David Wright, Ph.D., Azusa Pacific’s dean of the School of Theology, echoes this sentiment. “The first three chapters of Genesis orient us in understanding the cosmos,” said Wright. “God created three primary relationships: the relationship between humans and God, the relationship humans have with each other, and the relationship we have with the earth. Our relationship with the earth is one of dependency and caretaking. God made us to tend and look after the earth, and in turn, the earth and its creatures would provide for us. This relationship between humans and the rest of creation was woven into who we are from the very beginning.”
In fact, there have been many early champions of this biblical environmentalism, which finds its grounding in theological, not humanist moorings. St. Francis of Assisi, founder of the Franciscan Order and patron saint of animals and ecology, advocated for the care and appreciation of nature in works like Canticle of the Sun. In 1970, L’Abri founder Francis Schaeffer wrote the seminal Pollution and the Death of Man, which deftly examines man’s erroneous attitude and perception of himself in relation to the Creator and creation as the root of ecological deterioration.
However, for a concentrated, and highly vocal and visible segment of the evangelical community, global warming and soil erosion rank a distant second to more traditional causes like defending the pro-life effort and the sanctity of marriage. Eco-evangelism is viewed as a dangerous detractor, siphoning off energy from the “real issues” the Church is called to pursue.
For creation-care patrons, it is not an issue of either-or. “To say that I’m just going to worry about abortion sounds archaic,” said Calvin DeWitt, Ph.D., founder of the Au Sable Institute of Environmental Studies in Michigan and author of Earth-Wise: A Biblical Response to Environmental Issues. “Not that I’m saying abortion is right, but what about the world that the infant will be born into? I’m saying that there must be balance across the subjects.”
Lowry attributes the frigid reception among some evangelicals to human nature. “I think the low participation among some pockets of the Church can be attributed to out of sight, out of mind,” said Lowry. “There’s no immediate, direct impact in our daily lives to remind us of the serious environmental mess we’re in.” Lowry believes that in time there will be more widespread acceptance of creation care.
Leslie Wickman, Ph.D., director of Azusa Pacific’s Center for Research in Science, feels that at least some of the resistance to creation care within the evangelical community stems from centuries of teaching that asserts the supremacy of the incorporeal over the corporeal. “This thinking that matter is bad has led us down a dangerous path in how we relate to the Earth,” said Wickman, who has worked on NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and the International Space Station Programs.
“A lot of Christians grew up with the mentality that all things spiritual are good, but nothing material is good, " said Wickman. "We think that because there will be a new Earth, we can basically trash this one. But Genesis tells us over and over that God saw what He’d created and ‘It was good,’ the ‘it’ referring to all of creation, not just humans. And, in John 3:16, the word ‘world’ is actually translated from the original ‘cosmos,’ but we have a tendency to translate it as ‘man.’ Who, then, are we to contradict what the Bible says? We have a choice before us to either bury our treasure and let it waste away, or cultivate it as the Bible directs us.”
