Once, in a church council meeting, we were attempting to reply to several questions the denomination was asking of our congregation. These questions might have been in place to help each congregation maintain some of the distinctives of the denomination. At any rate, the question came: what were we doing to promote environmental stewardship among our members? Certain people in the meeting were fairly upset that such a politically left ideology would be imposed on our congregation, and what did that have to do with being a good church?Most Christians I knew were American Evangelicals who were also politically conservative, which led me to believe conservative politics were closer to what American Jesus wanted for us. After I had been a believer for a few years, labeling environmentalism “creation care” sounded to me a lot like the baptism of a liberal cause. Never mind that free market conservatives were fairly certain the environment was something for Americans to dominate and use up. Christians told me that in Genesis we were told to subdue the earth; it’s here for our benefit! And it was a sign of the end times that people would worship the creation rather than the creator.
