Religion and the Environment

I didn’t have a garden till I turned 40. It changes how you view the world. Yet polls show that young people are the most sympathetic to green issues and they don’t have gardens. Is it because the young have less and so can afford to be humble, while the old have more and so are defiant? Remember the camel and the eye of the needle?

This year Passover and Easter coincide with Earth Day. Sermons all over the country have linked them to an environmental message about stewardship of the planet (as any Google search will show). But, when people hear about Genesis (notably the Deluge) or Exodus (Passover) or Luke 12 (for example), do they connect stewardship to themselves? Do they understand that the message is that THEY need to act on it as individuals, or is it all lip service?

I have not studied polling data but I doubt there is much difference between religious and secular when it comes to hostility toward the science of climate change. Unfortunately the issue has been hijacked as a rallying cry against President Obama. Polls indicate diminished support for anti-global warming initiatives, while wild fires ravage West Texas and tornadoes roar through St. Louis Airport, Missouri’s levees may break and there is a serious drought all across the South. While climatologists warn this is actually weather, not climate change, the larger point is lost – that scientific models are predicting a gradual worsening of things to come and that we need to take action.

Perhaps we will see religious authorities take a more active role in the debate in the years ahead and hopefully we won’t hear too much about Armageddon and the Rapture. The current Pope is already more active than his predecessor and many liberal Protestant churches and reform Jewish temples are quite activist on the issue. The challenge, once again, is with the mainstream American Evangelical churches. In 2006-7 there was a lively debate among Evangelicals that seems to simply have faded away and that’s too bad.

So, back to the garden… When people do not have a stake in the world around them – a garden or potted plants in their apartment – then they will not embrace green issues. If you think you kill plants, don’t give up. We all learn by persisting.