26.3.09

Religious Action

The lecture the Archbishop of Canterbury gave yesterday brings up an interesting angle on outreach and conservation efforts. The essential thrust of his speech was to argue against philosophies that don't consider:
the basic truth that the environment as a material system is finite and cannot indefinitely regenerate itself in ways that will simply fulfil human needs or wants.
Which is per the Wonk Room. Full text of the Archbishop's speech is here.

While this isn't a change of heart or anything, I think the outspoken nature of the Archbishop's speech brings up an interesting dynamic that I, personally, haven't thought about before. I didn't grow up in a church-going family, so I think I tend not to think about the effect that religious organizations can have on local communities. But now that I do, it could be substantial - especially concerning educational outreach.

Because what the Archbishop says is true. As long as you don't believe that the Earth was created just for humanity, there's a moral imperative to protect it. And even if you do believe that the Earth is just for us - that doesn't mean we can't ruin it, too.

My feeling is that there are very large fundamentalist Christian populations in the United States who don't believe in global warming. I don't know whether that's because those churchs generally align themselves with conservativism (which, for whatever reason, doesn't want to save the world) or because of some deeper religious objection to the idea of climate shift - but they're going to need to get on-board at some point. (Or, they can just hope for rapture. Depressing thought.)

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