The man who originally introduced the name "Earth Day" was a Pentecostal minister, according to the Assemblies of God (AG) Heritage magazine.

John McConnell introduced "Earth Day" at the 1969 UNESCO Conference on the Environment. The next year, Sen. Gaylord Nelson (D-Wisconsin) moved Earth Day to April 22, when he held a political protest.

"So the next thing I knew they stole my name Earth Day and they used it for April 22," McConnell told the AG Heritage. "I was urged to sue, but I didn't. I didn't believe in suing."

McConnell's grandfather was at the Azusa Street Revival and his parents were founding members of the AG. Darrin Rodgers also did a video interview with McConnell.

"If there had been no Christian experience in my life there would be no Earth Day - or at least I would not have initiated it," McConnell said. "We love God ... [and therefore should] have an appreciation for His creation."

Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at April 22, 2010 | Comments (4)

I celebrated Earth Day by purchasing a plane ticket and reserving a hotel room. From May 13 to 15, I'm going to join other evangelical Christians who care for God's creation at the Flourish Conference in Duluth, Georgia.

The lineup of speakers is intriguing. It blends people who don't usually appear on the same platform because of their differing constituencies and mixes veteran environmental presenters with other well-known speakers who haven't addressed this issue with their publics. Add to that the symbolism of a Southern Baptist venue for an environmental conversation and the fact that several of the speakers are "professional Southern Baptists" (that is, their public face is linked with Southern Baptist institutions).

But what is most interesting about this conference is this:

In a recent e-mail, Flourish CEO Jim Jewell told me:

This is a conference about church ministries and personal faithfulness, not political action and global warming. This reflects the philosophy of the new organization, Flourish. The organization and the conference are not taking a public stand on climate change ... , because the heated rhetoric about global warming and disagreements on the role of government have paralyzed the church's consideration of deeper responsibilities to care for God's creation as a matter of Christian discipleship.

Making this distinction between church ministry and personal faithfulness on the one hand, and political action on the other may be a necessary strategy. Jewell cited a recent Barna Research Group poll that found that "90 percent of evangelicals believed Christians should be more involved in creation care - but most didn't know what next steps to take. The poll also showed that "most were not convinced about the dangers of global warming. This conference," said Jewell, "can be the start of the equipping and motivating of that 90 percent."

This separation of direct action from politics is part of a larger picture, of course. Many issues can be divided (though not always neatly) into their "political" dimensions and their "direct action" dimensions. Consider, for example, hunger. A huge number of American churches participate in local community food pantries, many of which are part of the organization Feeding America (formerly called America's Second Harvest). Church members are eager to volunteer nonperishable food items and hours of service to the direct action of feeding the hungry. The necessary political work on hunger issues gets much less support in our churches. Nevertheless, a significant number of congregations do participate in Bread for the World's annual Offering of Letters so that church members can tell their concerns to legislators about hunger-related items such as the Farm Bill (renewed every five years) and the aspects of international trade and foreign aid that affect hunger both at home and abroad.

On most issues, we need Christians to be involved in both hands-on action and on the political and policy front. But if you allow the two to mix, you will, frankly scare off those who become uncomfortable with the presence of the "political" dimension in the church context.

According to Princeton sociologist Bob Wuthnow, this is a sociological reality. I recently interviewed Bob about his new book, Boundless Faith, which surveys the tremendous range of connections U.S. churches have with people and projects in other countries. Wuthnow found that certain kinds of issues were perceived as "too political" for congregations to engage. If church leaders tried to get their congregations to address issues that were perceived as political, they would meet major resistance. Thus, whether the issue was HIV/AIDS in Africa or human trafficking, pastors needed to depoliticize the perceptions of the issue as much as possible.

The attempt of the Flourish Conference to separate the church ministry and personal faithfulness elements of creation care from the political action and global warming factors is a savvy strategy. Potentially, it can open the door to congregational activity that is not polarizing but which can still makea significant impact in a local community.

Big environmental problems may still require big solutions coordinated on a national or even international stage. But neighborhoods are also environments where more direct and manageable efforts can make a difference. One of the Flourish speakers, pastor Leroy Barber sees "greening the hood" as an integral part of caring for urban neighbors in need.

Flourish is all about finding the right way to integrate environmental care into Christian living and congregational life. According to Flourish president Rusty Pritchard, the organization "doesn't intend to create a cohort of prophetic single-issue advocates. Caring for creation is one theme in the church's mission, and when it finds its rightful place we can better teach ourselves and those outside the church what it means to be fully human."

