Couple writes book on faith, climate change

By Kellie Bramlet | AVALANCHE-JOURNAL
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Story last updated at 4/21/2010 – 1:06 am

For years, Andrew Farley thought climate change was a myth created by liberal politicians.

He and his wife, Katharine Hayhoe, a Texas Tech geosciences professor, argued about it often.

But, over time, Farley – pastor of a nondenominational Christian church Ecclesia – started to separate the politics from the facts.

The journey led Farley and Hayhoe to write a book for people like Farley: conservative Christians with questions about climate change.

Titled, “A Climate for Change: Global warming facts for faith-based decisions,” the book explains why Christians should care about the environment and how it affects where they live.

“Even as we talk to people about climate change, they’re surprised that we’re Christian,” Hayhoe said.

The couple said the Christian community needs to better understand environmental issues, which is why their book appeals to it specifically.

“Evangelicals have always been threatened by science,” Farley said. He cited abortion issues and evolution in which some scientists and some Christians have been at odds. But he argues caring for the environment is a separate issue, one that Christians in particular should be concerned with.

Farley and Hayhoe said that, in theory, a creationist standpoint should actually embrace care of the environment. Because Christians believe God created the earth, they should take additional care of a sacred creation, Farley said.

“That’s there motivation for caring,” he said.

Other Christian missionary groups like World Vision and Plant With Purpose have initiated missions to help the environment, which in turn help the lower economic classes so many Christian missionaries reach out to.

Hayhoe said if Christians can still not commit to acknowledging climate change, they should still work to improve the environment because it will improve their lives and the lives of their children.

Larry Jones, president of the Lubbock Area Baptist Association, said he agreed.

“As citizens, Christians should put more values on green issues,” Jones said. “Christians are called upon to be good stewards of what God has given us.”

Jones said he wishes American Christians would work harder to preserve the environment.

While Hayhoe and Farley see the importance of the Christian right embracing environmental issues, they said there is a certain danger in combining church issues and green issues.

Farley said sometimes a belief that God will take care of things gives people a licence to become lazy. They believe that since God created the earth that they do not need to take care of it, he explained.

But Farley said environmental issues should be looked at like any other issue Christians are concerned with, like crime or poverty.

Farley does not preach about the environment during services because he likes to keep politics out of his sermons. But more than that, he’s concerned that people will replace faith in God with faith in earth.

Hayhoe said she believes there needs to be a distinction. She tells others that she doesn’t believe in climate change.

This seems a little contradictory, considering she’s a CEO at ATMOS Research, a scientific consulting company, and an expert reviewer for the Nobel-Prize winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Hayhoe clarifies she believes in God, something which she can’t find physical evidence to support the existence of. Climate change, on the other hand, she knows exists because she’s done the research.

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