Caring is more than Christian; it’s pro-life
A scientist looks to the biblical mandate for stewardship and care for creation — and the connection to poverty.
The first time I was invited to speak about climate change at a local church here in Texas, I decided the time had come to share more of my personal motivation, as uncomfortable as it might feel for a scientist. Maybe, I thought, just maybe a few of the people there might realize they cared about climate change for the same reasons I did.
It was a Wednesday night. The meeting was in one of the adult Bible study rooms, down a long hall with tan carpet. A group of about 50 interested people had gathered. I showed them the data revealing that yes, the planet is warming, and yes, humans are responsible. As I expanded on the impacts we were already experiencing in Texas, people listened and nodded along; they felt validated by what I had to say and it matched what they’d witnessed themselves.
But then I took a deep breath, gathered up my courage, and for the first time ever, nervously launched into why I cared: the biblical mandate for stewardship and care for creation, the connection between climate change and poverty, and the Bible verses that directed my concern.
I was half expecting people to laugh; but instead, they seemed surprised. They recognized those Bible verses I was quoting and they lived by the same principles. And the questions I got afterward shifted: they were deeper, far more personal than I’d heard before. This audience cared. Why? Because we had connected over something fundamental and undeniable that we shared.
I’m someone who lives in Texas and wants the best for it; a Canadian who loves winter and snow and the outdoors and her child; and a Christian who believes that we humans have a God-given responsibility to care for our home, and for our sisters and our brothers and every living thing that shares it with us.
I believe we’re called to love others as we’ve been loved by God. That
means caring for the physical needs and well-being of those who are suffering, which today includes a growing number of people whose hardships are being exacerbated by climate impacts.
That’s why I became a climate scientist. I believe we need to act on climate and we need to connect with others on values we share and encourage them to take action, too.
If we are going to fix this thing, we need everyone to get involved. Connecting with others is easier said than done, but through thousands of conversations, I’ve learned some helpful lessons.
Tackle the conflicts
It’s not always easy to make these connections.
Some years after I spoke at the church, I received an invitation to speak at a religious university so conservative — and not just theologically, but politically and culturally, too — that I was shocked they’d even let me in the door. The invitation came from a fellow scientist and colleague named Evan, whom
I’d met at various conferences over the years.
A week before the talk, Evan emailed me.
“I just wanted to let you know what some are saying about your visit,” he said, attaching several emails he’d received from other faculty and administrators.
As I scrolled down, my eye snagged on a quote from one professor: “This is the work of Satan, the father of lies … presenting solutions to climate change is morally equivalent to abortion.” An administrator joined in, telling Evan he had to stop advertising my talk. It was making too many people angry.
At the time, a comment Bernie Sanders made during a presidential debate was being distorted as touting abortion as a climate change solution to limit population growth. The administrator, apparently, had heard this.
I needed to reconsider what to say. The stakes were high. I didn’t just have to talk about why climate change matters to us as Christians. I also had to show there were solutions that helped rather than harmed people and that had nothing to do with abortion and were compatible with our values. I had to start from a negative opinion and turn it right around.
But how?
Turning opinions around
I found myself thinking of Mitch Hescox. He’s a coal executive turned pastor who now leads the Evangelical Environmental Network.
Mitch has seen firsthand the devastating impacts fossil fuels have on our health. He understands that the consequences are particularly bad for children, pregnant women and unborn babies. That’s why Mitch refers to climate change as a “pro-life” issue. If Christians are truly pro-life from conception to death (rather than from conception to birth, as some people’s attitudes seem to suggest), they should be leading the charge to get rid of fossil fuels — not dragging their feet or heading in the other direction.
At the same time, it’s also necessary and appropriate to acknowledge the benefits that energy has brought us.
Growing up as a missionary kid in Colombia was an experience I knew many at the university could relate to.
When I was 9 years old, my family moved to Cali, Colombia, where my parents spent several years working at a bilingual school and helping out with a local church. We lived in a whitewashed, red-tiled row house in a lower- to middleclass area. We had electricity
and running water most days, and we’d fill up the kerosene lamp and the bathtub for when we didn’t.
Disaster can hit us hard here in North America, but our recovery is cushioned by private and public services, from home insurance to disaster relief.
In Colombia in the 1980s, life was challenging at the best of times: poverty, inequality, lack of clean water and health care; corruption and danger from the mafia, the guerrillas, the paramilitaries; reverberations from the atrocities of “La Violencia” in the 1950s still echoing through many rural areas.
When disaster struck, it could be devastating. When rains came, entire neighborhoods were swept away. When drought hit, people starved.
The vulnerabilities I saw in Colombia are reflected around the world and are being amplified by climate change. Just like the coronavirus pandemic, it’s deepening the chasm between the haves and the have-nots, pushing many more into poverty. Whoever we are, wherever we live, disasters take whatever challenges we are already facing and make them worse.
Christian solutions
Only after I’d thoroughly explored all these issues with my audience did I turn to climate change and how the suffering global warming will cause around the world is not going to be parceled out equally. One Stanford study estimates climate change has already increased the economic gap between the world’s richest and poorest countries by as much as 25 percent. It has also negated over 50 years of advances in poverty and hunger reduction and could push 120 million more into poverty by 2030.
Taken individually, any one of these reasons should be enough to convince us that there are better options than fossil fuels for the developing world, which is already suffering the impacts of climate change. Taken together, they overwhelmingly demonstrate how, if we care about life at all, then we already care about climate change.
So what are the solutions? One of the most surprising is education and empowering women and girls. Education reduces infant mortality, increases equality and allows women the freedom to choose how many children they have. Education, empowerment and poverty eradication — not abortion — are the positive routes to addressing climate change and building prosperity in the developing world.
As Christians, I concluded in my talk, our response to any challenge should be characterized by love. Love is key to acting on climate: caring for the poor and the needy, those most affected by the impacts of a changing climate, as well as creation itself. It’s not only our responsibility, it’s who Christians believe God made us to be.
Loving our global neighbor
As I finished, I was overwhelmed with enthusiastic students approaching me. Many of them asked, “Here’s what I’m studying; how can I apply what I’m learning to help with this issue?” Others shared how they’d never made the connection between climate change and their faith before, but it was very clear to them now why they cared.
As I walked out, the administrator — he of the email — grabbed my hand and shook it vigorously. He thanked me for the talk. And the next week, Evan forwarded me an email he’d received from him. It said that I’d given him a new perspective on the topic and he really appreciated that Evan had invited me. He understood how his existing values connected with addressing climate change and he’d changed his mind.
This was one of the most encouraging responses I’d ever heard.
If Christians truly believe we’ve been given responsibility — “dominion” — over every living thing on this planet, as it says at the very beginning of Genesis, then we won’t only objectively care about climate change. We will be at the front of the line demanding action because it’s our God-given responsibility to do so. Failing to care about climate change is a failure to love. And what is more Christian than to be good stewards of the planet and love our global neighbor as ourselves?