Scott Freeman is not your typical tree-hugger.
For years, he said, he believed that concern for the environment was "all a bunch of liberal politics."
But, added the senior pastor of Northside Church of Christ in Waco, Texas, "the more I began to pray and pay attention to the change in climate and the way we pollute, I began to see how deep the need is."
Now Freeman, a father of three, is trying to be better about recycling. He's talked to his wife about composting. And in early September, he became one of 86 church leaders to sign the Evangelical Declaration on the Care of Creation, a call to conservation from religious conservatives.
"Because we have sinned, we have failed in our stewardship of creation," the statement says. "Therefore we repent of the way we have polluted, distorted or destroyed so much of the Creator's work."
It adds, "Because we await the time when even the groaning creation will be restored to wholeness, we commit ourselves to work vigorously to protect and heal that creation for the honor and glory of the Creator."
Jim Ball, executive director of the Evangelical Environmental Network, called the ministers' manifesto "groundbreaking." His group, based in Wynnewood, Pa., orchestrated the release of last year's statement.
The ecological goals of the "creation care movement" sound like the Sierra Club's agenda: Protect the water, the air, the land, and the creatures that inhabit them. But biblical imperatives are fundamental to the evangelists' movement.
Pollution, for example, is regarded as "the earthly result of human sin" which has led to "a perverted stewardship, a patchwork of garden and wasteland in which the waste is increasing." And helping the developing world economically is important because "godly, just, and sustainable economies . . . reflect God's sovereign economy and enable men, women and children to flourish along with all the diversity of creation."
Such a religious focus means the evangelical ministers "are going to start redefining these issues," Ball said. "People understand global warming as an environmental issue. With our statement, we are helping people to understand that climate change is much more than an environmental issue." It's a sign that, by chemically altering the Earth's atmosphere, "we are pressing against the finite limits God has set for creation," the statement said.
Ball said the real thrust of the "green Christians" movement is "people care. . . . All of the Bible's teachings about caring for others . . . love others as yourself, that applies to concerns about pollution."
The ecological initiative creates an odd alliance between the goals of evangelical Christians, who are often conservative in their political views, and traditional environmentalists, who tend to bend toward the left.
For this reason, use of the term "creation care" is important, said Calvin DeWitt, a professor at the University of Wisconsin and the founder of the Au Sable Institute, a Christian institute dedicated to better understanding of the natural world. He said some ministers shy away from being identified as environmentalists.
"Some of them will hug a tree at some point, but they'll hug it because the Creator hugs it, not because some environmentalist hugs it."
Tony Campolo, a popular Christian author and professor emeritus of sociology at Eastern University in St. Davids, Pa., said the ministers' movement "may be one of the signs that the hegemony that the Republican Party has on evangelicals might begin to crack."
President Bush and many other Republicans have won the strong support of Christian voters by opposing gay marriage and abortion, he said. But now, "people are raising their heads and saying these are not the only two issues — what about poverty and the environment?"
Melanie Griffin, director of environmental partnerships at the Sierra Club, said the ministers' help is welcome.
"I think we all share the values of stewardship," she said. "I see real hope for this to be a healing and unifying force in the country." And if the alliance seems ideologically odd to some, "the politicians are just going to have to catch up with the people."
She added that this is hardly the first time conservative Christians have joined hands with environmentalists. When Newt Gingrich and his conservative vanguard took control of the U.S. House in the mid-1990s, Griffin said, evangelicals were key to defeating an attempt to dismantle the Endangered Species Act.
The ministers' statement is a first step in the Evangelical Environmental Network's campaign. The group plans pro-environmental television and radio spots in states with influential legislators. It is also organizing informational campaigns in churches and educational events at Christian colleges.
The network is the same group that in 2002 launched the "What Would Jesus Drive?" campaign, an effort to persuade Christians "that our transportation choices are moral choices" and that a modern-day Savior wouldn't haul himself around in a mammoth, gas-guzzling SUV.
DeWitt, of the Au Sable Institute, said evangelical environmentalism is helping to connect science and religion.
"The world cannot allow us to separate people and environment," he said. "What's more important, the economy or the environment? Well, that's a dumb question. It's a question you shouldn't be able to ask."
Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services