Posted on 09/15/2006 6:26:14 PM PDT by Mrs. Don-o
A powerful alliance of Evangelical Christians and other religious groups is challenging traditional views of environmental activism by promoting a documentary about global warming in churches across America.
The group aims to convince congregations of all denominations that damage to the environment is a moral and spiritual rather than political issue that requires urgent action at every level.
The Great Warming, a Canadian production narrated by Keanu Reeves and Alanis Morissette, is being pitched in particular at the powerful conservative Christian constituency, which was credited with helping to re-elect President George W Bush in 2004.
Its release is timed to mobilise people ahead of the mid-term elections and the 2008 presidential election, and comes against a background of widespread frustration at the Bush administration's reluctance to act on the issue.
The involvement of faith groups in the film's promotion signals the growing clout of the religious green lobby, the so-called "creation care" movement that has gained significant momentum since Evangelical Christian groups began signing up a few months ago.
Some commentators believe the involvement of this traditionally Republican-voting group could succeed where countless scientists and environmentalists have failed and convince conservative sceptics who dismiss global warming as "alarmist" to change tack.
A national rollout of The Great Warming starts in American cinemas next month. It is already being screened by members of the National Council of Churches, which represents about 45 million churchgoers; Presbyterians for Restoring Creation; the National Association of Evangelicals; Jewish groups and Baptist ministries.
Themed sermons form part of the promotional campaign.
...
[S]aid Richard Cizik, "The issue is not a green issue per se any more than it's a Red State Republican or Blue State Democrat issue. It's a moral and spiritual issue."
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
ping
Evangelical.
The National concil of Churches is very liberal. This story has its Christians mixed up.
They have obviously forgotten that GOD is still in charge …!
And--- what about the National Association of Evangelicals?
The president of the NAE is a local charismatic pastor who has managed to let himself get carried away. It is not the whole NAE, but the leadership which has gotten on board that train (you know, the one going in the wrong direction)
Sorry, but I've never heard of that.
Take care of nature and nature will take care of you: Papal envoy
"Every time humanity degrades itself, he exacts a toll on creation and degrades creation in the process."This was the message of Vatican Representative Papal Nuncio Archbishop Fernando Filoni as he declared the environment to be exposed to serious threats due to people's lifestyle.
"We are witnesses of our own greed: major oil spills, global warming and the greenhouse effect, forest degradation, soil erosion, famine, flood, heat waves, and more are frank reminders that as His masterpieces, we are responsible for all the other things the Almighty God has gifted us with," he said.
Evangelical is used by four distinct groups to describe themselves. There are Conservative, Charismatic, Liberal, and Open theists all sharing this label.
A note about Conservative and Liberal Evangelicals:
When Bush was elected for the first time, the MSM attempted to politicize the word 'evangelical' and to associate it with fundamentalist Christianity.
The more liberal evangelical churches misread this attempt by the MSM to demonized conservative evangelicals as an attempt by the conservatives to hijack the word evangelical for themselves. So the liberal Churches started using the word 'evangelical' more and more.
The MSM delighted in this because it showed that liberals could be Christian too. The MSM loved it so much that it has gotten to where any evangelical church that does something liberal is sure to get a story printed with the word 'evangelical' in the headline.
It has all gotten bad enough that many Evangelicals (of any flavor) prefer not to use the label so as to not be associated at all with the others.
Personally I think that it is time we started distinguishing the different Evangelicals. Possibly like this:
Charism Evangelical - Charismatics and Pentecostals
Free Will Evangelical - Open theists
Protean Evangelical - Liberals
Bible Believing Evangelical - Conservatives
I think these terms are descriptive and non-offensive, being that each group already uses these words to describe themselves.
But how do we describe the Evangelicals who are conservative/orthodox when it comes to the Bible, gospel, etc even to the point of pre-trib dispensational, but when you talk about Bush, WOT, economics, social welfare policies, he suddenly sounds like the Harvard Crimson?
Many of the ethnic minority evangelicals in the US sound like this, and overwhelming numbers of Christians from the East Asia (where the gospel is spreading like wild fires) are also like that. They either assume people like Ron Sider or Jim Wallis are of this mold, or they pick bits from Gary Bauer and bits from Jim Wallis and mix together.
Perhaps someday Mr Gorman's mug will be on a statue in Geneva next to Karl Marx, Carl Sagan and other pseudo-scientific marxist propagandists.
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