Motivating Evangelicals
Francis
Schaeffer, Christianity Today, and
Evangelical Concern for the Environment
Gregory Johnson • Saint
Louis University • Fall 1998
A computerized search of articles, reviews and essays dealing with environmental issues in the journal Christianity Today—from its first issue in 1956 up to the present—yields some striking results. Between 1956 and 1970, of over seven thousand articles, none is found which deals directly with ecological concerns.[1] But after the 1970 publication of Francis Schaeffer's Pollution and the Death of Man, a steady stream of articles appears in Christianity Today directing the focus of evangelical[2] readers to the global environmental crisis. The magazine's April 1971 issue opened this evangelical ecological discussion, including within it a review of Schaeffer's seminal book, raising what many perceive as a "liberal" issue among a generally conservative readership. This paper will examine the manner in which both Schaeffer and Christianity Today sought to motivate their readership toward environmental concern.
The first part of this paper will explore the primary motivational arguments in Francis Schaeffer's Pollution and the Death of Man, looking at how Schaeffer uses a distinctively evangelical and Christian discourse to raise environmental concern. How does Schaeffer seek to motivate his evangelical readership? And how does Schaeffer's distinctively evangelical assessment of the ecological issue give him a perspective from which he critiques approaches that he would perceive as competing "answers" to the environmental crisis—and what is his motive for including such an apologetic in a book marketed to evangelicals? Why, according to Schaeffer, should evangelicals value nature in its own right? This will be the question posed in the Part I of this paper.
In part II of this paper, I will explore the primary motivational arguments in Christianity Today from April 1970 until May 1992.[3] How do the authors in this journal use their evangelical discourse to raise environmental concern? How do they seek to motivate evangelicals? And again, how is their perspective a critical one, unwilling to blanketly endorse what they see as a largely non-Christian environmental movement, yet calling for ecological activism nonetheless? This section of the paper will read something like a bibliographic essay. And though my aim is to cover all of the articles, editorials, reviews and news stories which deal with ecology, I will focus especially on the landmark April 23, 1971 "Terracide" issue. Why, according to Christianity Today, should evangelicals care about nature? This is the question I will raise in the second part of this paper.
In the third and final part of this paper, I will compare the motivational argumentation in Christianity Today with the arguments presented in Pollution and the Death of Man. How does the later evangelical discourse about the environment found in Christianity Today develop, embody, ignore, or add to the motivating arguments first presented in Schaeffer's 1970 book? Is it possible to suggest that Schaeffer legitimized the environmental issue for conservative evangelicals? To what extent has subsequent evangelical scholarship followed Schaeffer's lead in both its motivational argumentation and its critical perspective?
PART I:
Francis Schaeffer's 1970 Pollution
& the Death of Man
Few scholars can doubt the importance of Francis Schaeffer to American evangelicalism in the latter half of the twentieth century. Francis Schaeffer (d.1984) served a dual role as American evangelicalism's foremost popular apologist[4] and its critic. A doctrinally conservative Calvinist formed in the furnace of the modernist-fundamentalist split within Presbyterianism, Schaeffer was aligned for a time with Carl McIntire in an effort to provide a conservative alternative to the National and World Council of Churches, but later fell out of favor with McIntire. Schaeffer left America in 1955 to set up a Christian ministry to intellectuals at L'Abri in the Swiss Alps, where he taught in knickers, knee socks and walking shoes, adding a goatee by 1972. As Michael S. Hamilton suggests in a 1997 Christianity Today issue devoted to "Our Saint Francis," no figure except perhaps C.S. Lewis has more shaped the thinking of American evangelicals—and no figure of the period except Billy Graham has left a deeper stamp upon the movement as a whole—than the late Francis Schaeffer.[5]
Schaeffer by the 1960s and '70s would have a central shaping influence on key evangelical leaders such as Jesus People organizer Jack Sparks, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Jack Kemp, Chuck Colson, Operation Rescue's Randall Terry, Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, columnist Cal Thomas, authors Tim and Beverly LaHaye, historian Mark Noll, and sociologist Os Guinness. Schaeffer's million dollar film How Should We Then Live? (1976-77) was a best-seller (as was the book) and brought to evangelicals at large Schaeffer's message about the rotten underpinnings of American culture, followed in 1979 by a film, book and lecture tour with C. Everett Koop on abortion, euthanasia and infanticide titled Whatever Happened to the Human Race? This film has been called the key factor in developing an evangelical consensus in opposition to abortion.
Yet at the same time, this most popular apologist for evangelicalism was no establishment figure. Schaeffer refused to condone the arms race (a rare stance among evangelicals), even calling upon evangelical churches to remove the American flag from their sanctuaries, afraid that Christianity was being co-opted by the "idol of the American dream." Schaeffer blasted evangelicals for tolerating racism, and warned that because of its cultural conformity, the evangelical church was on the brink of apostasy. In 1970, Schaeffer wrote that "one of the greatest injustices we do to our young people is to ask them to be conservative." The apologist of evangelicalism could also be one of its harshest critics.
Schaeffer's Apologetic Approach
Francis Schaeffer's 1970 Pollution and the Death of Man opens, not with a presentation of biblical teachings on the environment, but with an apologetic critique of non-evangelical approaches to the issue. The strategy of evangelicalism's most popular apologist begins with apologetics. Granted, Schaeffer was not an academic and had no formal philosophical training; he was foremost an evangelist. Still, Schaeffer approaches the ecological issue with a presuppositional apologetic, not completely unlike that of Westminster Seminary's Cornelius Van Til.[6] In this presuppositional approach, Schaeffer asks which belief system or worldview —which presuppositions—best make sense of our world. These presuppositions are then taken to their logical conclusion, interrogating them to see if they are livable, that is, whether or not they accurately describe reality.
