announcments are not in any way binding upon the individual churches. This is not the Catholic Church we are talking about. Yet because many of the signatories were both present and past church leaders it is likely that many Baptist preachers and members will give such announcements considerable thought. That strikes us as a good thing. A basic tenet of the Christian faith, and for that matter of most faiths, is to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. I sincerely believe that most of us would like to live in a clean, pollution free world where no one suffers as a result of our mishandling of the environment. I also sincerely believe that most of us want to survive period! Global warming threatens all of this. We certainly would not want our neighbors doing things that might threaten our environment and therefore our own existance. Consequently we should avoid doing these things ourselves.

Exactly what is the best way to go about our lives such that we don't cause damage to the environment, our neighbors and ourselves is not always easy to see. It will require better understanding of the planet, of the environment and ultimately of our own nature. It was towards this end that the EnergyBible.com Website was created. As we continue to study and research the field of renewable energy and the environment, we hope you will share your own learnings with us so that together we can come up with the most effective solutions. Should you have any knowledge, experience or opionions that you think would be helpful please don't hesitate to write to us. We look forward to hearing from you!