Posted on 03/11/2008 6:42:13 AM PDT by Between the Lines
Jonathan Merritt, a 25-year-old student at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C., captured widespread media attention March 10 in releasing a statement titled "A Southern Baptist Declaration on the Environment and Climate Change."
The so-called "Southern Baptist" statement is not an initiative of the Southern Baptist Convention which voiced its views on global warming last summer in a resolution, "On Global Warming".
However, the student's project carries the names of a number of high-profile Southern Baptist leaders including his father, James Merritt, pastor of Cross Pointe, the Church at Gwinnett Center in Duluth, Ga., and a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention. Frank Page, pastor of First Baptist Church in Taylors, S.C., and the current SBC president, and Jack Graham, pastor of Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas, and a past president of the SBC, also signed the document.
Although he signed Merritt's declaration, Page, in a statement to Baptist Press, voiced support for the 2007 SBC resolution and earlier SBC resolutions on the topic.
"Southern Baptists have long stood for a clear environmental message which takes seriously God's call to guard and keep the earth," Page said. "We have been balanced and responsive in our calls for care....
"However, in a broader sense, many of God's people have been timid about speaking out regarding issues which relate to environmentalism. Perhaps this timidity has been a fear that speaking out would tie us to the very extreme left wing liberal environmental lobby. Some in this group are known for harsh political tirades. Others have issued irresponsible calls for economic change which would devastate the economies of some of the poorest nations in the world."
In a teleconference with media March 10, Merritt said the idea for the initiative came to him during a theology class.
"In the lecture," he said, "my professor made the statement that when we destroy creation, which is God's revelation, it is no different than tearing a page out of the Bible. At that moment, God began to work in my heart and call me to do something. [This document] is the product of that nudge from God that day." Merritt has been identified as the project director of the Southern Baptist Environment and Climate Initiative, which is behind the document.
The declaration, which carries 46 signatures, says Southern Baptists' "current denominational engagement with these issues [has] often been too timid, failing to produce a unified moral voice. Our cautious response to these issues in the face of mounting evidence may be seen by the world as uncaring, reckless and ill-informed. We can do better."
The declaration released March 10 offers four main points:
-- Human beings have a responsibility to care for creation and acknowledge their participation in environmental decline.
-- Addressing climate change is prudent.
-- Stewardship of the earth is required by Christian and Southern Baptist beliefs.
-- Individuals, churches, communities and governments should act now.
The statement included the disclaimer that advocacy of environmental stewardship will not reduce the signers' commitment to protecting unborn and other human life or to the biblical view of marriage.
"We will never compromise our convictions nor attenuate our advocacy on these matters, which constitute the most pressing moral issues of our day," the statement says. "However, we are not a single-issue body."
One of the most glaring missing endorsements was that of the SBC's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.
During the teleconference, Merritt mentioned that the ERLC had provided helpful inputs to reshape the statement but in the end did not endorse the final draft.
In a statement to Baptist Press, ERLC President Richard Land said he declined to endorse Merritt's declaration out of respect for Southern Baptists' autonomy.
"They reserve to themselves the right to decide through Convention action what the Southern Baptist Convention's public policy positions are to be," Land said. "The ERLC will continue to share the officially adopted positions of the Convention with public policy makers and the media."
Land also took issue with the signers' statement that Southern Baptists have been "too timid" in addressing these issues.
"[T]he Convention has officially addressed the issues of creation care and environmental stewardship in its 2006 and 2007 Conventions through resolutions adopted by the Convention's duly elected messengers," Land said. Referring to the 2007 action, he added that the approved action "is as close to an 'official' position as the SBC is capable of making, apart from its formal confession of faith, the Baptist Faith and Message."
"Consequently, in our convention-assigned role to share faithfully with Washington and other public policy venues where the convention is on an issue, it would be misleading and unethical of the ERLC to promote a position at variance with the convention's expressly stated positions."
While some media reports interpreted the declaration as a major shift of position in Southern Baptist circles, the document actually builds on statements adopted in the past, Daniel Akin, president of Southeastern Seminary, said during the teleconference.
"What the statement does is in concert with what Southern Baptists have said," Akin said. "The difference is that this comes as a grass-roots movement, not through the mechanism of a resolution that comes when the convention is in session.
"It does challenge Southern Baptists to be more proactive," he added. "I see it as building on what Southern Baptists have said in previous statements and position papers."