Schaeffer himself works with a dual presupposition, that the infinite-personal God exists, and that he has spoken accurately in the Bible. While Schaeffer will use many arguments later in the book to motivate his evangelical readers, he does not view these arguments as humanly inspired myths which are of value simply because they are useful. Rather, Schaeffer believes Christianity as embodied in the Bible to be objective truth, propositional revelation from God, a communicative event in which God gives his accurate and divine perspective to humanity. In Schaeffer's terminology, Reformation Christianity is "true truth," not relative truth. The biblical documents provide, he will argue, not merely for a religion, but for a comprehensive worldview that is of supreme value—not because it gives meaning—but because it is actually true. Genuine significance, Schaeffer argues, and not make-believe meaning, is found only in the fact that God actually exists and has spoken reliably and understandably to the human race in the Bible. God is there, Schaeffer argues, and he is not silent.[7]
Schaeffer's perspective is therefore critical of viewpoints at variance with biblical Christianity, and to them he turns his apologetic pen at the outset. Pollution and the Death of Man begins by first asking which worldview best presents an accurate and livable philosophical base for ecology[8]—accurate because truth matters, livable because truth corresponds to reality and will therefore best make sense of the world around us.[9] The question here is all or nothing—which belief system, when lived out consistently (to its reductio ad absurdum, one might say), best gives us a perspective which makes sense of life, the environment included?
Schaeffer is really simply following Lynn White in this worldview approach. Lynn White first raised this question of a philosophical basis for ecology, questioning whether Christianity gave a philosophical foundation which could foster ecological concern. White's approach fits well with Schaeffer's own apologetic approach, both authors asking which presuppositions consistently make sense of reality. Schaeffer included White's essay "The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis" as an appendix to Pollution and the Death of Man, as well as including Richard L. Means's essay "Why Worry About Nature?"[10] Means followed White in this worldview approach by suggesting that pantheism, rather than theism, best provided a base from which modern man could build.
Means is the first target of Schaeffer's apologetic. Taking up this worldview challenge, Schaeffer argues that the presupposition of pantheism as expressed by Means, characterized by a rejection of hierarchy among species, cannot be consistently lived out in practice. While Schaeffer is willing to find points of agreement with Means, he nevertheless suggests that, rather than raising all species to the level of humanity, pantheism instead lowers all species to the lowest common denominator, so that (to use Schaeffer's words) "man is no more than the grass." A true worldview, Schaeffer argues, must be one that makes distinctions between species; this is our experience of reality. We eat lettuce. We do not eat children. The end result of the Mean's presupposition of pantheism, Schaeffer warns, is a pragmatism where ethics are not grounded in objective distinctions between species and between good and bad behaviors. Schaeffer writes:
Those who propose the pantheistic answer ignore this fact—that far from raising nature to man's height, pantheism must push both man and nature down into a bog. Without categories, there is eventually no reason to distinguish bad nature from good nature. Pantheism leaves us with the Marquis de Sade's dictum, "What is, is right," in morals, and man becomes no more than the grass.[11]
As a worldview, Schaeffer tells his readers, pantheism fails the test.[12] But so too fails a dualistic Christianity—what Schaeffer calls a Byzantine Christianity, with its Platonic dualism between the (bad) physical and (good) spiritual. But here already one can discern a critique of evangelicalism, or at least its fundamentalist strand, which its separatism and its suspicion of "the world." While this area of Schaeffer's argument will be discussed further below, something of Schaeffer's real purpose begins to become clear.
Schaeffer is not writing Pollution and the Death of Man to pantheists. He is writing to evangelical Christians. As an apologist, he opens by critiquing non-evangelical approaches, pantheism and Christian dualism. At first he uses the apologetic strategy found in his earlier books. But Pollution and the Death of Man does not continue as an apologetic. Schaeffer targets competing viewpoints, but then turns his guns on his own troops. His argument does not end with a "God is there and has spoken—Too bad for the pantheists!"
Rather, after gaining the trust of his evangelical readers through his apologetic, assuring them of his commitment to biblical orthodoxy, Schaeffer continues as if to say, "God is there and has spoken—Too bad for the evangelicals!" Evangelicalism's most popular apologist rebukes evangelicals for failing to care for the earth, proceeding in the last two-thirds of the book tell them that their own worldview— their own presupposition of God and the Bible—requires them to think and act differently toward the environment. To Schaeffer's specific motivational arguments we now turn.
Schaeffer's Motivating Arguments
In Pollution and the Death of Man, Francis Schaeffer uses a number of arguments to motivate his evangelical readership toward environmental action. Ultimately, Schaeffer argues that nature is important—not because it is useful to humanity—but important in its own right. Schaeffer's approach is not anthropocentric, but theocentric, grounding the ultimate value of the created order in its vertical relation to God rather than in its horizontal relationship to man. Schaeffer speaks within an evangelical discourse of biblical authority, where biblical categories provide the ultimate framework within which reality is understood and decisions are made. The goal is that the biblical discourse swallow all other discourses, so that the biblical "true truth" serves for Schaeffer as the prime interpreter, the final motivation behind all of his various motivational argumentation.[13] What are the primary motivating arguments Schaeffer uses to encourage evangelicals to environmental action?
1. The Goodness of the Material World. The genuine goodness of creation, Schaeffer insists, must be genuinely believed in practice, not merely as a point for philosophical speculation, nor as a mere cog in the machinery of a natural apologetic—but in practice. There can be for Schaeffer no separation between nature and grace. The spiritual is not all that is important; God made the material as well as the spiritual, and God speaks to both. Here Schaeffer insists that it is only Reformation Christianity which has taken this objective goodness seriously. He goes to great lengths to critique what he labels "Byzantine pre-Renaissance" Christianity—be it in its Orthodox, Thomist or (for many of his readers) fundamentalist variety.[14] There can be no Platonic duality, he asserts, within true Christianity.[15] Schaeffer writes:
The Byzantine represented that the only truly valuable thing is heavenly—so high, so lifted up, so holy.... The only thing that mattered in life... was the heavenly. This kind of Christianity will never give an answer to the problem of nature, for in this view, nature has no real importance.[16]
Only Reformation Christianity, which Schaeffer sees as biblical Christianity, takes seriously the goodness of the material world. Schaeffer illustrates this point by appealing to the Dutch painters like Van Eyck who, after the Protestant Reformation, found themselves painting, not merely religious scenes, but landscapes and still-lifes and scenes from the daily lives of ordinary people. Within a Calvinistic Dutch culture, the material world was suddenly of equal value to religious or biblical topics.[17]
Schaeffer argues for the goodness of the material world from numerous biblical teachings. Looking at Christ's Incarnation, Schaeffer argues that the physical body cannot be devalued either in theory or in practice; Christ took a real, material body in history.[18] Schaeffer similarly makes appeal to Christ's bodily resurrection and ascension; Christ's body really was raised physically, can eat and drink, and is now located in a real place, at the right hand of God's throne.[19] There can thus be no false dichotomy between the spiritual and the material. The Bible permits no such distinction. Evangelism is not all that matters to God. The goodness of the physical world, grounded within an evangelical discourse of biblical authority, is a primary motivating argument is Pollution and the Death of Man.