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Photo: Fox's den near Jastrzebia G?ra, Poland, provided by Leafnode via Wikimedia Commons.

Posted by David Neff at April 24, 2009 | Comments (6)

When Frodo sailed into the West, never to return to a Middle Earth that was itself slipping away, I got choked up. When Narnia was no more, I felt a longing of regret:

The spreading blackness was not a cloud at all: it was simply emptiness. The black part of the sky was the part in which there were no stars left. All the stars were falling: Aslan had called them home.

As a billion people observe the 40th Earth Day today and think about the noble goal of preserving (and for Christians, stewarding) the planet on which we live and move and have our being, I am thinking about heaven.

There's a reason the Bible promises us a new heaven and a new earth. This world, as seemingly solid and as breathtakingly beautiful as it is, is transient beyond our comprehension. And despite our best (and sometimes misguided) efforts, this pale blue dot in a sea of inky blackness is headed for extinction. That's not a world-denying premillennial eschatological perspective that cannot be verified. It's the latest findings of the new science of astrobiology.

According to Peter D. Ward and Donald Brownlee, life on earth is the result of a precarious - and temporary - balance of air, rock, and solar activity. In The Life and Death of Planet Earth, They write, "Our neighboring planets, Venus and Mars, one blisteringly hot and the other frozen, have provided valuable insights into how rare, unique, and wonderful our own home is."

Ward and Brownlee, authors of Rare Earth, say the planet is already in decline and make the following predictions related to earth's eventual demise:

- The long-term climate threat to human civilization comes not from global warming, but from a new ice age: "Human civilization has arisen in a brief ?interglacial' that has lasted only about twelve thousand years and may already be ending."
- The loss of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in 100 million years will spell the end of plant life (meaning the Age of Plants is 95 percent over);
- All life, even microbial life, which most scientists believe began 3.4 billion years ago, will be extinct in a mere 500 million years;
- When earth, currently estimated at 4.5 billion years old, is 12 billion years old, it will be swallowed by an expanding sun.

Given these projections, the old hymn, "This World Is Not My Home," resonates with me on this Earth Day.

This world is not my home, I'm just passing through.
My treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue.

Yes, while we pass through this world, let's take care of it for our good and for God's glory. But let's remember that Jesus has promised to prepare an even better place for his followers. For us, the end of the world represents the beginning of something far better.

Posted by Stan Guthrie at April 22, 2009 | Comments (6)

Why do people care about the environment? Critics often dismiss ecoconcern as something irrational - as in the derogatory label tree hugger. But for religious believers (whether Christians, Buddhists, Jews, or Muslims), there are reasons that are deeply rooted in their belief systems.

Renewal (4 stars) is a 90-minute DVD featuring eight stories of religious groups taking environmental action. The documentary leads off with a group of evangelicals drawing attention to the impact of "mountaintop removal" mining operations on poor residents of Appalachia. Most memorable are scenes at a Jewish environmental summer camp where campers weigh their collective food scraps after each meal as they learn to cut down on waste - a value shared by Jews and Christians (at least Puritans and Mennonites). Groups that want to use the DVD for discussion purposes can learn more at the Renewal website.

Posted by Susan Wunderink at August 29, 2008 | Comments (2)

Too much press coverage misunderstood what the Vatican was doing in issuing its recent list of serious sins. (See the excellent media criticism piece by Mollie Hemingway at Get Religion.)

But as you engage in serious self-examination this Holy Week, you might want to read a light-hearted op/ed posted today at the Indianapolis Star website (the piece originated with sister newspaper Noblesville Ledger).

Ledger columnist Jane Younce reflects on the new list of sins and finds them, well, not as personally challenging as the old Seven Deadlies: lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride. Those were sins that everyone had to avoid. Whereas the new list seems to be dominated by sins of the rich and powerful: embryo-destroying stem cell research, environmental pollution, poverty, excessive wealth, etc.

It's not that we can do nothing about embryonic stem-cell research or environmental pollution. I recycle and use compact fluorescents, but I don't really think the Vatican is counting the occasional unrecycled paper cup among the mortal sins. That warning about environmental pollution is surely for the captains of industry.

The danger that Jane Younce's delightful column hints at is this: It is easy to feel righteous about recycling that urethane foam milkshake cup and to forget about the gluttony that I abetted by buying that milkshake.

