The View from Above
As a person of faith, I am heartened to read about the increasing involvement by religious congregations in environmental causes and even alternative transportation issues. Religious organizations have historically focused on more traditional social justice causes, like poverty, hunger and homelessness. But the urgency of the debate over global warming has forced congregations of all faiths to decide whether responsibility to the environment is a cause that should share the limelight with helping the needy. Many religious organizations are answering in the affirmative and jumping into the global warming debate.
This article highlights the quickening progression of religious groups to the environmental movement over the past year. Within the past month, Christian congregations across the country, including my own, hosted screenings of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. At my church, this event was sponsored by our Peace and Justice Committee, a group which, in the past, has primarily addressed topics of economic and racial injustice. Bill Moyers recently examined the awakening of the evangelical Christian movement to environmental issues in a PBS special, “Is God Green?” Evangelicals have even coined the phrase “Creation Care” to connote the responsibility to be stewards of a planet which, according to their faith, was created by God. The term Creation Care also conveniently allows the mostly conservative evangelical community to get involved without appearing to jump over to the left side of the political spectrum.
Transportation issues are only a small part of the discussion about the environment and global warming. Yet one Christian group has targeted transportation as part of its environmental activism. What Would Jesus Drive? is a campaign led by the Evangelical Environmental Network (EEN), an association of various religious organizations trying to promote the Creation Care agenda. Like this website, EEN’s WWJDrive initiative promotes responsible car use, including switching to hybrid or low emission vehicles, and advocates that people of faith reconsider the questions of where to live, shop and work to lessen our impact on the environment. While I might shorten the question to “Would Jesus Drive?”, I can’t quibble with the message. One of the strengths of faith communities is their ability to quickly spread a message and produce action. My guess is that we are witnessing the beginning of widespread involvement by religious groups in the environmental and alternative transportation movements.
Most policy debates hinge on cost – benefit analysis, economic incentives and political constituencies. Religious organizations, however, are not shy about adding a moral dimension to the discussion. EEN has taken the position that transportation is a moral issue. I certainly agree with this assertion. Yet, you don’t need to be religious to approach this debate from moral or ethical grounds. We can all trot out the statistics about the impact of the car on our society, but an appeal to the moral compass that we all share is equally powerful. Secular and religious communities alike rally to condemn behavior that is destructive to any aspect of our society. Our national car dependence should be subject to the same collective moral outrage.