2. Humanity's Fundamental Union with Creation. Schaeffer further argues that man is essentially like creation (and unlike God) with respect to God's infinitude. It is not enough for humans to interpret themselves in relation to God's personhood, in which we as God's image are essentially like God and unlike the creation. God is a personal God, but an infinite-personal God. Not only must we see ourselves as God's image; we must understand ourselves as fellow creatures, fundamentally like creation in our creatureliness. Schaeffer writes, "Only [God] is independent; everything else is dependent. So man, the animal, the flower, and the machine, in the biblical viewpoint, are equally separated from God in that He created them all."[20]
And this commonality between man and nature should not merely be experienced on an intellectual level. Schaeffer argues:
I can say, "Yes, the tree is a creature like myself." But that is not all that is involved. There ought to be a psychological insight, too. Psychologically, I ought to "feel" a relationship to the tree as my fellow creature. It is not simply that we ought to feel a relationship intellectually to the tree, and then turn this into just another argument for apologetics, but that we should realize, that on the side of God's infinity and our finiteness—we really are one with the tree![21]
Humanity lives in union with creation. Here Schaeffer appeals to God's covenant being a Covenant with all creation. Citing Genesis 9:18-17, Schaeffer argues that if we love God, we will treat his things with the same integrity with which God deals (covenantally) with them.[22] Indeed, flowers, trees, grass, animals—all creatures have a created integrity that is independent of their relationship to humanity. This created integrity, Schaeffer argues, is an integrity of things as things based on their being created by God in their proper order. The tree is thus not of value because we romanticize it and read into it human qualities (which the tree does not objectively have and was not designed by God to possess). Rather, Schaeffer says, the tree is of value because God made it to be a tree.[23] Humanity's union with nature is thus a primary motivational argument for Schaeffer. Indeed, he concludes Pollution and the Death of Man with words directed to the buttercup. He writes, "As I stand and face the buttercup, I say, 'Fellow-creature, fellow-creature, I won't walk on you. We are both creatures together.'"[24]
3. The Interpretive Framework of Redemptive History. Schaeffer seeks to motivate evangelicals by placing the ecological crisis within an already existing evangelical discourse of biblical authority, and perhaps nothing is more fundamental to that evangelical discourse than the narrative of Fall, sin, and redemption. Schaeffer interprets nature's contemporary suffering as a result of humanity's historical time-space Fall recorded in Genesis 3.[25] Mankind's selfish plundering of the environment amounts to greed and materialism, sins familiar within an evangelical discourse. And, Schaeffer argues from Romans 8, the environment's hope lies in the same gospel that saves the Christian.[26]
At this point Schaeffer brings in an eschatological perspective, drawing on the partial manner in which Christians now enjoy salvation in expectation of the complete renewal at Christ's return. Analogous to this partial reality, Schaeffer argues that creation itself should now be enjoying the partial benefits of redemption even as it awaits complete restoration at the second advent.[27] And, Schaeffer insists, this eschatological perspective must form the manner in which evangelicals now treat the world. We must treat creation now in the direction which it will be. There can be a real, substantial healing now in anticipation of a complete redemption at Christ's second coming.[28] By interpreting ecology within the narrative of Fall and redemption, Schaeffer seeks to motivate evangelicals to be agents of ecological concern.
4. Stewardship. Stewardship is another paradigm within which Schaeffer approaches the environment. Humanity, Schaeffer insists, is a steward—a servant standing in place of his master and ultimately accountable to him. Man is not using his own possessions, but God's, and man must only use them as God wants them to be used. Schaeffer writes, "When we have dominion over nature, it is not ours, either. It belongs to God, and we are to exercise our dominion over these things not as though entitled to exploit them, but as things borrowed or held in trust, which we are to use realizing that they are not ours intrinsically."[29] Stewardship describes the attitude the Christian must have as he approaches the task of dominion. Schaeffer views human dominion over the environment, not merely as a mandate, but as a fact. People exercise dominion all the time, either for personal glory or for God's glory.
Since the Fall, Schaeffer explains, man has exercised dominion in rebellion against God. Schaeffer writes, "Since the Fall man has exercised dominion wrongly. He is a rebel who has set himself at the center of the universe.... Because he is fallen, he exploits created things as though they were nothing in themselves, as though he has an autonomous right to them."[30] The Christian is called to bring that existing dominion back into submission to God, treating the thing as having value in itself, a tree as a tree, for example.[31] The tree is not a human baby, Schaeffer insists, but neither is it a zero. Schaeffer speaks here against hunting for mere sport, against clear-cut development, and against intentionally stepping on an ant because one does not wish to step over it.[32]
5. The Pilot Plant as Witness. In the final chapter of Pollution and the Death of Man, Schaeffer presents his vision for the Christian church as a "Pilot Plant," analogous to a pilot factory built to test a product (salvation) before moving into full-scale production (in the eschaton). Schaeffer's vision is of the church as a community embodying substantial (albeit partial) healing of all the fractures caused by the Fall: man's relation to God, man's relation to himself, man's relation to man, and man's relation to nature. With particular reference to man's relationship with nature, Schaeffer writes, "The Christian Church ought to be this 'pilot plant,' through individual attitudes and the Christian community's attitude, to exhibit that in this present life man can exercise dominion over nature without being destructive."[33] At stake, Schaeffer argues, is the church's very mission itself. The world is watching to see whether Christians will actually embody in their relationships the new creation they profess to have received.
