Responding to the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance

statement on climate change:

I’m addressing this statement as an evangelical Christian who has been active for 50 years in the teaching of ethical behavior as it relates to the historic Christian faith and for the past 17 years as an advocate for better stewardship of God’s creation on the part of the church, the Body of Christ.  My degrees are a BS and MS in secondary education and Christian educational administration.  My first year of college-level teaching began in 1965 with a course in practical psychology for Christians.  I’ve also been involved in Christian journalism and critical writing throughout that time.

I have no desire to interact with the first two sections of the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance statement on climate change: the scientific and sociological (called “ethical” in the statement) implications of climate change policy.  The reason is that I have a simple approach to scientific research and a skeptical approach to sociological theories.  In science, because I’m not a scientist, I think it makes practical sense to go with the objective majority.  Further, when key Christians in the relevant scientific fields also side with the majority, I generally choose to place my faith in them—trusting that they have considered the science honestly and tested its implications in the light of the Scriptures. If I find myself leaning toward the minority view merely because I’d prefer to believe it and because my theories somehow fit better with it, a warning flag goes up. Francis Bacon’s observation comes to mind: that people more readily believe what they wish to be truth than what is actually true. So I prefer to let more knowledgeable Christians respond to the scientific naysayers the ISA uses and references in this statement. The fact that those affiliated with the ISA seldom reference credentialed fellow believers who differ with them raises suspicion in my mind that they have fallen victim to Bacon’s belief prejudice.

Regarding sociological conclusions, which are far more subjective and more difficult to arrive at, I tend to also side with the majority—as long as they don’t hold non-Christian positions on the nature and purpose of mankind.  Further, complex sociological theory is often meaningless when it comes to dealing with localized issues—a matter critically relevant to this discussion.

That brings me to part 3, Calvin Beisner’s discussion of the theological implications of climate change policy, which he has generously sprinkled with the scientific minority opinion of his fellows, his signature economic and sociological theories, and his novel interpretation of the Genesis account of Adam, paradise, and the early earth.

My many documented interactions with Calvin Beisner started almost 15 years ago.  Our correspondence, in my opinion, has been frank, but civil.  Most of the time I’ve had few problems with his core principles and the theological positions he articulates. Being a conservative in theology, politics, and economics, I seldom have significant arguments with his theories in those arenas. The most significant issue I have with Calvin is the manner in which his often solid reasoning has been put to the service of those who often appear to have little respect for those of us who are seeking to move the evangelical community in the direction of less materialism, more sensitivity to the earth’s environmental distress and its impact upon the poor, and better stewardship of God’s creation.  Many of his arguments could and would add important elements to the mission of those of us who are affiliated with the evangelical “creation-care community.”  In brief, I feel it is more Calvin Beisner’s actions, his elaborations and disclaimers, and his alliances that offend than it is his primary views on economics, ethics, and theology.  Yet those are not totally void of what I see as significant aberrations from orthodox Christian thinking.

I’d like to consider his statements in the same order as he presented them.  One will need to reference the ISA statement to make sense of my comments (http://www.interfaithstewardship.org/pages/article.php?id=153):

Calvin has proposed seven biblical principles for environmental stewardship.  This is actually not necessary, since many fine statements of principle in this area already exist (and which, unfortunately, he regularly criticizes in his service to those who are generally hostile to the mission of the evangelical creation-care community).  Many, if not most, of his core principles, minus his elaborations and disclaimers, could be affirmed by the creation-care community, and they indeed actually support what we’re seeking to do. 

Principle 1: Creation displays divine wisdom. 

I have no argument with this.  However, I have a great deal of disagreement with him on his elaboration—especially his cavalier assertion that because of God’s wisdom and His amazing design of creation it has “self-protecting and self-correcting layers” and that “positive and negative feedback mechanisms often minimize or quickly repair environmental damage.”  He adds that, “irreversible, catastrophic damage is rare to nonexistent in the world’s history.”  Then he speaks of such damage from not only the more localized effects of tornadoes, volcanoes, tsunamis, floods and droughts, but also from the long-term effects of ice ages and meteor impacts!  These statements are so startling they would leave a room-full of ecologists and aid workers in stunned disbelief.  Can you imagine evangelical missionaries helping Haitian farmers who have lost most of their topsoil to erosion telling these poor folks that in a few hundred years their soil may be back?  How can it matter to millions of people displaced by the effects of global warming that a thousand years from now, things will be “repaired”?

