“The earth is the LORD's, and the fulness thereof; the world, and
they that dwell therein.” Many of us grew up hearing these
words from Psalm 24:1 (KJV) from time to time. That being the case, it would
seem that churches would be eager to celebrate Earth Day, using the Sunday
closest to that day as a special time to emphasize the proper use of and care
for the earth.
However, and it may just be my misperception,
it seems that churches now are less likely to celebrate Earth Day than most
other segments of society.
Monday, April 22,
will be Earth Day 2013, and this year’s global Earth Day theme is “The Face of Climate Change.” Maybe even more than
in the past, churches may not say much about Earth Day this year, for there are
Christians (and a growing
number of pastors) who reject the idea of climate
change, at least as something that is being caused by or made worse by us humans.
Chris Mooney is a
young (b. 1977) U.S. journalist and academic, a Yale University graduate who
now focuses on writing about science and politics. His most recent book is “The
Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science—and Reality” (2012).
In the Introduction
of his new book, Mooney makes reference to a recent survey which indicated that
“only 18 percent of Republicans and Tea Party members accepted the scientific
consensus that global warming is caused by humans” (pp. 6-7). “In other words,” Mooney goes ahead to
say, “political conservatives have placed
themselves in direct conflict with modern scientific knowledge, which shows
beyond serious question that global warming is real and caused by humans”
(p. 7, emphasis in original).
This issue of
climate change continues to be a divisive issue among U.S. citizens in general
and among Christians in particular. According to Conservapedia.com, global
warming is a “liberal hoax.” (In case you don’t know, Conservapedia is written
from a self-described American conservative and Christian point of view. The
website was started in 2006 by Andrew Schlafly, son of the anti-feminist
activist Phyllis Schlafly, to counter what he called the liberal bias of
Wikipedia.)
But can or should
the problem of global warming be so easily brushed aside? Earlier this month
the name of James Hansen was in the news. On April 2 a CBS headline said, “NASA
climate scientist James Hansen quits to fight climate change.” Hansen (b. 1941)
had been the head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies since 1981.
Upon leaving NASA he said he planned to take a more active role in the
political and legal efforts to limit greenhouse gases.
This is just one
example of a multitude of top-notch scientists who have no doubt that global
warming is real and caused by humans as Mooney declared. That is why I happy
that Earth Day will widely observed on April 22, in spite of conservative
Christians, and why I hope it will help more people face up to the fact of climate
change and the necessity of us humans doing more to combat the dire
consequences of that change.
