Is God "Green"?

Liberal and mainline churches have for some time been a comfortable part of the environmental and conservation movements, hosting congregational trash pick-ups, selling sustainable and fair-trade coffee in the fellowship hall, and even advocating on behalf of environmental causes. I was given my first reusable canvas shopping bag by the pastor's wife at a Presbyterian (USA) church.

For the most part, though, theologically conservative churches haven't jumped on the bandwagon with such fervor. The most charitable explanation is that they're busier than more liberal churches with enterprises such as evangelism, support for overseas missions, and discipleship. And yet it's also undeniable that many conservative evangelicals are wary of environmental protection movements and causes, associating them with New Age spirituality, animal rights activists who deny the uniqueness of humankind, evolutionists, population control advocates, "The Day After Tomorrow"-style alarmism, and (of course) Democrats. A fair number of conservative Christians, distrusting secular science (especially when it starts generating doomsday scenarios), don't believe global warming is happening, or believe that it's a natural process not caused by humans, or think that whither goes the Earth is up to God and therefore none of our business. Others are concerned that aggressively countering climate change by limiting carbon emissions will endanger freedom by empowering government regulatory bodies vis-a-vis private enterprise, or that policies that increase energy costs will exacerbate global poverty.

Into this veritable soup of reasons and excuses wades Jonathan Merritt. Merritt is young, single, unapologetically Southern Baptist - and "green." While in seminary, a professor's remark and his own subsequent research into the subject of "creation care" turned him from a litterbug into a crusader for environmentalism in his own denomination. With the help of some older church leaders, he drafted a statement on stewardship of the environment that was subsequently signed by forty-six leaders in the Southern Baptist Convention and sparked a heated conversation in that denomination and the wider evangelical world. A prolific writer whose articles on religion have been published in a variety of Christian and secular magazines and newspapers, Merritt has just come out with his first book: Green Like God.

Green Like God is different from any other environmentalist book or article I've read in that it saves the dire statistics, facts and figures, and "tips on living green" (such as they are) for the end. The first half of the book is theology. Rather than try to convince theologically conservative Christians that they should tolerate and work with New Age, Gaia-worshiping far-left environmentalists, Merritt argues that conservative evangelicals - precisely because of their commitment to theological orthodoxy - ought to be not reluctant followers but bold leaders of the conservation movement.

Merritt himself became a believer in the need to care for God's creation when one of his seminary professors made the following connection: "There are two forms of divine revelation: the special revelation in Scripture that is able to lead us to salvation and the general revelation we receive through nature. Both are from God... So when we destroy creation, which is God's revelation, it's similar to tearing a page out of the Bible."

In other words, neglecting and actively destroying the natural environment isn't bad primarily because it kills spotted owls or because it upsets the natural balance of ecosystems or even because it causes respiratory illnesses and makes it dangerous to eat fish; ultimately, it's wrong because it sabotages one of the main ways God reveals Himself to man and communicates truths about His nature. Furthermore, as Merritt goes on to explain, it's an incredible act of hubris on our part, given that God alone is the Creator (and, therefore, the rightful owner) of all the earth. Who are we to say that it doesn't matter if a species of fly goes extinct or if a remote icefield is sullied by oil and gas exploration? Didn't God create those things, too? Did He tell us they were less valuable than, say, kittens and puppies and bubbling mountain brooks?

Merritt's approach is an extremely welcome one, I think, because it shows convincingly, from the Bible, that a God-centered, Christ-centered environmental stewardship is uniquely Christian and commanded by God for us. The participation of Christians in environmental conservation and advocacy isn't just a matter of adding secular environmentalism to some patchwork portfolio of social justice or good works, and in some cases Christian environmental action will look very different from the secular variety. For instance, Merritt affirms that humans are, in fact, made in the imago dei and therefore different from and higher than animals. He isn't a vegetarian and (although I think there is a Christian case that can be made for vegetarianism) he's clear that his searching of God's Word reveals no reason that Christians shouldn't eat meat or use animals in other ways as long as the animals are not abused or killed needlessly. (On this basis he does support cutting down on one's consumption of meat and doing one's best to eat meats from animals not raised on "factory farms.") He stands unequivocally against environmentalists who support limiting human population growth through abortion or who believe that humans ought to die off and leave the earth to other living things who don't exploit it as we do. Merritt certainly thinks we can work together with non-Christians to conserve the environment, but also that we need our own strongly Biblical vision for this work.