PART II: Christianity Today,
April 1971–May 1992
As already mentioned, the magazine Christianity Today, from its first issue in 1956 until the beginning of the 1970s included no articles which sought to address the ecological crisis. The only pollution with which this journal was concerned was moral pollution.[34] All of this changed on April 23, 1971, with the publication of an entire issue devoted to the environmental issue. On the cover of the magazine were two trees: the one on the left alive and well, the one on the right, its mirror image, blackened, barren and dead. Across the middle of the cover a single word was written: TERRACIDE. This issue included an interview, a review article, and an editorial, all addressing the killing of the earth.
Terracide: The Interview
The April 23, 1971 Terracide issue opened with an article in question and answer format, an interview with Carl Reidel, assistant director of the Center for Environmental Studies at Williams College.[35] The magazine's editors included this preface to the interview:
To many minds the environmental crisis is the foremost issue of our times. They see it as having displaced the race problem, and even the question of war and peace and the threat of nuclear annihilation. For the latter is "merely" a threat, whereas extermination of human life because of environmental deterioration seems certain unless there is a dramatic turnabout in our way of life.
Feeling that the environment should be a prime concern for Christians, CHRISTIANITY TODAY presents this interview with Dr. Carl Reidel, assistant director of the Center for Environmental Studies at Williams College. Dr. Reidel holds a master's degree from Harvard and a Ph.D. from Minnesota. He is a member of the First Baptist Church of Williamstown, Massachusetts.[36]
Here the editors seek, not only to establish the cultural relevancy of the issue for the Christianity Today readership, but also to legitimize that concern by stating that the magazine itself feels "that the environment should be a primary concern for Christians." And the editors present not only Reidel's academic credential—degrees from Harvard and Minnesota—but also his spiritual credentials, membership in an evangelical church. Perhaps knowing a risk could be involved in raising an issue dominated by secular liberals, the editors go far beyond the normal pattern to lend credibility to the perspective that follows.[37]
Reidel frames the environmental issue in biblical moral terms as essentially one of greed, or the love of money. While the question and answer format begins by substantiating on scientific grounds the reality of an ecological crisis, Reidel goes on to argue that neither science nor technology is ultimately to blame. Values are at the heart of the problem, "the values we have chosen as individuals and as a society." Reidel adds, "Sometimes we call it growth. Sometimes we call it progress. What it amounts to is an ever-increasing affluence. Not merely a high quality of life but an always climbing standard."[38] The love of affluence is the heart of "environmental evil."[39] Reidel thus places the ecological crisis within a biblical framework familiar to evangelicals, Paul having warned that "The love of money is the root of all evil."[40] Reidel quotes Jesus' saying, "You cannot serve God and Mammon."[41] He adds that a minor lifestyle changes like giving up a few detergents and cars will not please God. He writes:
The Christian ought to know better than to offer a few token sacrifices. Jesus did not suggest that a few good deeds made the difference between a Christian and everyone else. Only when individual Christians make a radical reassessment of their personal values concerning material affluence, and start expressing that commitment collectively through the church, will we see the beginning of world-wide action [Italics original].[42]
Reidel identifies this valuation of material progress with the Christian's battle with the thought forms of this world, an enemy that is all around the Christian and which seeks to influence his values. Reidel insists that a fundamental transformation of American society, "its culture and values," is needed. "Such a transformation will be possible only when we are able to understand the biases of our culture and the motivation it fosters in us. From a Christian perspective this demands a re-examination of our convictions and commitments."[43] Reidel thus calls upon evangelical readers to test their thinking to see whether it is biblical or rather is in conformity to the (non-Christian) values of American culture. While Reidel criticizes Lynn White for blaming Christianity for the ecological crisis, arguing that White's notion of "equality or spiritual autonomy of all creatures... amounts to pantheism,"[44] Reidel nevertheless adds that "evangelicals must face up to their own measure of guilt" for the ecological disaster.[45]
Much of Reidel's argumentation follows a paradigm of stewardship, which in many ways is parallel to the notion of conservation. God permits humans to make use of nature, but not to do so unwisely or without love. Reidel notes that the current usage of fossil fuels is not sustainable, and that North American cats eat an amount of South American fish equal to the protein deficiency in the diets of South Americans themselves.[46] Yet Reidel references the first chapters of Genesis to affirm that "man does occupy a superior place in nature." Humanity was created, he argues, both to have dominion over nature and "to till and keep" it. "The Christian's view of creation rests on the belief that all of nature is God's creation, and that we hold it as stewards for him. We simply are not free to exploit nature for our own benefit if in so doing we destroy its life-giving ability."[47]
Still, Reidel says he agrees with Francis Schaeffer's notion in Pollution and the Death of Man that evangelicals should "honor the ant." He continues, "We honor the ant by understanding and respecting his place, not by romanticizing his place in human terms nor by seeking a common essence that destroys the distinctions between us."[48] Thus the evangelical moral discourse of biblical authority is called upon as a limit to humanity's use of the natural world, even as the evangelical discourse of stewardship (responsible dominion) is called upon to structure the evangelical's understanding of his relationship with the environment.
Greed, the battle with the world, and stewardship—through the use of all of these themes, Reidel places the environmental issue within the evangelical discourse of biblical authority, a standard over the church to which evangelicals must submit. Yet Reidel goes beyond this to one further concern. He warns:
Christianity is becoming the target of environmental activists, but not because we are worse offenders than anyone else or because we are the contemporary link to the Judeo-Christian heritage some hold responsible for technological pollution. We are criticized, I believe, because we claim the highest values and show little outward evidence of practicing what we preach.[49]
Drawing on the biblical distinction between internal and external religion, Reidel warns that the accusation of hypocrisy is one which may not be unfounded. As a result, Christianity itself is being defamed. Here is a concern both apologetic and evangelical: Christ condemned because of Christians, the evangel rejected because of evangelicals. Terracide was thus a vital issue for Christianity Today readers.
