SOUL FOOD:Earth Day controversy in evangelical circles

Were Jamie and Andi Douglass evangelicals, somebody might be raising Cain about what they have planned for Sunday, which this year also happens to be Earth Day.

At their Huntington Beach Episcopal church, St. Wilfrid of York, the husband and wife have organized a fair called “Caring for Creation.” The event will pair tasty foods, fair trade coffee, games and prizes with hands-on, educational displays about an array of environmental issues.

“When you talk about the environment, the list of what you can learn and what you can do just goes on and on,” Jamie Douglass says. From 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the church this Sunday, there will be booths and displays featuring information, products and samples related to many items on that lengthy list.

Organic gardening. Organic foods. The environmental benefits of eating a locally produced diet. Solar power. Energy-saving light bulbs. Waste disposal and recycling. Reusable shopping bags made from recycled materials. Hybrid and fuel-efficient cars. Human population. Global warming.

Much of it is familiar fare, if still hard to sell. But little of it holds as much potential for controversy as the latter two, which have engendered growing contentions, particularly among evangelical circles.

Many mainline churches have for some time held articulated positions on various environmental concerns. The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) drafted a statement on the use of natural resources more than 50 years ago.

The National Council of Churches maintains an online anthology of environmental statements written by its member churches — the Episcopal Church, the American Baptist Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Orthodox Church, the United Methodist Church and others — on topics ranging from strip mining to acid rain. Many of them have formal resolutions on global warming.

In 2001, America’s Roman Catholic bishops issued their own statement calling for action to counter the effects of global climate change. In May of last year, Archbishop Celestino Migliore, the Vatican’s representative to the United Nations, told the international body that a sustainable human ecology is “essential to our common future.”

As Margaret Henke, president of the Orange County Interfaith Coalition for the Environment, noted, whether Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, Baha’i, Christian or Jewish, “all [faiths] have something in their teachings that emphasize caring for the Earth.” The [coalition] was formed to help their congregations form Earth ministries, similar to the one Andi and Jamie Douglass head up at St. Wilfrid Church.

But being green has never been easy for evangelical Christians who have had to contend with those among their ranks who, like the Rev. Jerry Falwell, tend to view environmentalism as a competing religion with a neo-pagan worldview. In a recent article titled “The Great Myth of Global Warming,” Falwell urged believers not to be “duped by these ‘earthism’ worshippers,” who claim global warning is a real and imminent threat.

They are, he advised, not only green but possibly also red.

If evangelical Christianity ever were a monolith of theological belief and political opinion, as it has often been depicted, the issues of global warming and climate control have exposed a fissure running through it.

Most recently, because of his outspoken position on global warming, Richard Cizik, vice president for governmental affairs for the National Assn. of Evangelicals, has run afoul of James C. Dobson, chairman of Focus on the Family. In March, Dobson and 24 other self-identifying evangelicals wrote a letter to L. Roy Taylor, chairman of the association’s board, calling for Cizik’s resignation, though none of the letter’s signatories are members of the association.

While acknowledging “many opinions and perspectives” about global warming among the association’s 30 million members, the letter nonetheless argues that Cizik is not to be trusted “to articulate the views of American evangelicals on environmental issues.”

Cizik, it says, is contributing to a “growing confusion about the term ‘evangelical’ ” while diverting attention from “the great moral issues of our time,” those being “the sanctity of human life, the integrity of marriage and the teaching of sexual abstinence and morality to our children.”

The letter notably criticizes Cizik’s linking of climate control to population control in a 2006 speech he gave to the World Bank. “How,” the letter writers ask, “is population control going to be achieved if not by promoting abortion, the distribution of condoms to the young and even by infanticide in China and elsewhere?”

Cizik, who has said he had only birth control in mind, has characterized climate control as a moral imperative. G. W. Sqyres, pastor of Huntington Beach Baptist Church, like many evangelicals, disagrees.

Having read extensively on the subject, including the findings of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Sqyres remains unconvinced that “the sky is falling.” Cizik’s claim, he says, is “on shaky, if not non-existent, ground.”

While Sqyres does believe Christians “have a duty to be good stewards of the earth,” he also says, “The earth is old and very tough and it will survive quite well.”

Eric Oleson, pastor of God’s House in Huntington Beach, says he was for a time hesitant to take a firm position on global warming. And he understands concerns that it not overshadow other Christian mandates such as, he says, “serving God, telling people about God [and] feeding the poor.”

But as he read Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports and other statements, such as those issued by the National Academies of Science and the Evangelical Climate Initiative, Oleson found himself convinced.

“I have great respect for those who have signed that statement,” he says of those who put their names to the Evangelical Climate Initiative. Besides, he says, “It’s pretty easy to come to the conclusion that if global warming isn’t our problem, pollution [and] air quality [are].”

Before putting together Sunday’s Caring for Creation fair, Andi and Jamie Douglass taught a three-Sunday course at St. Wilfrid using the Episcopal Church’s three-part Catechism of Creation. Based on the Bible and the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer, the Catechism is meant to lay a solid theological foundation for Christian efforts to care for creation.

During the course, Andi Douglass recalls, most disagreement that arose hinged on “how to care for the earth rather than should we.” I suspect that may be true far and wide.

For Jamie Douglass, caring for creation is about never having to say, “We could have, why didn’t we?” At the fair, he hopes, people can put squabbling aside and find common ground, discovering those things they can support and act on individually.