The “healing” capacity of the earth is indeed amazing, but it is rarely “quick.” Further, to presume upon God’s creative genius by living carelessly and irresponsibly on the earth because of it is the epitome of sinful behavior.  God’s environmental safety net, for instance, is evident in Northern Michigan where we have some nice hardwood forests and a good deal of open land that makes for good deer hunting.  Two hundred years ago, however, that region was covered with vast white pine forests, which the lumber barons virtually stripped away in a few decades—thinking all along that they could never cut them all.  When they left with abundant personal wealth—apparently without much guilt—the land was a virtual desert.  The people forced to remain there were among the poorest and most hard-pressed in the entire state for decades.  Some even died as a result of huge slash fires that followed the rape of the land. How callous it is to tell the victims of poor stewardship that hundreds of years after they’ve suffered and died, their abused land may heal itself—perhaps even bringing in thousands of hunters, skiers, and campers.  Some of their descendants might eventually enjoy the permanently altered landscape—landscape that could have perpetually produced timber for human use for hundreds of years.  Yes, in a way the environment has been “healed.”  But that means nothing to those who suffer because of the previous and continuing abuse.

  Calvin’s elaboration on this principle suffers not only from this indifferent attitude toward those who do suffer and die every day because of “short-term” environmental damage, but it’s also weakened by the use of terms that are ill defined—like God’s “quick repair” of the damage we cause.  Finally, his elaboration ends with his ever-present assumption that the free-market system is the panacea that solves all economic and social ills—a cure-all that millions of suffering people will never live long enough to receive because they die waiting for wealth and compassion to “trickle down.”  His constant conflation of capitalism with Christianity begins with this first point and continues throughout. 

So this core principle is beyond debate, but his subsequent discussion is an embarrassment to the Christian mission of compassion for hurting people, and it ignores the requirement for us to be good stewards of God’s creation.  To presume upon God’s long-term “environmental safety net” in this manner is only a bit more refined than Rush Limbaugh’s mantra: the earth is so big and man is so small that “people cannot ever possibly do harm to the environment that even one volcano does,” which he repeats in the face of the fact that if we people detonated all our nuclear bombs, we’d kill millions and devastate the planet for centuries.  If a couple hundred exploded atom bombs can do that, can we really be so naïve as to think that billions of small explosions per second in our millions of engines around the globe are virtually harmless?

Principle 2: God is owner; people are stewards. 

A great point.  The same great point the evangelical creation-care community has been trying to make in the face of constant opposition from many of those who are supported by Calvin Beisner’s arguments.  His declaration, however, that some “negate any claim of human ownership—and hence of decision-making prerogative—over the earth,” has absolutely no relationship to the debate in evangelical circles about how to lovingly care for God’s creation and the people who suffer from our abuse of it.  I know of no evangelical statement on our God-mandated stewardship of the earth and our need to care for creation that even implies such a “hands-off” approach to the earth. Deep ecology and deep Christianity are worlds apart. The very word “stewardship” implies human decision-making.  I have no argument at all with the remainder of his discussion.  In fact, with it he has written a decent manifesto for evangelical creation care.  This points up the sad fact that ultimately evangelical Calvin Beisner and the evangelical creation-care community are biblically on the same page; yet he persists in using his words to squelch the biblical mission of his fellows and to attack us as unthinking, economically uneducated, and deceived—or as sometimes implied—“deceivers.”  This causes grief for us all and often compels us to spend our personal resources trying to undo the damage he and his wealthy libertarian sponsors create in this evangelical cause. 

Principle 3: The fall into sin makes abuse possible. 

Another good point.  Our point.  His elaboration and disclaimer, however, suffers again from his undying faith in amoral capitalism and the unfettered market—as though the Enron crime never occurred on the free market’s watch, and that such crime is occurring all over the world on the free market’s watch.  One could be made to think by his fear of the potential evils of governmental regulation that the potential evils of greed and unchecked materialism within capitalism pale into insignificance.  It is telling to note that Woodrow Wilson had a word for the American capitalism he was seeing even before World War I: “heartless,” he called it.  Alexander Solzhenitsyn believes that it was the evils of amoral capitalism that in large part gave rise to the socialism Calvin Beisner’s cadre of friends often says is the economic system the evangelical creation-care community favors.  While many of us are indeed wary of morally unchecked capitalism, I know of no one who feels that socialism is to be preferred.  This charge has been leveled often by those who constantly war against our mission, and the charge is often implied in Calvin’s books and articles.  We all tend to give labels to people who challenge our beliefs and behavior because that means we won’t have to listen to them. Many of Calvin Beisner’s cheerleaders and fellow-travelers have refused to address our concerns by simply labeling the evangelical creation-care community “liberal” or “leftist.”  (This has been done—directly or by implication—by Calvin, by the Christian newsmagazine World, by many of the big evangelical media magnates, and by many libertarians who have been or are associated with the influential Council for National Policy). 