Terracide: The Review Article
The April 23, 1971 Terracide issue of Christianity Today included an extensive review article "Ecology and Apocalypse" by Wilbur Bullock, notably not a theologian, but a professor of zoology.[50] Bullock begins by noting that "the Church—and especially the evangelical sector—has been strangely silent" about ecological issues.[51] He continues, "If this silence indicates a desire to handle a critical matter with a carefully reasoned approach, then the silence may be helpful. However, we cannot remain silent forever."[52] Bullock raises four questions with which evangelicals must grapple:
[1] What is the historical background for the present concern with environmental problems?
[2] Are these problems 'for real' or have we been subjected to emotional exaggerations by prophets of doom?
[3] What is the biblical view of man's relation to nature?
[4] And finally, what should our attitudes and actions be if in confronting these crises we wish to remain faithful to our primary objectives as followers of Christ?[53]
These four questions are loaded with significance in revealing a distinctively evangelical way of understanding. The desire to know where these environmental concerns are coming from, as well as the desire to confirm that the problems are "for real" both betray an evangelical suspicion of the world and its values. Evangelicals do not want to be "duped" by unbelievers with a political agenda. The concern to understand "the biblical view" demonstrates a confidence in the unity of the biblical documents as a single, consistent communication from God, as well as demonstrating the evangelical desire to subsume all worldly concerns within an overarching biblical discourse. The final question about "attitudes and actions" demonstrates an evangelical desire for both internal (attitudes) and external (actions) conformity to God's will in the Bible, since following Christ is the chief objective.
Bullock reviews four books to help answer these questions, including Schaeffer's Pollution and the Death of Man, which he recommends the most highly of the four.[54] Bullock may also betray evangelical, or at least Protestant, convictions in his willingness to at least partly blame the church for having "often been passively and even actively involved in desecrating our God-given environment."[55] Still, Bullock criticizes some for overstating the environmental terrors humanity will soon face, and is critical of the trend to blame to Bible for the ecological crisis, noting the selective use of biblical quotations by those seeking to discredit Christianity, those same scholars ignoring biblical passages that speak highly of nature.[56] Thus Bullock seeks to interpret the ecological situation within an evangelical biblical discourse, even acknowledging partial blame on behalf of Christianity as it has been lived out in history. At the same time Bullock is critical of those who would place blame on Christianity as presented in the Bible. To blame the Church is fine; but to blame the Bible is another story altogether.
Terracide: The Editorial
The editors of Christianity Today also include in the April 23, 1971 issue a two-page editorial titled (with the issue itself) "Terracide."[57] The editors begin by insisting that the environment is not one of those many issues that "are really medium-size problems blown up by opportunists." Rather, they insist, "There can be no mistaking that our planet is dying.... Everyone suffers from the problem, and everyone shares in the blame."[58] The editors proceed to criticize the Jesus-people movement, their fellow evangelicals, for fostering an attitude of abandonment from the world, supposedly for the sake of evangelism. (As one dispensationalist preacher asked, "Why polish the brass if the ship is sinking?")
At this point Christianity Today again makes use of the stewardship motif. Even if God were to use environmental disaster to judge the world, the editors argue, the Scripture's commands are still authoritative. They write, "To fail to respect life and all other environmental resources is to demean creation and to violate biblical principles of stewardship."[59] Our values, and particularly our national greed in "seeking material things to compensate for a lack of spiritual fulfillment," they insist, are the heart of the issue. Indeed, the editors ultimately blame the crisis on the historical Fall of man and his subsequent "depraved nature that over-emphasizes self-interest." As the problem is sin, so the solution is redemption. They add, "The only answer to despoliation lies in lifting men above sinful inclinations to a new plane of life and thought—and biblical Christianity does this best of all."[60]
The editors are also quick to defend the Bible from those who would blame it for the world's environmental problems. They argue, "The fault lies not with revealed religion but with those who insist on a life style that is at odds with it. The greatest damage to our environment by far has been done since the Bible ceased to be the cultural norm of the Western world."[61] The editors of Christianity Today assume the biblical teaching to be objective truth, the will of God.
And, the argue, only this divine imperative gives us a non-pragmatic motivation for environmental action. They write, "Only a believer in Scripture has other than pragmatic reasons for respecting nature/creation."[62] In a sense, the editor's ultimate motivation is simply that "God says so." Human-oriented motivations, they argue, will ultimately fail; they are the problem, not the solution. Thus their perspective is not anthropocentric, but theocentric. The editors motivate their readers by explaining the crisis in light of the simple narrative of Fall and redemption so familiar to evangelical Christians. The problem started with the historical Fall, and as a result we humans are self-oriented, resulting in the present crisis. Through Christ, we can become God-oriented and be about living non-materialistic lives en masse as the Church, an answer which alone can provide a lasting solution to prevent an ecological disaster. In this sense, Christianity Today presents the issue as one of the gospel itself. In the remainder of Part I of this paper, I will briefly examine ecological motivation in Christianity Today between the April 23, 1971 issue and the significant May 18, 1992 issue.