Southern Baptist messengers, in speaking to the issue of global warming during the 2007 annual meeting in San Antonio, encouraged their fellow Southern Baptists "to proceed cautiously in the human-induced global warming debate in light of conflicting scientific research." It also called for public policies that guarantee "an appropriate balance between care for the environment, effects on economics, and impacts on the poor when considering programs to reduce" carbon and other emissions.
The resolution affirmed Southern Baptists' responsibility to protect the environment while urging caution in the debate over humanity's role in global warming.
Messengers to the 2007 convention voted to delete two paragraphs of recommendations that were in the global warming measure when it came from the Resolutions Committee. They approved an amendment from the floor that removed proposals for government funding to do research on the human impact on global warming and to find energy alternatives to oil and other carbon-producing resources. Messengers passed the amendment with about 60 percent in the majority before approving the resolution overwhelmingly.
Last year's SBC resolution, which cited the Bible and offered a scientific and historical summary of climate change, is the seventh since 1970 to affirm that Christians have a responsibility to be stewards of creation.
Evangelical Christians have expressed differences of opinion on how to address global warming.
The Evangelical Climate Initiative (ECI), a coalition of more than 100 evangelical leaders, contends human beings are the main cause of global warming, which it says will negatively impact poor people the most. The ECI, which issued a statement in February 2006, has endorsed legislation to decrease carbon dioxide emissions in an effort to combat climate change.
The Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation says the cause of global warming is uncertain. It has expressed concern about the effects that policies proposed by those who believe in human-induced climate change would have on the poor. Some proposals might make little difference in the environment while harming economic progress, especially for the needy, it fears. The Cornwall Alliance released a document in July 2006 that was partly a response to ECI's statement and was signed by more than 110 evangelicals. Barrett Duke, the ERLC's vice president of public policy and research, has endorsed the Cornwall statement.
2006 SBC resolution: 'Environmentalism'
I was all set to let several of my pastor friends have it as a result of this story, but I’m glad I get the rest of the story here at FR. As it turns out, this “Southern Baptist Declaration on the Environment and Climate Change” would more aptly be described as “A Southern Baptist Seminary Student’s Opinion on the Environment and Climate Change”.
Yes, it would. It would seem the Christian Post has jumped the gun in their pronouncement of "a major shift" of Southern Baptist leaders positions on global warming. You would think that they would have checked their recourses better, but the Christian Post has always loved environmentally conscience churches.
Southern Baptists apparently also fall for hoodwinking by global warming scam artists.
As a person of LDS persuasion in the south, the SBs were always hateful towards me. Now I see they're kinda stupid too.
“I was all set to let several of my pastor friends have it as a result of this story, but I’m glad I get the rest of the story here at FR.”
As was I including the president of the SBC. Guess I’ll put the “flame gun” back in it’s holster!
Being a ex-Baptist....I’d like to offer some suggestions for those poor Baptist folks.
First....turn off the AC in the church totally. If you are burning tons of coal to cool a unnecessary comfort...then it is wicked. A good Baptist would sit there in sweaty clothing and listen without complaining. The same Baptist would limit the heat to a minimum.....maybe 55 degrees...just enough to sit there and listen with a good jacket on.
Second....Sunday night and Wednesday night services should be immediately canceled as they are unnecessary and trigger a family using excess fuel to get to a event of no consequence. An online service could be provided....for those with DSL or cable.
Third....all those folks driving big cars or SUVs....are to be chastised and criticized. If they don’t get rid of their vehicles within twelve months....kick them out of the church. They aren’t fit to be real Baptists if they don’t agree with the church doctrine.
Fourth.....ten percent of all donations to the church....ought to go to carbon credits....and not missionary work. Churches that won’t donate their ten percent.....ought to be chastised and identified.
Fifth....all members who need to be baptized....ought to do in a bio-degradable outfit....at the local creek.....not in some artificial water tub with heated water. No waivers for folks who want to be baptized in December or January....just bring them to the creek and dip them hard and fast. Those who fall into the rapids and freeze to death or catch pneumonia.....well....it was God’s will.
Sixth....no more hook-ups to a city sewage system and putting excess waste into the hands of the authorities. A out-house will be constructed outside of each church, with a new pit dug each month by the deacons. We want to go back to the old morals of the original Baptist church.
Seventh....all Southern Baptist meetings will be held in a field near Nashville where participants will ride Greyhound bus lines into the city (no air travel) and just camp near the old Operyland Park. Tents and sleeping bags will be provided by the state folks.
Eighth.....no toilet paper will be purchased by the church for the church toilet. Everyone will be asked to bring old newspapers with them to wipe with....preferably not the USA Today paper.....causing it has all that color pigment stuff will cause problems.