This charge of being “pink” seems to be based merely on the fact that few in the evangelical creation-care community have the religious faith in free-market capitalism expressed by these individuals.  Frankly, I believe a strong argument can be made to support the conclusion that it was not free-market capitalism that made the American way great and its wealth good for most of its citizens, but its Christianity.  Capitalism without Christianity can just as easily become as cruel as socialistic communism—and in some ways potentially more devastating because it is such a powerful economic system.  It is an effective and efficient but amoral tool.  It can be used for evil both by the Christian and by the ungodly just as easily as a hammer, a gun, or atomic power can.  Many—if not most—of us who Calvin Beisner berates are conservative in faith, politics, and economics.  It can’t be stated strongly enough that we do not oppose free-market capitalism; we merely point out that the way he says it’s supposed to work often doesn’t work.  And even if it worked for half the poor, what are Christians to do to help the billion or so people who suffer and die waiting for their economy to provide these blessings? 

We need direct compassion, not the pseudo-compassion of those who feel they’re doing their loving part for the poor by making, investing, and spending money.  If Calvin’s cadre of libertarians can motivate academics, corporations, industry, and the government’s of the developed nations to indirectly protect God’s creation according to economic principles, for the benefit of us all, that’s great!  We support them wholeheartedly.  That sort of help from the theoretical top level is essential.  But at the realistic bottom level, millions need help now.  They can’t wait for their economies to change.  Many are facing environmental crises that will kill them if they don’t get direct help now.  It is at that level that the evangelical creation-care community seeks to be involved.  Of what benefit is it to us and those we’re seeking to help if these laissez-faire capitalists consider us as enemies?  Sometimes I feel like I’ve been coldcocked from behind, and when I came to, found that I was hit by a friend. The evangelical creation-care community is not arguing with them.  Nor are we arguing with their economic theories.  In the end, theories do nothing.  People do.

A further issue with Calvin’s elaboration on this principle is the novel theology it presents: that the curse on the serpent to go on its belly and eat dust represented “all of the beasts of the field, birds of the air, and fish of the sea over which God had given dominion in Genesis 1:28.”  He speaks of this curse as putting all beasts “back under human dominion” as if somehow they had escaped human dominion even before the Fall.  His understanding of the Genesis account of creation: the Garden, the Fall, the curse, the Flood, and the Noahic covenant adds to the confusion created by his theological views of creation stewardship.  That and his kinship with many associated with R. J. Rushdooney’s Christian Reconstruction movement may, in fact, be the most significant factor in motivating him to put the power of his pen into the hands of those who oppose the creation-care movement.  Many of us are not convinced that Christians and the biblical worldview will come to dominate in the world before the reappearing of Jesus.  That view, in fact, is far from the predominant view of mainstream evangelicalism.  The majority of evangelicals believe that we and our worldview will likely become even more out of sync with the predominant materialistic worldview. 

Many of Calvin’s theological conclusions relate to the centuries-old theological argument between those of the Reformed faith and those of a more dispensational bent (Left Behind).  Where this is most significant is in his optimistic belief that those holding to the Christian faith and biblical worldview will rise to power and compassionately use free-market capitalism to create, in a sort of reversal of roles, an earth fit for Christ.  Many of us feel the Bible teaches clearly that the world is headed for a takeover by the forces of Satan allied with the Antichrist (the human epitome of godless Mammon).  Yet, in spite of this, we should still be broadcasting the “good news” (evangel) of Christ.  Those of us who believe this seem to register in Calvin Beisner’s mind as people opposed to the future manmade theocratic utopia he envisions.  Hence, he throws in his lot with the neo-conservative Christians who seek with money and politically-bound theology to influence conservative Republican policy and lawmakers—another sad conflation of biblical principle with conservative politics and economics.  We believe, just as he, that a theocracy will indeed come, but we believe it will be at Christ’s making, not ours (a major point made by deceased Reformed theologian Francis Schaeffer, whose views on creation care have been an impetus to the evangelical creation-care movement).  Being wise and compassionate stewards of God’s creation, in fact, is living the Gospel before the watching world and preparing us for our future roles in the coming Kingdom.

