Oh, I so agree with you. Yes, he has written for BioLogos before. He reviewed the wonderful film Avatar, which (as you know) is about taking care of the environment, not exploiting it for natural resources, and respecting the rights of indigenous people. So he decides this movie is anti-Christian! But seriously, conservative Christianity does have a problem with environmentalism. You see the flak I get when I post stuff about climate change.
This may be more of an American thing than a Christian thing. There is a history of anti-intellectualism running through Christian communities in the US, and it has led to a culture of rejecting scientific findings, be it evolution or climate change. Symptoms of this anti-intellectualism are found at many tiers in society, including congregations and political parties. It will be interesting to see what the future holds for how Christians in the US view science and intellectualism. As some have indelicately put it, it may be a matter of older generations dying off. Who knows?
In Europe, we do not have this problem amongst Christians. I suspect it goes down to the theological differences between American and European Christianity. The more moderate Anglican Church had Nonconformist Protestants persecuted in the 17th century, so they fled to the American colonies.
I will agree with Godawa and others however, that there needs to be a balance between rampant environmental destruction and the thought that nature is an entirely benevolvent and passive force that is misunderstood. The unfortunate case of Tim Treadwell is testament to this.
I agree. I had the privilege of working with a British man who considered himself a liberal Democrat and felt it was Christian to be so. He felt it was more Christian then to be a tory.
Thanks. Interestingly, he was a missionary in Africa. Tim Farron was an evangelical leader of the Liberal Democrats in the UK till recently. I read a Counterpoints book on inerrancy, in which Michael Bird,a theologian from Australia, mentioned that Americans tend to think their theology is the only one, while 4/5 of the world’s Christians do not ascribe to this. He was quite incredulous at the gun culture and conservative culture of Christians in the US. He couched it in terms of how most of the world’s Christians don’t subscribe to the Chicago statement on biblical inerrancy either. I am still learning a lot about this. However, it seems that aligning one’s theology with one worldview not clearly Christian shoots yourself in the foot.