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Sunday, April 13, 2008
Austin Hill :: Townhall.com Columnist
American Politics, Christianity, and the Pursuit of the Eco-Friendly Mom
by Austin Hill
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Recycle products. Start a compost pile. Take the bus. Turn off the lights when you leave the room.

The action items above, which appeared in a list of “strategies to help your family make this world a better place to live” might seem like something you’d find at the homepage of the Sierra Club.

But not this time. These directives were listed in a recent editorial appearing on the website of the Evangelical Christian publication, “Christianity Today.”

Entitled “Looking After God’s Creation,” the article was directed to parents - - moms in particular - - and was authored by Lucy Kraemer, a single mom who belongs to a local Baptist church near her home. In concluding her message to parents, Ms. Kramer wrote “your example will serve as the most effective tool in teaching your young child about honoring God’s creation.”

Now, if I were writing here about theology, I would argue that the intended ends of the human person is to “honor God,” not his creation, yet one of the means by which we humans can achieve this objective is to exercise wise stewardship of the earth.

But I’m not writing about theology, so I’ll leave this discrepancy in the hands of the editors of “Christianity Today.”

I am, however, writing about our country, our culture, our politics and our public policy. And Ms. Kraemer’s editorial is yet one more shred of evidence that, as public policy concerns go, “conservative Christian America” isn’t thinking and acting they way it once did.

I’ve asserted this before here at Townhall Dot Com. I’ve made the case that while in previous years the public policy concerns of conservative Christians may have been largely focused on abortion, the definition of marriage, and parental rights, today, younger generations of both Evangelical and Catholic Christians are interested in a much broader array of issues.

“That’s a lie from the liberal media” I was told in an email from an angry staff member at a large, Christian activist organization. “You’re just another Christian-basher, like all the rest, Hill..“

Oh, really? And do we regard “Christianity Today” as being a part of that big, scary, collective monster affectionately known as the “liberal media?”

Or how about Forbes Magazine? Rich Karlgaard, the astute business and economics writer, author of the daily blog “Digital Rules,” and Publisher of Forbes Magazine, has also noted as I have that “conservative Christianity” in America seems to be shifting in a different direction these days.

“The church I attend is Christian and evangelical” Karlgaard recently wrote on his blog and in the magazine. “The mood of the congregation is moving left. The music is tilting toward a folk-rock sound of the 1960s and 1970’s…The younger clerics don’t identify themselves as ‘Christians’ but as ‘Jesus followers.’ I would guess that many of them are Barack Obama supporters, but I don’t ask…The mainstream secular media, as usual, ignores this story.” Continued...

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About The Author
Austin Hill is a Talk Show Host for the Fox Newstalk Radio Network, and a frequent guest host for 630 WMAL / Washington D.C. and 1080 KRLD/Dallas. He is the author of "White House Confidential: The Little Book Of Weird Presidential History," and is a local columnist for Arizona's East Valley Tribune Newspaper.
 
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Subject: Environmentalism isn't next to godliness
I think that single mom has discovered that conservationism is a good thing for the material world in which we reside and it also makes good economic sense (turning off the lights saves money for the individual and in the law of supply and demand results in cheaper and more abundant energy for all). But the possible trend that Austin is pointing out is linking or equating environmentalism with good Christianity. That trend(?)is the road to perdition. Will the best enviromentalist be considered the most worthy Christian?

What the real issues here are: is one; the terrible general trend of linking socialist government action (aka Obama and Hillary) with good Christianity; and two, the slippery slope of christo-evironmentalism that is becoming an animistic pagan muddle of "worshiping/honoring" God through and because of his creation. That may well be the future of many of our mainline churches. These are the same churches that are experiencing plummeting membership and are striving in their best carnal way to become "relevant." When will a new denomination with the word "green" in its name appear?

Austin
Entering the philosophical realm is exactly what you must do here. The reason is that the environmental movement is governed by ideology, not pragmatism. That the private sector is more efficient misses the point. It's the thought that counts.

They will look around, see human suffering or some thing they don't like, and point out that, by Christian principle, we must make the government do something about it because "the private sector has failed."

You must be prepared to enter that realm. You must explain that collectivism is evil, and that mankind should be free. You must fight their principles with principles of your own. I am not saying that the practical benefits of capitalism and the failures of collectivism are irrelevant to the argument - far from it. But it cannot be your primary argument, or you will lose. We are really warring against a false set of principles, not mistaken notions of the practical. Environmentalist principles must be exposed as evil.

For example, you can point to environmentalism's origins: Rachel Carson's 1962 diatribe, Silent Spring. This tract led to a campaign of government restrictions on the use of DDT. 40 million people died of malaria as a result. Such evil happened because people accepted the evil idea that government should ban voluntary human activity for some notion of "the greater good." I am quite sure that the Africans who died would have been more than happy to take a chance on DDT. Yet, they were given no choice, because environmental collectivism was imposed on them.
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