God's Green Earth

Please forgive the lapse - been getting dental work done and haven't felt up to snuff.

While I was getting my mouth renovated, the Vatican was also having a little bit of construction. Maybe you caught this AP story on Tuesday:

Some of the Holy See buildings will start using solar energy, reflecting Pope Benedict XVI's worry about squandering the Earth's resources, a Vatican engineer said Tuesday.

The roof of the Paul VI auditorum will be redone next year, with its cement panels replaced with photovoltaic cells to convert sunlight into electricity, engineer Pier Carlo Cuscianna said.

Holy greenhouse gasses! It seems like a pretty bold statement by Rome, when other Christians - especially our homegrown evangelicals - are deeply divided on what exactly God wants us to do with the planet. Later in the article, it seems that Pope Benedict XVI was working to phrase environmental stewardship as a poverty issue:

A feasibility study for the planned conversion, published recently in the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, found the conversion made economic sense. It quoted from Benedict's speeches defending the environment and noted that his predecessor, the late John Paul II, also championed the safeguarding of natural resources.

Cuscianna recalled a speech in which Benedict lamented "the unbalanced use of energy" in the world.

Last summer, Benedict called on Christians to unite to take "care of creation without squandering its resources and sharing them in a convivial manner." He said lifestyle choices were damaging the environment and making "the lives of poor people on Earth especially unbearable."

And what's going on here at home with Christians and the environment? Heck if I know. As you may know, the evangelical bloc is becoming somewhat divided on this issue. But how divided? At the passing of Jerry Falwell last month, all sorts of stories came out which seemed to imply that Falwell's "old guard" with its solidly right-wing issues was passing into the sunset, and an openness to traditionally lefty topics like poverty and the environment was again on the table.

Quoting at length from the NY Times article on the subject from May 21:

The evangelical movement, however, is clearly evolving. Members of the baby boomer generation are taking over the reins, said D. G. Hart, a historian of religion. The boomers, he said, are markedly different in style and temperament from their predecessors and much more animated by social justice and humanitarianism. Most of them are pastors, as opposed to the heads of advocacy groups, making them more reluctant to plunge into politics to avoid alienating diverse congregations.

"I just don't see in the next generation of so-called evangelical leaders anyone as politically activist-minded" as Mr. Falwell, the Rev. Pat Robertson or James C. Dobson, he said....

Mr. [Rick] Warren, along with Mr. [Bill] Hybels, 55, and several dozen other evangelical leaders, signed a call to action last year on climate change. The initiative brought together more mainstream conservative Christian leaders with prominent liberal evangelicals, such as the Rev. Jim Wallis of Sojourners and the Rev. Ronald J. Sider of Evangelicals for Social Action, who have long championed progressive causes. Notably absent from the list of signatories were several old lions of the Christian right, some of whom were openly critical of the effort: Mr. Falwell; Mr. Robertson, 77; and Mr. Dobson, 71, founder of Focus on the Family.

Another evangelical standard-bearer who did not sign the statement was Charles W. Colson, 75, founder of Prison Fellowship Ministries, who said in an interview that there were many environmental groups behind the statement that were hostile to evangelical causes.

So - there you have the issues in a nutshell. New evangelical leaders are pastors of growing congregations and may want to avoid divisive issues. There is concern about who you're in bed with if you vote green, and how likely they are to vote along with other core issues. And not mentioned here, the confusing matter of the apocalypse - some believe that God would not allow the earth to be destroyed before it's time, and that global warming is a red herring issue.

For more resources, here are websites of the two major contenders:

The Evangelical Environmental Network, who have been actively trying to promote saving the environment and "creation care.

The Interfaith Stewardship Alliance, supported by James Dobson and others, who think the current thinking of environmental activists is misleading to Christians, and that "dominion" takes place over "stewardship."

Makes my head spin a little. For some more passionate, in-depth coverage of this complicated issue, catch the daily wisdom of this blogger: The Evangelical Ecologist.