Ninth.....a new chapter should be added to the Bible....entitled.....”The Letters of Al”.....referring to our apostle Al Gore and his Trinity of Carbon which he delivers upon us.
Tenth and final......for the most part....the poor, the homeless, and the hungry....will still be rated above Global Warming....but just barely.....in terms of importance.
Not bad. With a bit of tweaking, your list should be mandatory for every global warming chicken little out there.
Does no one remember that Jesus calmed the storm?
Don't we know how the world ends? Why fear a different end?
Don't we also know that ultimately God controls the weather and the physical world? God created all of this for us, not us for it. Can we really sin against the earth? I thought sin was against God, other people, even ourselves, not against the earth.
Quick evidence that God should be trusted with the care of the earth: He created it. He can manipulate it to judge us for sin (flood, hail, darkness, famine....) He can part a sea and wall up the water. He can bring water out of a rock. He can send food from Heaven, or quail from wherever, or replenish a container of grain and oil, or make a small amount of food multiply to feed thousands so much that after everyone is full, more is collected as leftovers than you even started with. He can change water into wine. He can cause the earth to tremple. He can raise the dead. He can heal the sick, even repairing a withered hand. He can make a donkey speak human language for goodness sakes. Do we even believe the Bible anymore?
The disciples were rebuked for their lack of faith when they worried about the climate. God is still in control, people.
Being mindfull of clean air and clean water and just taking care of health issues is a wise thing to do. But jumping onto these fear bandwagons where we worry about things we should be trusting God for is just wrong.
Christians are the ones supposed to know that even in terms of something so humanly obvious as the benefit of the size of a nation's army is really meaningless unless God is on your side.
PLEASE READ ALL OF PSALM 33 posted below.
Psalm 33 -
1 Sing joyfully to the Lord, you righteous; it is fitting for the upright to praise him. 2 Praise the Lord with the harp; make music to him on the ten-stringed lyre. 3 Sing to him a new song; play skillfully, and shout for joy. 4 For the word of the Lord is right and true; he is faithful in all he does. 5 The Lord loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of his unfailing love. 6 By the word of the Lord were the heavens made, their starry host by the breath of his mouth. 7 He gathers the waters of the sea into jars; he puts the deep into storehouses. 8 Let all the earth fear the Lord; let all the people of the world revere him. 9 For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm. 10 The Lord foils the plans of the nations; he thwarts the purposes of the peoples. 11 But the plans of the Lord stand firm forever, the purposes of his heart through all generations.
12 Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people he chose for his inheritance. 13 From heaven the Lord looks down and sees all mankind; 14 from his dwelling place he watches all who live on earth-- 15 he who forms the hearts of all, who considers everything they do. 16 No king is saved by the size of his army; no warrior escapes by his great strength. 17 A horse is a vain hope for deliverance; despite all its great strength it cannot save. 18 But the eyes of the Lord are on those who fear him, on those whose hope is in his unfailing love, 19 to deliver them from death and keep them alive in famine. 20 We wait in hope for the Lord; he is our help and our shield. 21 In him our hearts rejoice, for we trust in his holy name. 22 May your unfailing love rest upon us, O Lord, even as we put our hope in you.
You have a unique view on what is or is not SBC. Being "official" is the only thing that would make something SBC. Just because some kid steals a envirochurch idea, puts it on paper and gets some SBC members to sign it means nothing in relation to the SBC. That is why the SBC put out this statement, to clarify that it is the position of these signers and not that of the SBC.
"Green churches" or "creation care" or whatever you want to call it, has been around for quite awhile now, even in SBC member churches. But it did not originate in the SBC. It was these SBC affiliated green churches have brought up global warming before, which is why it was addressed at last years convention and why the position statement on global warming was approved. The fact that this so called "“Southern Baptist Declaration on the Environment and Climate Change” is in direct conflict with the position statement approved last only proves that it is not SBC.
What is the SBC but the sum total of its members. The fact that all its members did not sign on to this does not mean it is not SBC. The signers are all SBC. One of the signers is the President of the SBC. You can try to disown it but that leaves you denying the evidence. You can disagree. You can say it does not represent a majority. It is not the official position approved by the Convention. All true. But it is SBC and even has the support of the SBC president. It represnts a strong, sorry faction of actual and powerful members.
The SBC is not so much a denomination as it is an association of like minded churches. Each church is autonomous and the only authority is the local church and that of Christ. What makes a church SBC is their similarities, not their differences, because they are free to leave the association at any time.
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