Green Like God may surprise many readers in that Merritt quotes, in support of his position, a number of thinkers and writers usually thought of as politically as well as theologically conservative, from John Calvin to Francis Schaeffer to Albert Mohler - even "father of conservatism" Edmund Burke. He makes fun of celebrity-authored guides to green living (and worries that "going green" is becoming just another materialistic fad more about "keeping up with the Joneses" than stewarding the planet), and while he admires some of Al Gore's work, he's not just repackaging An Inconvenient Truth for evangelicals.

I was also surprised and pleased to find that, when Merritt finally does get down to the specifics of what poor stewardship is doing to the earth, he seamlessly brings together the impact on plants, animals, habitats, the poor, public health, and our own souls. For Merritt, environmental degradation isn't just something we do to the spotted owl or the rainforest; it's something we do to ourselves as God's creatures and chosen stewards, and it's inextricably linked with greed and consumerism. Merritt doesn't mince words in condemning "the American way" when that means producing many times the amount of garbage produced by citizens of other countries, fighting terrorism while guzzling oil sold to us by likely supporters of terrorism, and doing violence to each other in the name of getting a good deal. (As I do also, Merritt considers hearing about the trampling to death of a Wal-Mart employee on "Black Friday" 2008 a watershed moment in his understanding of the monstrous consequences of the consumerist mindset.) According to Merritt, these shouldn't be separate issues for Christians. Our own commitment to environmentalism ultimately must be spiritual; it comes back to depending on God rather than the "stuff" we can buy with "our" money. This is another way Christian environmentalism, as laid out by Merritt, differs from secular environmentalism; it's less about buying fancy recycled and eco-sensitive products and more about just buying less. (One of the resources he mentions in the back of the book is the Advent Conspiracy, an online project dedicated to convincing Christians to give fewer pointless, unappreciated, expensive, and earth-trashing Christmas gifts and instead focus on worship, spending quality time with loved ones, and helping those in need. I've been a fan of the Advent Conspiracy for a few years but never thought of it as an environmentalist cause.)

This is a slim, easy-to-read book, and there's a lot it doesn't do. Its approach to theology is informal and conversational; don't look for much Greek or Hebrew here. Merritt spends only a few pages (in an appendix) on the question of global warming and its causes (although I do agree with his reasoning that it's a highly contentious issue that need not hijack the Christian creation care movement because even if it's not actually happening, it still can't be good for planet or people to be pumping so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and to have become so dependent on non-renewable energy sources. Merritt does give, I think, some cogent reasons for believing that human-caused climate change is in fact occurring, but he doesn't go into much detail.) The book's biggest deficiency, in my opinion, is that while Merritt demonstrates a great concern for the world's poor and for social and economic justice in general, he doesn't do much to address what I consider anti-environmentalism's strongest argument: that policies designed to decrease carbon emissions and preserve habitats will end up disproportionately hurting the poor, who can't afford alternative energy sources or green products. Hopefully he'll write another book soon.

But I have to applaud Merritt for staying on-task and not getting distracted by the myriad ethical and political questions raised by environmentalism. His mission is to convince all Christians that caring for creation is our business, that destroying God's general revelation through nature is not just sloppy or uncool but sinful, and that environmental stewardship doesn't supplant outreach or discipleship as a goal of the church but goes hand in hand with them. His writing is a call to action but also to humility and worship.

- KPE

P.S. To learn more about Jonathan Merritt and the book, see www.jonathanmerritt.com.