Principle 5: People are a population bloom, not bomb. 

Here Calvin’s desire for a cute alliteration and an opportunity to take a shot at the humanist population doomsayers ends up with his creating a meaningless “principle.”  His principle would have been better stated if it had related to the significance of people being created in God’s image and having the potential of doing wonderful things in the development of the creation’s potentialities.  Further, his factual statement that “the great contributions of legions of scientists, inventors, engineers, and others . . . have been a source of immense benefit to the world around them,” does not negate the opposing fact that they have also been a source of immense pain and suffering to millions of people and to the other creatures of the earth—and a threat to the health of the earth itself.  It is this fact that the evangelical creation-care community seeks to address.  We believe the former, but that doesn’t compel us to excuse or overlook the latter.

The point is that many of the problems caused by the increase in the earth’s population are not so much related to absolute numbers (as some population alarmists sometimes seem to imply) but to patterns of human movement and behavior.  It’s an issue of too many people in one place doing harmful things.  For as Wendell Berry said, one person with the opportunity and the will to set off a nuclear bomb is one person too many for the earth.  Calvin’s point seems to imply that Mexico City, Calcutta, and Tokyo would be better off with even more millions of people.  Certainly he can’t mean that.  What I assume he means is that the problems created by these masses of people in one place doing harmful things are not automatically solved by reducing their numbers—and that the solving of those problems will require the scientifically astute, wise, and compassionate work of people. 

That’s a good point—if indeed it’s the point he’s making.  I agree, and so do the others in the evangelical creation-care community.  However, as he usually does, he uses this point to tout the wonders of the unfettered free-market and to argue against the majority scientific position on global warming.  In fact, in this statement he uses this moot and relatively simple point as his major pulpit for praising the marvels of the economic, social, and theological theories that make up much of the thinking of the libertarian think tanks.  They, in turn, spend thousands of man-hours and likely millions of dollars to help shore up the present Republican administration and influence its economic and environmental policies.  What is strange is that while this laissez-faire cadre warns against the dangers of big government, they put massive resources into influencing the same big government to make laws and policies that put our natural resources—our natural capital—into jeopardy by virtually demanding that we give it to people and corporations whose prime motivations are monetary profit and material gain.  Apparently to them Enron was an aberration, not the norm.  Those of us in the evangelical creation-care movement simply don’t believe that.  We want to see government curb the excesses of these “evildoers” (using the biblical term).  And for that we are labeled liberals or socialists?  We don’t have religious faith in politics or economics, and we are not clamoring for “big government” (another relative term).  All we are seeking to do is to influence the government we have—be it small, medium, or large—to use its power for good.  G. K. Chesterton saw through the affluent libertarian’s grumbling about “big government” and concluded that “the poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.”

Calvin Beisner’s conclusions also place him in great favor with the leaders of several large evangelical media ministries and the cadre of Christian philanthropists that support them. (And it can’t hurt his job security being on the faculty of a seminary associated with one of those ministries.)  In my opinion this alliance of the “holy” is, for the most part, an unholy alliance.  Many of them meet annually as members of the Council for National Policy, a secretive collection of policy makers, libertarians, laissez-faire think tank fellows, evangelical Protestant and Catholic conservatives, political conservatives, Christian media leaders, Christian and conservative publishers and educators, conservative foundation officials, and some of the nation’s wealthiest people.  At their meetings and in their private interactions, millions of dollars are unofficially earmarked for the advancement of the economic, social, and theological ideas preached and then narrowly applied by Calvin Beisner and dozens more like him.  A close look at the forces behind the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance would no doubt uncover many links to those who are or have been a part of the Council for National Policy. 

The fact that the leaders of the CNP feel they must keep their meetings closed to the media, to the general public, and even to the evangelical public is, for me, cause for great concern.  If those who have views different from theirs are not welcome and there is no process by which their beliefs are put through the rigor of public debate, that smacks not of price fixing, but of behind-the-door “policy fixing.”  They want to influence public policy without the input of and out of sight of the public—and even of fellow Christians and/or conservatives. I don’t believe that any of the highly qualified authorities in the evangelical creation-care community have been invited to join the CNP or even to speak at or offer seminars in their annual meetings.  The CNP’s way is not the American way and it certainly isn’t the Christian way.  In addition, though some of the world’s top authorities on the environment and ecology are followers of Christ, as far as I know, none have been invited to address the CNP or any of the agencies and think tanks that Calvin Beisner services with the questionable ethical conclusions he makes from his often sound core principles

