remember, tuesday is soylent green day
What Would Jesus Do about Soylent Green? Because it's made of people!
Boston Globe:
Leading scientists and evangelical Christian leaders have agreed to put aside passionate differences over the origin of life and work together to curb alarming levels of global warming that threaten the survival of life on Earth.
Representatives met recently in Georgia and agreed on the need for urgent action to drive down growing environmental degradation. Details on the talks will be unveiled in Washington on Wednesday, according to a joint statement.
"Whether God created the Earth in a millisecond or whether it evolved over billions of years, the issue we agree on is that it needs to be cared for today," said Rich Cizik, vice president of government relations for the National Association of Evangelicals, which represents 45,000 churches.
Eric Chivian, director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School agreed, saying, "scientists and evangelicals have discovered that we share a deeply felt common concern and sense of urgency about threats to life on Earth, and that we must speak with one voice to protect it."
Chivian and Cizik, who both participated in the talks, declined further comment beyond their written statements.
In February 2006, 86 evangelical leaders signed a statement to fight global warming, saying human-induced climate change is real, its consequences will hit the poor the hardest and Christian moral convictions demand urgent response to the problem.
They argued that governments, businesses, churches and individuals all have a role to play. Signatories included presidents of evangelical colleges, aid groups, churches and pastors of megachurches.
The powerful National Association of Evangelicals, however, did not join the initiative. It is unclear whether Cizik's involvement in the new campaign will convince the organization to adopt environmental conservation as a central agenda.
Evangelicals and scientists previously failed to launch a large-scale joint initiative partly because they focused more on differences between evolutionary science and a literal interpretation of the Bible -- a rift dating back to Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection.
Those who met in Georgia, however, are expected to argue that the threat to life on Earth is too great to let the rift prevent them from working together to combat greenhouse emissions that lead to global warming.
First there was the word, and it was good, and you shall know them by their works, halleujah, amen, etc. etc. Cereal, though: I haven't seen anywhere explaining just why the NAE isn't going to be party to this, and it'll be interesting to see how the membership personally responds to the notion of linking word and deed.
For the most part - and official docs reflect this - the frame evangelicals are using around meeting global warming challenges is responsibility, stewardship being the buzzword. Now, I don't quite remember where responsibility checks in on Lakoff's ladder for the Strict Father Morality (though I'd venture to say that it works into concepts of maturity and discipline) but it's nested in there - that is to say enviro stewardship, that responsibility, fits into the broad evangelical worldview - so I think we might be cookin with gas on this.
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