Christianity
Today through the 1970s
A number of review articles deal with environmental issues throughout the remainder of the 1970s. In the August 6, 1971 issue of Christianity Today, Janet Rohler reviews a number of books which seek to answer the charge that Christianity is to blame for the ecological crisis.[63] A February 1972 review by John H. Patterson also notes the tendency of ecologists to broadly hint that Christianity is to blame for the crisis. Patterson calls Christians to concentrate their efforts on figuring out what God means for us to "have dominion" and on understanding how humanity went wrong once that mandate was issued.[64] Harold O.J. Brown gives a positive review of the traditionalist Roman Catholic perspective of Christopher Derrick, who sees, not Christianity, but a modern Manichaean tendency to blame for much of the environmental crisis.[65]
An October 1972 article by James M. Houston seeks to raise a more critical acceptance of environmentalism among evangelicals. Noting Jesus' warning, "Take care that no one misleads you," Houston gives five warnings. He tells his readers to beware of panaceas and fads, false emphases, false judgments, false analogies, and false solutions. Houston calls for a sober realization that humanity is in the midst of a crisis, but argues that the Bible is not to blame. He further demonstrates his evangelical concern for "orthodoxy" by warning readers of the tendency among some environmentalists to create new religions to support an environmental agenda. Still, Houston argues, Christ calls Christians to act with responsibility and urgency with a radical new lifestyle in light of the present crisis.[66]
"A Message To Polluters From the Bible" by Martin LaBar begins with motivating arguments that are common to Christian and non-Christian alike: dwindling resources, pollution, and increasing rates of extinction.[67] LaBar's concern is that "some prophets of doom have cried wolf too often and fostered a belief that there is no need for alarm."[68] LaBar then continues by giving six reasons why evangelicals should care about ecology enough to radically change their lifestyles, providing multiple biblical prooftexts for each point. First, the Bible teaches individual responsibility; each of us is responsible for the present crisis. Second, the Bible teaches "that the earth, as created, was good." Thirdly, "The earth and its creatures belong to God.... If God is aware of the death of one sparrow, what about the extinction of an entire species?" Fourth, the Bible regulates how we are to treat creation. Fifth, "the cause of the crisis is sin." LaBar specifically mentions dualistic thinking, which he argues is heresy and therefore sin, also mentioning selfishness, laziness, waste, blind faith in technology, and greed, which is idolatry.[69]
Referencing Schaeffer's Pollution and the Death of Man for support, LaBar continues, "Not only should we try to protect [the environment] because we believe it is God's world, but we should see the seemingly all-powerful Gross Domestic Product as a symptom of idol worship, drawing men's hearts from eternal values to the selfish accumulation of treasures that moth and rust will surely corrupt."[70] Labar concludes with a sixth and final motivation, what he calls "the certainty of punishment."[71] He notes, "After the Israelites did not allow their land to lie fallow as they had been commanded, the land was left fallow for them when they were placed in captivity (II Chron. 36:21)."[72] The biblical teaching on individual responsibility, the goodness of creation, the value creation has to God, biblical regulation of our relationship with creation, sin, and punishment—LaBar uses all of these elements within an evangelical discourse, each directly linked to biblical authority, to motivate evangelicals to confront the ecological crisis.
Christianity
Today in the 1980s
After a relative silence through the late 1970s, Christianity Today opens the 1980s with a more negative appraisal of both the industrial scientific trust in technology and the environmental movement, both being seen as "the two wings of secular humanism."[73] In an article assessing the merits of nuclear power, Peter Wilkes (notably a professor of nuclear engineering) criticizes both impulses for centering their hopes in humanity rather than in God.[74] Neither approach, he insists, takes into account the reality of the Fall, and the resulting "flaming sword" that prevents humanity's return to Eden. The earth, he argues, is cursed, and will not see a completely new order until Christ's return.[75] Industrialists want to create Eden through an ever increasing gross national product, environmentalists want to abandon industrial society and return to Eden, confident that once free from its confines peace can be reached in harmony with nature. Both approaches, Wilkes argues, overestimate humanity's ability, assuming a secular humanism that is at heart another religion.[76]
Wilkes argues that government regulation, or law, is the primary means God has given us to constructively protect the environment. Law checks the abuses of greed-driven industrialism, without at the same time chasing an impossible ideal of a risk-free society. This governmental approach, he proposes, is the biblical and constructive environmentalism to which evangelicals are called.[77] Thus Wilkes seeks to motivate evangelicals to a regulatory environmentalism (as distinct from the emphasis on personal lifestyle evident through the 1970s), but he does this more through a critique of opposing "secular humanist" options than through a raw appeal to biblical authority. The implicit motivation is that evangelicals have the answer, even if there is nothing revolutionary about that answer.
About two months after Wilkes' relatively cautious article, a more ambitious article appears by Loren Wilkinson, "Global Housekeeping: Lords or Servants?"[78] Wilkinson looks to the Incarnation for an analogy to humanity's relationship to nature, humans both being "different from the earth" as uniquely God's image and called to subdue the earth, and at the same time being "of the earth." "The Genesis account... portrays [man] as enmeshed in the earth, and told to care for it."[79] God's call to "keep" the earth is a call to diligently care for it; this is God's mandate for human stewardship of the earth—stewards implying that the earth is not ours to do with as we please. The biblical approach, Wilkinson argues, must grasp both dominion and servanthood. Indeed, Wilkinson adds, the Fall itself was an attempt to have dominion over the earth without having to serve the earth.[80] Ultimately, the example we look to in order to understand stewardship is the example of Christ's Incarnation and, ultimately, his crucifixion; he died as Lord to serve his subjects.[81] This example of servant-leadership is the heart of biblical stewardship, Christ's example of selfless dominion providing the motivation for evangelicals to go and do likewise to the earth. Thus stewardship, humanity's commonality with nature, and Christ's example all serve to motivate the reader to environmental concern.
Tied to Wilkinson's article is a brief discussion by George Sweeting of the energy crisis, in which, referencing Schaeffer's Pollution and the Death of Man, Sweeting argues that the current predicament "comes basically from greed and haste." He adds:
Dr. Schaeffer reminds us that the church is really God's pilot plant—his living, small-scale demonstration of the world as it should be. We dare not live selfishly. We must be examples of those who see and face the issue clearly, who restrain our self-desires. We should walk as children of light.
In the end even such seemingly secular matters as the energy crisis have their roots in the motives of the heart.[82]
Thus Sweeting too interprets the current crisis within an evangelical discourse of sin and God's call to selfless living, further motivating his reader by appeal to Schaeffer's pilot plant. The church's very nature is at risk, he suggests, as is its credibility before the watching world.
