On Climate Change and Christian Faith

I was reading The New Yorker this weekend, and I came to a remarkable quote from the senior David H. Rank, the senior American diplomat in China. He was contemplating President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement on climate change. Actually, I should have written, “the former senior American diplomat in China” because he resigned over Trump’s decision, a decision he would somehow have to sell to the Chinese:

“I’m not a great theologian, but, just in my gut, I thought, We’re stewards of creation and the world. As a parent, I’ve spent my life trying to make my children’s life O.K. And, finally, in terms of national interests, it’s just dumb.”

       

As Rank put it quite simply, global climate change represents a pressing issue that we cannot avoid, but global stewardship even more. We need to concern ourselves for the poor who bear the brunt of climate change. We also need to think about the future, for our children. What earth will we leave for them? When the planet is threatened by our actions over which we are stewards, we have to re-evaluate all these calculations. 

      

So why do we resist?

      

Frankly, the resistance to climate change does not strike me as primarily scientific. As a member of the largest scientific organization in the world, the AAAS, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, I can affirm that I hear the call to take climate change seriously and urgently.

      

Money is one big issue. I remember my church business administrator expressing more than a modicum of resistance to the sustainability committee I started by saying “The only greening in the church we need to seek is saving money.”  Some resist for economic reasons—and those motivated by greed need to be openly rejected. “Put to death,” is Paul’s command to his fellow Christians about a list of sins that ends with “greed, which is idolatry” (Colossians 3:5). (On the other hand, others truly fear a livelihood in industries that are threatened—like coal—and I believe that we need to be sensitive to these concerns. That’s not my focus here.)

      

Following the connection Rank makes between climate change and stewardship, I’ve argued for a particular strategy: Let’s move away from a focus on climate change to the broader concerns of stewardship (or, if you prefer, creation care). Partly, I advocate this change because “climate change” has literally become politicized—with more Democrats subscribing to its reality and more Republicans expressing skepticism. In all this, I don’t want to lose all the other ways that pollution, and recycling, and lowering our carbon footprint—i.e., “greening” our lives—are simply good Christian spiritual practices.

      

What can we do? We can learn to decrease our carbon-based footprint. We can make changes in our congregations. Many churches, like my own Presbyterian Church USA have a zero-carbon neutral statement. Others have adopted creation care as a part of their ministry.

      

This is the flip side of my central concern: Let’s not expect too much of science. Let’s not expect science to make the change that we’d have to imbed in our lives as (generally) wealthy United States Christians who are often wedded to consumption. That’s something the transforming work of the Holy Spirit has to do. It is the hope that I hear in Paul’s stirring words, “And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit” (1 Corinthians 3:18).

            

Finally, we believe as Christians that Jesus might return at any moment, but when he comes like “a thief in the night” according to 1 Thessalonians 5:2, I want to be found caring for a world that our children—my daughters and their millennial colleagues—will inherit. (Back to Rank’s comments one more time.) It’s not hard for me to imagine that one of Jesus’s questions will be this: “How have you taken care of this planet that I entrusted to you?”

AAAS "Perceptions" Conference

Is there any way to bring together religious and scientific communities? The early church thinker Tertullian famously posed the question, 

“What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” 

What can the church have to discuss with those outside? Or more contemporarily, the physicist Lawrence Krauss has asserted, 

“Science is only truly consistent with an atheistic worldview.”

 There would seem to be, from either the religious or scientific, no connection.

But we’re about to hear some different answers this week through a conference put together the world’s largest scientific organization, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, or AAAS, as it’s better know. “Perceptions,” is a day-long event that certainly has its share of superstars: Nobel Laureate physicist William D. Phillips, well-known Texas Tech climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe, celebrated author and speaker Rice University sociologist Elaine Howard Ecklund, and President of the National Association of Evangelicals, Leith Anderson.

All this arises from the work of AAAS’s DoSER, or Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion, a program, which is 30 years old and is now headed by Jennifer Wiseman, an MIT and Harvard-trained astronomer of no mean standing. Having served as Senior Program Scientist for the Hubble Space Telescope at NASA, she’s now Senior Astrophysicist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. As she commented, 

“I believe it is important to rejuvenate our congregations with a sense of joy and unity in contemplating the magnificence of Creation, with forefront scientific knowledge.”

That summarizes quite a bit about this conference.

Yes, the participants may be worth listening to, but what are they going to address? I know there will be origins (which means evolution versus creation), climate science, global health, science and the religious communities. I mentioned that last one, because that’s where I’ll make a contribution, through a project I’m directing on how 18-30 year olds view science and faith, is to take part on a panel with other members of religious communities (both Jewish and Protestant) which have sought to bring science to faith.

My experience is there’s a lot to talk about and that the students I’ve been interviewing want to know how to bring the two together. In fact, one sophomore told me religion and science are like “peanut butter and jelly—you can’t have one without the other.” The metaphor may not work for all of us, but I got the point. Despite the fact that over 2/3rds of 18-23 year olds see—or perhaps better, hear about—a conflict between religion and science (may they caught Lawrence Krauss on YouTube), many want to find reconciliation.

Here's my summary for today's talk in just three points:

1. Yes, integrating faith and science can be done, and it’s an important task.
2. Do this work through relationships, particularly with scientists we know.
3. Take it in steps. Begin the dialogue. You don’t have to finish it in our conversation.

To be sure, there obviously some contrasting perspectives, like the 20-year old sophomore who told me, “A lot of people think we’re going to figure everything out one day.” If that’s the perception, it’s going to be hard for this conversation to gain much traction. But, I suppose, that’s what this conference is designed to help sort out.