Tackling global issues with Flourish

Evangelical Christians are breaking past conservative politics, individualism and fear of association with the political left to join the environmental movement.

Among their own, the 150 leaders who gathered for the Flourish environmental conference in Duluth this week are at the forefront. Critics say they are late to the party, 40 years after the first Earth Day, and that evangelicals are still too timid in addressing the biggest environmental problem, global warming.

“Evangelicals have been the taillight, not the headlight of the environmental movement,” said Robert Parham of the Baptist Center for Ethics in Nashville, a moderate organization not affiliated with Southern Baptists.

Flourish is a new Atlanta organization started by evangelicals to educate fellow Christians about what they call creation care.

Jonathan Merritt, a young, Southern Baptist minister at Cross Pointe Church and a Flourish founder, has emerged as a leading voice in the movement.

He said the 150 who came were less than he hoped for. Still, he is encouraged. Many who came are leaders who will influence many more. The conference sessions also will soon be online to magnify the impact, he said.

Jim Jewell, a Flourish co-founder, said the conference gave a “comfortable” place where evangelicals can talk about the issues.

Environmentalism, and especially global warming, are causes claimed by the political left for decades. Evangelicals are traditionally conservative, socially and politically. More than 30 percent of white evangelicals deny the Earth is warming, according to a 2009 poll by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. That is the highest percentage of all groups polled.

“We are trying to do things a third way,” Jewell said, by creating a forum where the issues can be discussed outside of political agendas.

Andy Crouch, a conference speaker and an editor with the group that publishes Christianity Today, a national evangelical magazine, said there are other reasons evangelicals are late in joining the cause.

Past national leaders have not provided galvanizing leadership on the environment. Churches lacked teaching tied to the Bible, a key for their adoption of issues. And evangelicals tend to see the world in terms of individualistic, rather than corporate, actions. That is changing, Crouch said, as evangelicals become more of mainstream America.

“This is what our culture cares about right now, and they are part of culture,” he said.

For more information: www.flourishonline.org