But don't let me blather on. Just read Younce's op/ed.

Posted by David Neff at March 20, 2008 | Comments (4)

Lost in the media storm preceding and following Super Tuesday, and the actual storms that debilitated or devastated much of the US that same day, was media coverage of the start of Lent, arguably the most recognized of the exclusively Christian seasons on the Church's liturgical calendar. In reviewing English-speaking coverage of this turning of the seasons, I was struck by the difference between US media reports and those issuing from across the pond in the UK.

US stories were generally conventional - though sometimes oddly technical or whimsical - and documented an approach to the season that was consistently pious, yet often private in scope, focusing on interior spiritual attitudes or individual struggles of the will in forgoing chocolate, coffee, alcohol, or insert-your-weakness-of-the-flesh-here for the 40-day period. (Jane Hawes's article is notable in its attempt to balance both the private-public and negative-positive dimensions of the season.)

Stories from the UK, on the other hand, conveyed a theological posture toward Lent that emphasized the public dimension of Christian commitment. Most notable is the Tearfund carbon fast mentioned by Tim Morgan in an earlier blog, which was launched by the Anglican bishops of London and Liverpool, and backed by Archbishop Rowan Williams, as well as scientist Sir John Houghton, an evangelical who formerly chaired the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's scientific assessment. The proposal received considerable coverage in UK press (Daily Telegraph; The Guardian; BBC News; New Consumer), though its only mentions in the US were on one or two blogs, a university newspaper, and an ezine.

Also worth mentioning is the Lent Endurance Challenge issued by the UK organization Church Action on Poverty, and backed by several Anglican bishops, as well as Catholic, Methodist, and Baptist church leaders in the UK. The Challenge is to live the life of a refused asylum seeker for one week, which involves donating one's normal weekly food budget in exchange for ?3.50 and the typical food parcel supplied to the homeless by local charities. The hope is to give participants a glimpse into the life of these "living ghosts," who are "essentially airbrushed out of existence as ?failed' asylum seekers," but, lacking money to return home, remain in the UK, unnoticed or ignored by society at large.

These constructive and creative public applications of Christian theological commitments make my own internal ruminations about whether I should give up coffee or fried foods for Lent seem, if not entirely inconsequential, unimaginative and blatantly disengaged from my neighbor and the world. If Lent is about submitting to suffering for the sake of identification with our Lord, whose own suffering was always for the sake of carrying forward God's redemptive intent for the whole world, navel-gazing US Christians like me may want to look across the seas to spark our flickering theological imaginations.

Posted by Derek Keefe at February 8, 2008 | Comments (1)

Georgia received rain late Wednesday and early Thursday, one day after Gov. Sonny Perdue led a public prayer for rain to end the region's historic drought.

"Certainly, we're not gloating about it," the Associated Press quotes Perdue. "We're thankful for the rain and hopefully it's the beginning of more. ... Frankly, it's great affirmation of what we asked for."

Mainstream press is quick to point out that the prayer came as the National Weather Service predicted rain. Still, the Atlanta Journal Constitution is also quick to say "The faithful ought to keep praying." Forecasters say that the storm likely did little to ease the state's drought.

A separate AP story examines how previous politicians have approached public prayer differently, from George Washington to Thomas Jefferson to Harry Truman.

While public prayer vigils might raise eyebrows in other parts of the nation, they are mostly shrugged off in the Bible Belt, where turning to the heavens for help is common and sometimes even politically expedient.

TIME magazine writes a piece that examines who is at fault for the drought.

"Politicians always call catastrophes 'acts of God,' blaming unnatural destruction caused by natural phenomena on supernatural forces," writes Michael Grunwald. ... "But it wasn't God who allowed an outdoor theme park to build a million-gallon mountain of artificial snow while the Southeast was running dry; it was Governor Perdue and his fellow elected officials. They also allowed the wasteful irrigation of Georgia's cotton farms and the rampant overbuilding and overslurping of metropolitan Atlanta."

TIME says the state will need serious water management and long-term thinking, which may take a miracle.

The L.A. Times writes that during his prayer, Perdue cut a newly repentant figure.

"Oh father, we acknowledge our wastefulness," Perdue said. "But we're doing better. And I thought it was time to acknowledge that to the creator, the provider of water and land, and to tell him that we will do better."

Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at November 16, 2007 | Comments (7)

To celebrate my 60th birthday yesterday, I had dinner with the Secretary General of the United Nations. The Washington Post's Dana Milbank covered the event in his puckish (my wife called it "snarky") style.

Okay, so I had dinner with Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and 300 other people. And the Washington Post didn't even mention me. Secretary General Ban and I were only sitting at adjacent tables. But I did get a grip-and-grin photo op with him before the banquet, and after his speech I was one of three evangelical leaders invited to give a brief response.

The banquet itself was a joint effort of the National Association of Evangelicals and the Micah Challenge. It was the closing event of the NAE's semi-annual board meeting and the opening event of the Global Leaders Forum. Organizations involved in the Forum (beyond the NAE and Micah Challenge) included Bread for the World, World Relief, Frontiers, The Salvation Army, Tearfund, the Evangelical Environmental Network, the Korean Church Coalition, and the UN Foundation and the UN Millennium Campaign.

Attendees at the sold-out event got this message loud and clear:

The UN needs evangelicals to help them hold governments to their promised support for the Millennium Development Goals. One hundred ninety-two nations signed on to the MDG's in 2000 and we are now half-way to the target date of 2015, but without the progress we should have seen by this point, especially in sub-Sarahan Africa. Some nations have been slow in paying their share of the costs.

The MDG's are all good: ensuring universal primary education, fighting hunger and poverty, reducing child mortality and improving maternal health, empowering women, fighting specific diseases like malaria and HIV/AIDS, working for environmental sustainability and a global partnership for development.

Many of these things have already engaged evangelicals, and Secretary General Ban reminded us of that. He also reminded us of the UN's desire to work with faith-based groups. From its beginning in 1945, the UN was engaged with the faith community. Forty-two faith-based non-governmental organizations were involved in founding the organization. Today, 400 religious NGOs are accredited to the UN.

He also quoted Isaiah 58:10 to much applause. "If you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness and your gloom be as the noonday."

In a sense, last night's banquet and today's issue-oriented discussions are really less about evangelicals fighting disease and poverty and more about evangelicals working in partnerships--partnerships between Western evangelicals and those in the developing world and partnerships with non-evangelicals.

We cautiously engaged those of other shades of Christian faith and even other religions in the mid-90s when we threw tremendous weight behind the effort to pass the International Religious Freedom Act and the creation of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom. We then enlarged the circle of cooperation to work on legislation to fight sex trafficking and, later, human-rights abuses in North Korea. The circle has expanded yet again as many evangelical leaders are partnering on issues of climate change.

Partnerships give evangelicals a sense of participation and empowerment. It gives us the chance to take on really big issues. That's a strange feeling for a movement whose consciousness is rooted in old-style fundamentalism. Fundamentalism was about being the few and the proud--I mean, the pure. The evangelicalism that emerged in the 1940s hoped for a new engagement with society while maintaining doctrinal and ethical integrity. Its leaders, like first CT editor Carl F. H. Henry and first CT board chair Harold John Ockenga preached a strong social justice message. But the old fundamentalist consciousness still lurks, and these partnerships stretch the evangelical sense of identity.

Despite the uneasiness of some, leaders like Northland Church's Joel Hunter and the NAE's Rich Cizik are plunging ahead with big grins on their faces. I predict we'll see a continuing expansion of these alliances as we move to tackle an increasing number of the really big problems facing God's world.

Posted by David Neff at October 12, 2007 | Comments (8)

It turns out I may have spoken too soon (and not for the first time). On June 22 in the CT Liveblog, in a posting entitled "Gas and Hot Air," I wondered why no one is talking about nuclear power as a partial answer to the nation's energy woes. Actually, people are talking about it. According to a report in today's Chicago Tribune, fears over global warming are sparking thoughts among environmentalists that maybe splitting the atom is the lesser of two evils, even though storing nuclear waste and protecting against possible terrorist attacks remain issues:

"Patrick Moore, a Greenpeace co-founder who has become a fervent nuclear energy advocate and industry consultant, said the industry needs to prepare for such worst-case scenarios, but those shouldn't drive the debate over nuclear energy.

"Moore said his former environmentalist allies, some of whom now deride him as a corporate shill, are stuck in a Cold War mentality that lumps together the benefits and dangers of nuclear technology.

"'You don't ban the beneficial uses of a technology just because that same technology can be used for evil," he said. 'Otherwise, we would never have harnessed fire.'"

Posted by Stan Guthrie at July 2, 2007 | Comments (5)