Tim Sprinkle

Keeping the Green Faith

Evangelical Christians are one of the most powerful voting blocs in national politics. Will they save the environment?

Hooked on the Outdoors
December 2005

For biologist Calvin DeWitt, it all started with a turtle. A whole yard full of turtles, in fact, along with a menagerie of reptiles, birds and other animals of all shapes and sizes.

“I had every species of turtle in Michigan represented,” he says. “And by the time I was a teenager, I had a zoo—on a 40-foot-wide lot in the city of Grand Rapids. Parents of young children actually brought their kids over to take a look. It was wonderful.”

Is it surprising that a University of Wisconsin biologist grew up with a backyard full of beasts? Not really. But a scientist whose upbringing blended freewheeling environmental awareness with fundamental religious teachings? Now that’s something. And despite all the prevailing cultural stereotypes of environmental advocates coming from the secular left, Christian conservationists like DeWitt are increasingly making their voices heard in national politics.

The American environmental movement is continually reinventing itself. In the forty-plus years since the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, environmentalism has gone from the radical fringe to the political mainstream, growing into a broad-based movement in the process. Lately, however, in the face of a decidedly anti-environment administration, the cause has found a powerful ally, an unlikely partner in the fight to save America’s wild places: Evangelical Christianity.

It’s no secret that Evangelical Christians are an active and effective voting bloc–according to the Pew Research Center, three out of every four Evangelical votes in the 2004 election went to President Bush, making them one of the most influential interest groups in Washington. Evangelicals have made their moral causes—including opposition to abortion, gay marriage, evolution and stem cell research—national debates. And they are gaining ground. But can Evangelical involvement in environmental causes, which are typically the province of the political left, really work?

CREATION CARE

Twenty-five years after he was wrangling turtles, DeWitt’s unique mix of faith and science grew into a career. Frustrated by what he considered to be a lack of respect for nature, he coined the phrase “Christian environmental stewardship” as a graduate student in the 1960s, and set out to convert his church peers. It was something of a radical idea at the time—and one that wasn’t particularly welcomed by the religious community—but DeWitt was, and remains, convinced that it needed to be voiced.

These days, the movement that DeWitt helped start is known as “creation care.” And for the last 32 years, he has turned this concept into action as president of the Au Sable Institute of Environmental Studies. Their mission? “Bringing the Christian community and the general public to a better understanding of the Creator and the stewardship of God’s Creation.” Although DeWitt is now retired, he’s still considered something of a pioneer, a spiritual leader for the growing community of faith-based environmentalists.

“As soon as you begin to look at the world as a resource, you’re led to think of how you’re going to exploit it,” he explains. “Whereas, if you think of the world as the Creation—of which you are a part—you’re thinking about it very differently. In fact, it really isn’t a resource—it’s a teacher, it’s a revealer of the Creator, and it gives us insight into how rightly to live on Earth.”

And creation care has picked up converts. “Our stated purpose is to declare the lordship of Christ over all Creation,” explains Dr. James Ball, founder of the Evangelical Environmental Network (EEN), a coalition of 23 faith-based and secular groups claiming thousands of members. “We believe that humans have a responsibility to take care of God’s creation and, for us, that creation includes nature as well as human beings.”

Given today’s political climate, the socially conservative church community may seem like a strange place to find the next generation of green warriors. But Evangelicals have a rich history of environmental stewardship. Sierra Club founder John Muir, for one, was a devout Christian who memorized much of the Bible during his treks into the California? backcountry. And for adherents of creation care, this spiritual tie to the natural world has become a mission, a call for Christians everywhere to stand up for the environment.

“We’re reaching out to the ‘it's-about-timers,’” says Peter Illyn, a former pastor and founder of the grassroots stewardship group Restoring Eden. “Those people who had always had an interest in caring for the environment, but never really felt they had a voice in the church. We’re trying to build a sense of awe and wonder for God’s creation, and make it safe for Christians to love nature.”

MORAL ENVIRONMENTALISM

Even though faith-based environmentalism has been around for years, it has not been a political force that inspires fervent demonstrations and public outcry like, say, the pro-life movement. But that could change. Increasingly visible ecological threats (many of them from an Evangelical president) and a strong group of vocal advocates are bringing creation care to the forefront of the political debate with the same fervor as proponents of other Evangelical causes.

Creation care advocates are quick to explain that they’re coming at the issue of environmental destruction from a completely new angle. They know it’s different than what we’ve been hearing, and that’s OK. Honoring the Creator by respecting His Creation is an idea that resonates with Biblical Christians, and the movement has found a receptive audience among the nation’s 30 million Evangelicals.

“There’s been an awakening,” says Paul Gorman, executive director of the National Religious Partnership on the Environment (NRPE), ‘and I think it will only grow. First of all, because conditions are simply getting worse. And second of all, because everybody is looking for a deeper response. Politics is not enough; the Kyoto protocol is not enough. We have to start asking questions about human behavior and human values.” Christians, it seems, should examine their moral duty to celebrate all life.