This emphasis on servant-stewardship is also evident elsewhere. A brief news account August 8, 1980 covered a meeting of evangelical college professors, who "urged a biblical stewardship view... in which the Christian assumes a caretaking, serving role toward nature instead of [an] exploitive [role]."[83] A book review by Martin LaBar of Ron Elsdon's Bent World: A Christian Response to the Environmental Crisis also takes this approach.[84] A 1988 news article covering a meeting of evangelical environmentalists, sponsored in part by the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, emphasizes the need to see ecology as a moral rather than economic issue.[85] And a 1989 news account analyzes the growing interest among evangelicals in earth issues, particularly the increasing role that stewardship of creation is being seen to play in the evangelical belief system.[86] Another news article noted a forum in which evangelical theologians identified "stewardship" as an essential part of "living out salvation."[87] Thus one sees stewardship becoming the primary evangelical interpretation of and motivation for environmental concern.
A 1987 article by Philip Yancey takes a somewhat different angle. Yancey looks to God's speech to Job, in which God calls on Job to consider the lioness hunting her prey, the mountain goat giving birth in the wilds, the stallion leaping high to paw the air, the hawk, eagle, raven, and more. Yancey notes the sense of wonder that the sheer mention of these animals brings to Job, how wildness is the characteristic that unites these animals all together. God asks, "The mere sight of [leviathan] is overpowering. No one is fierce enough to rouse him. Who then is strong enough to stand against me?"[88]
Ultimately, these beasts impress upon us a realization that God himself cannot be tamed. The animals "announce to our senses the splendor of an invisible, untamable God." Thus, the protection of these species is a theological necessity; apart from them, we lose sight of the glory of God. Yancey concludes, "Fortunately, in some corners of the world, vast multitudes of creatures can still live and have a good time in God's love. The least we could do is make room for them—for our sakes as well as for theirs."[89] By the end of the 1980s, the theme of stewardship had clearly become the chief evangelical motivating argument for ecological concern, yet Yancey's concern for our experience of God's glory indicates that stewardship was not the only motivation in use.
Christianity
Today up to May 1992
The early 1990s saw a sudden explosion in environmental concern on the pages of Christianity Today. A June 1990 article by Tim Stafford on "Animal Lib" argues that the [parallel] animal-rights debate is an inherently religious issue.[90] Stafford notes that the most visible animal-rights activists no longer accept the Christian assumption that humans are more valuable (and at the same time more responsible) than animals. Instead, these activists accuse Christianity of a new crime of speciesism, animal-rights becoming "one of the first social movements to claim an explicitly non-Christian worldview."[91] While criticizing this trend, Stafford argues that the Bible does not simply teach that animals were created to serve human ends. Rather, referencing Psalm 104, Stafford contends that "animals find their niche in creation alongside humanity, not beneath it." He continues, "Animals, however useful to humankind, are supremely valuable to God, who made them in their uniqueness for his own purposes."[92]
Loren Wilkinson provides "A Theology of the Beasts" alongside Stafford's article, in which he argues for substantial commonality between humans and animals. "This, then, is the biblical picture: Men and women are animals. They share creatureliness with the beasts."[93] Humans, as God's image, are to rule over the beasts, but not for their own ends, but rather as servants. While it is biblical to eat an animal, Wilkinson argues, even the fourth commandment includes "even your animals" in the Sabbath blessing.[94] Man's commonality with the animal, the Sabbath's design for animals as well, and Christ's example of selfless stewardship all provide for Wilkinson motivations toward love for the beast. An interview with Andrew Linzey in the same issue, "Why Christians Should Care," emphasizes the Christological paradigm that evangelicals must follow of "power expressed in humility."[95] Numerous news articles deal with ecological concerns in the early 1990s, generally focusing on the motif of stewardship.[96]
A 1991 article by Philip Yancey on evangelical activist-botanist Ghillean Prance motivates through a testimony of one Christian's succeeding in raising environmental concern.[97] Here the evangelical form of the testimony is invoked, a format whose very purpose is to motivate. And an article that same year by William A. Dyrness asks "Are We Our Planet's Keeper?"[98] Dyrness emphasizes the goodness of God's creation as the "first principle" for ecological thought.[99] He too interprets the environmental crisis in light of the Fall, pointing to Christ's liberation—a liberation from a greedy way of life. Drawing on the Old Testament example of Jubilee, with its goals of relieving poverty and of letting the land lie fallow, and calling for repentance, Dyrness seeks to motivate his audience (again) by placing environmental concerns squarely within an already familiar evangelical discourse.
A New & Greater Commitment: The May 18, 1992 Editorial
The editors of Christianity Today announce a new era in the magazine's approach to the environment in a landmark editorial on May 18, 1992. They proclaim, "The time has come for evangelicals to confront the environmental crisis." While still concerned to partially defend Christianity from those who blame it for the crisis, noting that the problem is tied more closely to Enlightenment science and the industrial revolution than to any biblical teaching, the editors nevertheless acknowledge that "some Christians... have argued that dominion means freedom to exploit the world." They continue, "In our refusal to refute such wrong-headed notions—both by our lifestyle and our language—we have erred."[100] The editors place particular emphasis on themes of stewardship, the earth's goodness, and the evangelical tradition of "activism and personal responsibility—both derived from the gospel."[101] They then conclude with the following announcement:
We at CHRISTIANITY TODAY plan to devote many of our pages to covering the environmental crisis. For instance, in July we will report on Christian participation in the controversial United Nations-sponsored Earth Summit. Through future editorials, news stories, articles, and reviews, we will seek to inform and stimulate Christian leaders in this important area.[102]
Indeed, in just the next three years, Christianity Today would include no fewer than twenty articles, editorials and news accounts addressing the environment, including a 1992 interview with then-Senator Al Gore, a 1993 issue devoted to "Saving Our World," and a lengthy 1994 Christianity Today Institute section analyzing "Eco-Myths." Ecological concerns have since become a routine concern for the editors of Christianity Today.
PART III: Motivation in Francis Schaeffer and Christianity Today
Francis Schaeffer captures the attention of American evangelicals in his Pollution and the Death of Man, and over the following twenty-two years a number of his basic motivating themes resurface on the pages of Christianity Today. Both Schaeffer and Christianity Today approach the ecological crisis within an evangelical discourse of biblical authority, attempting to motivate readers by appeal to that same discourse—the attempt is for the biblical discourse to swallow all others. This gives both the magazine's authors and Schaeffer a critical perspective in which they assess other strands of thinking in the environmental movement, critiquing such thinking against their authoritative standard of biblical teaching.
