Use ‘moral imagination’ in addressing global warming, expert says

Posted: 9/29/07

Use ‘moral imagination’ in
addressing global warming, expert says

By Ken Camp

Managing Editor

BILENE—“Premillenial pessimism” and blind allegiance to politicians backed by big oil companies contribute to evangelicals’ relative silence about the threat of global warming, said Richard Cizik, the National Association for Evangelicals’ vice president for governmental affairs.

In a Hardin-Simmons University chapel address, Cizik challenged students to use “moral imagination” in exercising stewardship of the world God created.

“I believe global warning threatens everything,” he said, echoing a position that came close to costing him his job earlier this year.

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In March, about two-dozen high-profile Religious Right figures—including James Dobson of Focus on the Family—called on the NAE board either to silence or fire Cizik for his public statements on global warning.

They insisted an emphasis on environmentalism would dilute evangelicals’ political clout and take their focus off issues such as abortion and gay marriage.

But Cizik, an ordained Presbyterian minister, insisted environmental degradation is a pro-life issue, and global climate change presents a threat to all of God’s creation.

“It’s not the devil’s diversion. It may be God’s way of getting our attention,” he said.

A theology of creation care means Christians strive to “bring the sustainable values of heaven to this earth,” he told students in Abilene.

“We’re not using resources for heavenly purposes but for our own selfish interests,” he said. “Our dependence on foreign oil means we’re transferring wealth to Middle Eastern religious dictators and importing oil to fuel a lifestyle that serves only our own interests.”

In part, creation care requires responsible lifestyle changes by individuals.

“We are living in sin, and we need to repent,” he said. “Unless we change, we are doomed.”

Recycling, driving hybrid cars and making homes more energy-efficient will help, but it won’t make enough difference, Cizik insisted. Citizens must demand public policy change—a difficult chore when politicians owe favors to big energy companies, he stressed.

“Are you going to save your friends or are you going to save the planet? I think, in effect, the president has said he will save his friends at the expense of the planet,” he said.

Evangelicals motivated by a sense of stewardship to God’s creation need to “bridge outward” and find common cause with scientists and secularists who may find reason to effect environmental change on the basis of public health or national security arguments, Cizik said.

“On this issue, we are all at peril. We must all work together,” Cizik said.

“Everything is at stake—the future of the planet even,” he continued.

At that point, a student interrupted Cizik to ask, “If we know the world will end in fire anyway, what does it matter?”

Cizik responded by pointing to the New Testament image of the new heaven and new earth as a renewed and restored creation, and he stressed the stewardship responsibility given to God’s people.

“It’s not about eschatology. It’s about theology,” he said.

In an interview after his chapel sermon, Cizik noted the student’s question represented a viewpoint prevalent among many evangelicals.

“The premillenial dispensational view has produced a pessimism about the earth that is frankly unbiblical,” he said.

A theology that teaches an end-times doomsday scenario has contributed to evangelical preachers’ unwillingness to address the environment as a moral and ethical issue. He compared it to how, in most evangelical circles, “churches opted out and preachers were silent” during the Civil Rights Movements of the 1950s and 1960s.

“I believe climate change and global warming is the civil rights issue of the 21st century,” he said. “We’re at a historically defining moment.”

Society does not have to choose between job creation and a clean environment, he insisted. Global warming and a dirty environment endanger both the working poor in the United States and people living in Third World poverty.

“Hundreds of millions of people of color” could be negatively affected by global climate change, he insisted.

Cizik sees the potential for a “convergence of concern” over global warming that could build bridges between people of faith and the secular scientific community.

Ironically, some high-profile Religious Right figures have used global warming as a wedge issue.

Cizik, who identifies himself as a “conservative Republican who voted for George W. Bush twice,” believes opposition to creation care grows out of fear that concern for environmental issues could drive some evangelicals into the arms of the Democrats.

“They’re interested in preserving the relationship between big business, particularly big oil, and evangelical conservatives—the two wings of the Republican Party,” he said in an interview.

“I don’t believe in conspiracy theories. It’s not a secret conspiracy. It’s right out in the open.”

That seems to reveal misplaced allegiance by some Christian conservatives, he added.

“It appears they care more about the welfare of the Republican Party than they do about the kingdom of God,” he said. “If that’s not the case, then they should say so.”