Declaring that caring for the environment is part of following Jesus, a group of 30 evangelical leaders has agreed to work for faith-based environmental activism among the nation's most conservative Christians.
The decision to move ahead, made at the end of a two-day conference in Maryland, could begin to reshape environmental politics in the years ahead, those present said.
Participants represented a cross section of mainstream evangelicalism in America, including the president of the National Assn. of Evangelicals, ranking officials of evangelical denominations, development and relief organizations such as World Vision, prominent evangelical scientists and theology professors, and senior editors of Christianity Today magazine.
The low key but potentially pivotal move by evangelical leaders toward a wider engagement in environmental affairs comes at a time when 1,000 mainline Protestant, Jewish, Roman Catholic and Orthodox clergy from 45 states have been stepping up calls for another vote in the U.S. Senate on a bill that would limit U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.
The evangelical group did not take a stand on the emissions bill being backed by the Interfaith Climate and Energy Campaign, which is urging Senate leaders to again take up the McCain-Lieberman Climate Stewardship Act. It would set a nationwide limit on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, requiring industries to reduce emissions to their 2000 level by 2010. The bill failed on a 55-43 vote in October. It was opposed by the Bush administration.
On Friday, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops dispatched letters to all senators calling for a vote. In a letter signed by Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of Washington and Bishop John H. Ricard of Pensacola-Tallahassee, Fla., the conference urged senators to consider the fate of poor workers and nations when addressing climate change. The poor, they said, would bear the most harmful effects of climate change because of where they lived and their limited resources.
The evangelical leaders, who met at the Sandy Cove Christian Conference Center about 80 miles northeast of Baltimore, avoided the specific issue, saying it was not their intent to become involved as a group in election year environmental campaigns.
"We took the long view. I'm not in it for a quick press hit," the Rev. Ted Haggard, the association's president, said after the conference. "What I saw working was the Holy Spirit."