Finally on this particular principle, Calvin’s novel interpretations of the early chapters of Genesis and his eschatological beliefs again confuse the matter.  When you’re done trying to figure them out, your head swims, and for some reason you begin to lose your grip on the simple economic ideas of Jesus: that the poor inherit the earth, that you can’t serve God and Mammon, that you should actually give to the poor (not just tell them to have faith in the trickle-down theory and the environment’s wonderful capacity to heal itself centuries after they’re dead), and that it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, and so forth.  The warnings of Paul and James about materialism and wealth among Christians also seem to lose their edge in the heady atmosphere of theoretical economics, ethics, and theology.  The power of the Bible is that it is not a book of theories.  It is primarily a book of narratives that demonstrate, positively and negatively, what it means to live as faithful servant of God and a steward of His Word and Works.  The Scriptures tell me that I owe nothing to “the economy,” but I do owe God wise stewardship of His creation, for out of it comes life and the abundance of life.

Principle 7: Christ’s redeeming work has implications for the rest of the creation.

Calvin begins this point with a very relevant quoting of Scripture about creation’s “groaning” (Paul’s treatise on nature’s future release from the curse in Romans 8:18-23.)  This is the very same treatise that has motivated the evangelical creation-care community to call upon the church to address the pains of creation.  But astonishingly he uses it to comment on how well mostly godless mankind has relieved creation’s pain since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.  Through increased technological power and the miracle of the free market, the world is soaring in health and wealth toward the perfection Jesus is looking for so He can return, take the throne, and thank us for our fine work.  Now that, if true, is something I could shout “hallelujah” about!  Greed has been kept in check by the “invisible hand” of the free market, our natural resources have been wisely used by the compassionate capitalists.  In spite of the nagging indications that millions are suffering in poverty, topsoil is bleeding away from the land, fresh water is being wasted and polluted, ocean fisheries are plummeting, fish are so full of harmful chemicals we can’t eat them, ecosystems are dying, species are going extinct at record levels, infectious diseases are multiplying in number and strength, nuclear weapons are increasing, human hostility—often exacerbated by environmental distress—is rising, all is really well with the world. 

The evangelical creation-care community does not have that sort of faith.  If the world we see around us is indeed on the threshold of this biblical “millennium” Calvin Beisner believes is about to bloom, the suffering we see must be illusion.

Calvin concludes with many more paragraphs describing this near-utopian state of the earth and offers some exercises in reasoning to relieve us of any residual environmental angst.  I feel like I should have left this statement of the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance with joy and optimism, because the world is rapidly getting better and better. But something in my gut tells me that if I swallowed this logic tranquilizer, I’d find myself dancing while millions around the world continued to suffer in the throes of environmental distress.  If he and his fellow laissez-faire libertarians want to reason themselves to happiness over the marvels of human technology and free-market capitalism, that’s okay.  I just wish they’d stop using their ample financial and political power as weapons against those of us who believe our mission to be better stewards of God’s creation requires active attention to real environmental crises and direct assistance to the amoral free-market’s victims and refugees. 

Many of us conservatives like to call ourselves advocates of “compassionate capitalism.”  We often forget, however, that there is an oxymoron in that expression: “Compassion” in its root definition means “to suffer with.”  Capitalism as an economic system nowhere includes the Christian requirement to sacrifice for and suffer with those who are still a long way away from the eventual benefits promised by the free market.  In fact, there is something totally un-Christlike in the idea that compassion is a virtual by-product of one’s pursuing personal wealth.  Jesus did not say to the rich young man who wanted advice on how to obtain eternal life, “Go and build great factories so that your capital can be used to give jobs to the poor.”  Instead He instructed the man to sell his possessions and give the proceeds to the poor.

Finally, I would like to say to the people who are a part of the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance that we are not adversaries.  I trust we both want the life systems of the earth to remain healthy and healthful.  And yes, capitalism can help in that process, but it has to be capitalism given a heart by those who serve Christ.  The creation’s distress will not be relieved by the free market alone.  Our environmental crises are real, and to deny them in order to exonerate laissez-faire philosophy or dominion theology will only make them worse.  As fellow believers we should be working together to become better stewards of God’s creation, which the Bible says will share with us the rewards of redemption.

Dean Ohlman

June 23, 2006