Earth Day, Jesus, and Christian Environmentalism

I’m in Spring­field, MO at a Chi Alpha con­fer­ence where I’ve taught approx­i­mate­ly 12 hours in the last two days.

Yes, that’s as gru­el­ing as it sounds. It’s been fun, though.

Any­way, while here I got to hang with Dar­rin Rodgers

ten dead men online

wild bunch the free down­load

, an old sem­i­nary bud­dy who is now a his­to­ri­an. He told me some­thing that blew my mind: the founder of Earth Day (the first Earth Day, I should say — there are two) is a Pen­te­costal Chris­t­ian. His name is John McConnell. If you are a paci­fist you will find his sto­ry espe­cial­ly inter­est­ing — read some reviews of his biog­ra­phy.

I’m encour­aged that a fol­low­er of Jesus was at the fore­front of the ear­ly envi­ron­men­tal move­ment. It is easy to grow dis­ap­point­ed in Chris­tian­i­ty if you focus on the inac­tiv­i­ty of the insti­tu­tion­al church and for­get that the faith, ulti­mate­ly, is expressed in indi­vid­ual lives. But when you remem­ber that the church’s busi­ness is to not to engage in activism itself but rather to release Chris­tians to serve God’s pur­pos­es in the world, you can actu­al­ly become quite gid­dy. We still have a long way to go, but we’re doing far bet­ter than the world or the church seems to think. When I peek deep into a pos­i­tive sit­u­a­tion I often dis­cov­er a Jesus-fol­low­er (or even a few) at the heart of it.

So if you’re a fan of Earth Day (the orig­i­nal), then remem­ber to thank God for it. And keep your eyes open — God is at work in unex­pect­ed places.