Green evangelicals and the dangers of sacred politics

Salon has an interview with Richard Cizik, vice president of governmental affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals. Cizik is on a mission to convert evangelicals to what he calls “creation care” – an environmentally-friendly agenda that takes seriously issues like global warming.

I admit I’m sort of ambivalent about this kind of thing. On the one hand, it’s good to see evangelicals moving beyond a narrow identification with the Republican Party and toward a greater degree of political independence. And most of what Cizik suggests seems sensible to me.

He wants

Christians to shape their personal lives in creation-friendly ways by practicing effective recycling, conserving resources, and experiencing the joy of contact with nature. We urge government to encourage fuel efficiency, reduce pollution, encourage sustainable use of natural resources, and provide for the proper care of wildlife and their natural habitats. There are still plenty who wonder, does advocating this agenda mean we have to become liberal weirdoes? And I say to them, certainly not. It’s in the scripture. Read the Bible.

On the other hand, I’m not sure what I think about having every political issue under the sun couched in religious terms. Cizik talks openly about the “sinfulness” of despoiling the earth and how he had a “conversion experience” which convinced him that global warming is “a phenomenon of truly biblical proportions.” My worry about this is that when you treat a position on a particular political issue as the fruit of religious illumination you risk closing the door to reason and compromise. It’s easy to slide from “The Bible tells us to care for the environment/the poor/the unborn/etc.” to “The Bible tells us to support this particular program or bill or politician.” This can give an absolutist cast to political positions that they don’t merit.

After last year’s election the response of some parts of what we can call the “Religious Left” has been to try to beat the Religious Right at their own game by insisting that their preferred policies are the ones really mandated by the Bible. But the Bible, it seems to me, doesn’t work like that. It doesn’t provide us with a political platform any any straightforward way. And to insist that it does risks further dividing Christians.