But does the traditionally left-leaning environmental movement want the help of conservative Christians? “A lot of mainstream environmentalists may not like what they’re seeing,” Ball says, “and may view Evangelicals as threatening. But we all want clean water, clean air. That’s creation protection. We’re going to put forward our own distinctive ideas about this, but in the end it may not be all that different.”

Sure, some secular folks may take issue with the message, but many mainstream environmentalists agree with green religious groups. Luke Warren of the Union of Concerned Scientists says that faith-based groups are “opening up a whole other demographic to these issues,” calling them “a welcome addition.” Not only is creation care bringing a new faces to the table, it’s adding a deeper level of meaning to the debate.

“They’ve really broadened the discussion,” says Melanie Griffin with the Sierra Club. “A lot of times, environmentalists focus on the science, the cause and effect. But the Evangelical groups can look at environmental destruction as a moral issue. They’re coming at it from the other side, so they can really speak to people’s values."

“The right wing has sort of pigeonholed environmentalism as a left-wing issue,” Griffin continues, “but that just isn’t true, and many Evangelicals have started to recognize it. This group of young Evangelicals coming up doesn’t have its feet in the political cement yet, so they’re asking questions like: Why can’t conservatives care for the environment?"

THE WRONG WORD

Not everyone in the religious community is thrilled with what creation care advocates are doing. “I have no objection to [their] addressing environmental issues,” explains Dr. Calvin Beisner, a professor of theology at Knox Theological Seminary and adjunct scholar with the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, a think tank in Grand Rapids, Michigan. “My objections are to some of the ways of which they use scripture—or, I might say, abuse scripture."

Beisner doesn’t object to their characters, however, only their purported strategies. “I think they’re honest people,” he says of the Evangelical environmentalists, “but I think, in many instances, what happens is they allow preconceived notions about environmental stewardship to shape their interpretation of a given passage of scripture. I’m not trying to say these guys are dishonest or anything else. I’m just saying that there’s a responsibility to work with scripture governed by the standard tools of lexicology and grammar and exegesis that I don’t see happening in most of what they write.”

In 1999, Beisner and other theologians, economists and scientists met in West Cornwall, Connecticut, to discuss the growing faith-based environmental movement. Although the participants all agreed that nature should be a part of modern religious life, they were concerned that so-called eco-spirituality advocates were placing too much weight on what they considered to be shaky, unsupported science. Their goal: Codify an environmental policy for the religious community that was, in Acton’s words, “scientifically sound, economically informed and theologically coherent.” The resulting document, known as the Cornwall Declaration on Environmental Stewardship, remains a key touchstone for opponents of faith-based environmentalists like Gorman and the NRPE.

And the resistance doesn’t stop there: Not all of the traditional scientific community is thrilled by creation care, either. Myron Ebell, a global warming expert with the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., says that, regardless of the issue, mixing religion and politics is bad news. “One thing that always amazes me about these people—when they’re not professional environmentalists, but they have some connection to a Christian foundation, is how little they seem to know about what they’re morally pontificating about,” he says. “They spend a lot of time expressing their righteousness in areas where they really know nothing. And I don’t think they’re really going to get very far.”

And Ebell is not convinced that Evangelical environmental groups aren’t simply a slightly disingenuous means for environmental organizations to claim Christian support. “It was pretty clear when the NRPE and EEN and the other groups were created that the environmental movement had been sort of a left-wing ghetto,” he says. “Their strategy has been very clear: They need to capture other groups to help them.”

THE SPIRIT THAT MOVES ALL THINGS

Regardless of how it’s perceived by its opponents, the idea of Evangelicals and mainstream environmentalists working together for political action has the potential to break through partisan divides. “You need only to look at the kind of issues that have come to command attention over these last few years to see the political power that Evangelical thought has on things like stem cell research and personal ethics,” biologist DeWitt explains. “If that power is expressed there, it can also be expressed in caring for creation, and I think there’s plenty of political clout in that.”

In Washington, however, the response has been mixed. The NRPE and EEN have both been involved in issues ranging from mercury poisoning to global warming, but with so many creation care advocates focusing on educating the Evangelical community rather than reaching out to the secular world, it’s difficult to judge their impact.

But, as Dr. John Grim, coordinator of the Forum on Religion and Ecology at Harvard University, argues, there’s more to faith-based advocacy than just policy. “If the environmental movement is going to move ahead,” he says, “it’s going to take more than science. There is a sense that we have not been able and will not be able to make the kinds of changes we need to make. That’s where the values-oriented side of these religious groups will be important.”

And after 30-plus years of Christian environmental stewardship, Cal DeWitt isn’t fazed by the naysayers. “Take someone to the Sierra or Estes Park or Mount Baker and most people are awed by what they see,” he says. “It’s a spiritual experience that goes beyond plate tectonics or glacial action.”

As Illyn says, “Nature speaks to our souls. There’s something there that reminds us that God is bigger than we are.” Having an experience above and beyond the mundane world of politics may be the best chance for the future of wild places—and turtles.