This is where Schaeffer's and Christianity Today's evangelical discourse differs from that of liberal Protestants. Many of the themes and arguments found within these evangelical authors were or would become commonplace among Protestant liberals, but while the themes (the goodness of creation, stewardship, etc.) may be similar, the discourse is not. Within an evangelical discourse, the Bible is the final word. Argumentation from the Scripture is perceived as ultimately authoritative, with the power to bind the conscience. For these evangelical authors to demonstrate that the biblical witness requires a changed attitude is to require that change absolutely. It is the placing of the environment within this evangelical discourse of biblical authority that, for the evangelical, settles the argument and silences possible objections. This submission to the Scriptures as authoritative is the unspoken assumption behind all the arguments in Schaeffer as well as Christianity Today. It is the shared discourse which not only is used to motivate evangelicals to environmental action, but which is also used to critique viewpoints at variance with that biblical authority. But within this shared evangelical discourse, which of Schaeffer's arguments find their way into the pages of Christianity Today?
While several of Schaeffer's initial motivating arguments become commonplace within Christianity Today, other arguments presented by Schaeffer find little or no mention in the magazine, while at least one argument is developed further to become the central paradigm within which evangelical Christians approach the environmental issue. By the beginning of the 1980s, the paradigm of stewardship becomes the primary evangelical argument within the pages of Christianity Today. Nearly all articles dealing with ecological issues embody this stewardship approach. While this stewardship includes both dominion and servanthood, this stewardship is consistently articulated in such a way as to emphasize servanthood, the authors being convinced that dominion has too often been taught without servanthood as a counterbalance. Thus human beings are over other created things in something of a hierarchy, but God, it is emphasized, is over humans. Humanity is not permitted to do as it pleases with God's creation. Humanity is but a steward—a servant—called to work and till God's garden. Stewardship is the one argument that Christianity Today authors make even more central than did Schaeffer.[103]
Similarly, numerous Christianity Today authors interpret the ecological crisis with Schaeffer in redemptive historical terms, as being a result of the Fall and consequent human sin. Nature suffers because of human sin. Greed is a primary label with which all of these authors identify the problem. Several Christianity Today authors, with Schaeffer, see the environmental problem as an opportunity for a more broad-ranging cultural critique, not only of Americans generally, but of middle class evangelicals particularly. A culture of affluence calls for a radical change in personal lifestyle and an intentionally lower standard of living. This is, for several authors, a necessary outworking of the personal salvation gained through faith in Christ.
Several of Schaeffer's other motivating arguments resurface within the pages of the magazine, even if not further developed. Certainly Schaeffer's attempt to defend biblical Christianity from Lynn White's accusation of blame for the ecological crisis is repeated in the magazine, as is the critique of pantheistic trends in environmental ethics. And Schaeffer's critique of dualistic Christianity is also found on the pages of Christianity Today, with the parallel affirmation of the world's goodness (with the Incarnation and bodily resurrection as examples for Schaeffer) also playing a significant motivating role.
Also repeated at least once is Schaeffer's argument that created things have integrity in themselves, to be what God made them to be, apart from any romantic effort to project human qualities onto them. Several authors similarly argue from the love God has for the animals. And many Christianity Today authors seem aware of Schaeffer's notion of the church as a pilot plant, equally aware that the world is watching and evangelical credibility may be on the line.
Several arguments see little or no repetition within Christianity Today. Schaeffer's argument of substantial commonality between man and beast—humanity's union with creation—is only reflected once, in Loren Wilkinson's 1990 "A Theology of the Beasts." Absent from Christianity Today is the emphasis on the buttercup as "fellow creature" Equally absent is Schaeffer's emphasis on the necessity of feeling a relationship to the tree as being like oneself with respect to God's infinitude. Neither does one find as a motivating argument in Christianity Today Schaeffer's emphasis on God's covenant with all creation.
And what for Schaeffer was a primary argument—his eschatological argument—finds no mention in the magazine. For Schaeffer, the Christian is to treat nature now in the direction to which it will be at Christ's second coming. While Peter Wilkes in 1980 insists that there can be no return to Eden, Schaeffer is confident that there can be a substantial healing even now that will approximate the fullness of redemption to be established at the second advent.
One new argument appears within Christianity Today to further motivate evangelicals to concern for earth issues, that of Philip Yancey. Yancey argues that animals, and particularly those that humanity has been unable to domesticate, serve an important pedagogical role in teaching humanity of God's wildness. God's glory is seen in these beasts, and apart from their reminder, we begin to drift away from respecting God's authority. The least we can do, Yancey argues, is to leave them room to run wild—for our own (spiritual) sake as well as for their own. Wilkinson's use of the biblical Sabbath rest for animals also goes beyong Schaeffer. Christianity Today adds at least these two motivational arguments to Schaeffer's, while developing, embodying, or ignoring others.
It is probably safe to interpret Francis Schaeffer's interest in the environmental issue as a legitimizing agent for evangelical involvement in ecological activism. His 1970 Pollution and the Death of Man opened a lengthy discussion, critical but overwhelmingly supportive of environmental concern. Christianity Today's landmark 1971 Terracide issue included a strongly positive review of Schaeffer's book, and the magazine's interview with Carl Reidel in that same issue discussed Schaeffer's book. Similarly, Martin LaBar's 1974 "A Message To Polluters From the Bible" makes reference to the book, George Sweeting's 1980 discussion of the energy crisis quoting Schaeffer as an authority on the issue. Perhaps only the apologist for American evangelicalism could also serve as critic enough to challenge conservative evangelicals to confront what he perceived as a serious ecological crisis. And by the time Christianity Today's editors decided to make environmental issues a chief concern in 1992, a tradition of evangelical environmental thought was already well established, itself having been grounded in an existing evangelical discourse of biblical authority.
[103]Stewardship was already a term familiar to evangelicals, previously used primarily with respect to money, the tithe being a faithful way to steward God's money.