Thursday, May 11, 2006
Faith, Politics and the Environment
In The Screwtape Letters, the 7th letter, C.S. Lewis has his senior tempter character Screwtape counsel his nephew Wormwood on how to guide his "patient's" thoughts concerning WWII which was happening when Lewis wrote the book
But the real clincher comes in this Daily Standard piece by Mark Tooley from last week. Tolley does an entirely political analysis of the ECI and quotes Christian leftie Jim Wallis extensively.
This debate is very informative on how faith and politics should and should not interact. In the first place, genuine faith is compromised, as Lewis suggests, when it becomes a tool of politics.
But the second and far more important thing to note is that there are many issues in politics that faith simply does not address directly. Says the Tooley piece
The church has a very specific mission. Sometimes the church must interact with the government, such interaction is politics, in order to accomplish that mission. But many issues just don't come under the direct mission of the church. In such cases the best we can do is elect politicians, whose characters have been well-formed likely by faith, and rely upon them to make the right decisions. To to more is to fall to the temptation Lewis describes.
Related Tags: faith, politics, religion, environment, Evangelical Climate Initiative, Cornwall Declaration, Interfaith Stewardship Alliance
The quietly and gradually nurse him to the stage at which the religion becomes merely part of the 'cause', in which Christianity is valued chiefly because of the excellent arguments it can produce in favour of the British war effort or Pacifism.Those words came bolting into my mind as I read some good stuff on Christians and the environment recently. First Amy Ridenour points to this excellent Townhall piece by Daniel Son in which he makes a case for the Cornwall Declaration - a statement on Christians and the environment from the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance that is sort of the anti-ECI (Evangelical Climate Initiative) and has a lot more signers. The declaration acknowledges our mandate for stewardship over the environment, but says Son
The Cornwall Declaration differs from the ECI in that it does not see global climate change as an immediate threat that requires emergency action. It states that ?public policies to combat exaggerated risks can dangerously delay or reverse the economic development necessary to improve not only human life but also human stewardship of the environment.?This would begin to hint that the ECI people have an agenda that extends beyond this Christian mandate to care for the poor since they do indeed focus on the future at the expense of the immediate. One sense the temptation Lewis describes in the mix somewhere.
[...]
While an inordinate amount of attention is given to distant, theoretical threats of global warming, a tragically minimal amount of attention is given to the life and death problems of today, some of which directly result from policies enacted to stave off the ?disastrous? conditions of global climate change.
But the real clincher comes in this Daily Standard piece by Mark Tooley from last week. Tolley does an entirely political analysis of the ECI and quotes Christian leftie Jim Wallis extensively.
According to Wallis, "biblically-faithful Christians" are soon going to turn against the Religious Right and instead follow his Religious Left. Instead, it seems more likely that an easy acceptance of apocalyptic warnings about a burning planet will ultimately confirm, not overturn, the political leanings of conservative evangelicals.I don't know how to read the article other than to come to understand that Wallis has indeed fallen victim to the temptation. He is nakedly bald in his attempts to accomplish political ends, the other end of the spectrum led in this piece by James Dobson and Chuck Colson sticks purely to the issue and the fact that not enough is known.
This debate is very informative on how faith and politics should and should not interact. In the first place, genuine faith is compromised, as Lewis suggests, when it becomes a tool of politics.
But the second and far more important thing to note is that there are many issues in politics that faith simply does not address directly. Says the Tooley piece
But their response also reflected the truth that evangelicals do not have a clear scriptural or historical teaching on Global Warming--as they do on an issue such as same-sex marriage.Our faith has something to say about our stance on the environment, but very little in specific. As a political issue and a science issue, this one is best left to the professionals.
The church has a very specific mission. Sometimes the church must interact with the government, such interaction is politics, in order to accomplish that mission. But many issues just don't come under the direct mission of the church. In such cases the best we can do is elect politicians, whose characters have been well-formed likely by faith, and rely upon them to make the right decisions. To to more is to fall to the temptation Lewis describes.
Related Tags: faith, politics, religion, environment, Evangelical Climate Initiative, Cornwall Declaration, Interfaith Stewardship Alliance
