Warming Draws Evangelicals Into Environmentalist Fold

Washington Post: Warming Draws Evangelicals Into Environmentalist Fold

LONGWOOD, Fla. -- At 8 on a Saturday morning, just as the heat was permeating this sprawling Orlando suburb, Denise Kirsop donned a white plastic moon suit and began sorting through the trash produced by Northland Church.

She and several fellow parishioners picked apart the garbage to analyze exactly how much and what kind of waste their megachurch produces, looking for ways to reduce the congregation's contribution to global warming.

"I prayed about it, and God really revealed to me that I had a passion about creation," said Kirsop, who has since traded in her family's sport-utility vehicle for a hybrid Toyota Prius to help cut her greenhouse gas emissions. "Anything that draws me closer to God -- and this does -- increases my faith and helps my work for God."

Her conversion to environmentalism is the result of a years-long international campaign by British bishops and leaders of major U.S. environmental groups to bridge a long-standing divide between global-warming activists and American evangelicals.

The emerging rapprochement is regarded by some as a sign of how dramatically U.S. public sentiment has shifted on global warming in recent years. It also has begun, in modest ways, to transform how the two groups define themselves. ...

Comments

[St. Blogwen]

Huh? It takes a revelation from God to let you know you have a "passion for creation"?

Individual Christians might engage in environmental activism as part of their civic duty, if they feel called to, but churches shouldn't confuse it with the mission and ministry of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

[Michael W. Kruse]

I tend to agree. There is the human vocation which inlucdes creation stewardship. The mission of the church is create communities of discipleship that equip people or their human vocation, not do their human vocation for them. :)