Left to Right: Meg Thomsen, program coordinator of Harvard Medical School's Center for Health and the Global Environment, David Gushee, Distinguished University Professor of Christian Ethics at Mercer, and Judith Curry, Georgia Tech professor, listen during the plenary session of the Mercer conference on Feb. 27. (PHOTO/Mercer)

Titled “Caring for Creation: Ethical Responses to Climate Change,” the conference was held on Mercer’s Atlanta campus as part of a campus-wide ethics program and was presented in conjunction with Harvard Medical School’s Center for Health and the Global Environment.

At the opening session on Feb. 27, Cheryl Bridges Johns of the Church of God Theological Seminary noted that humans are becoming disconnected from their roots in the natural world through urbanization, the increasing reliance on science to explain the world or the increase in technology’s role in their daily lives.

Confronting global climate change requires getting through to people who are suffering “enchantment-deficit disorder,” she said. Humankind’s divorce from nature and from God’s creation -- and the wonderment and enchantment from that creation – is part of the struggle for religious and moral leaders in confronting climate change, Johns said.

“I believe that we can re-enchant the world,” she said. “As a person of faith, I believe I can live an enchanted life of faith, a spirited life, where I see, sometimes as the ancient Celts, that the veil between this world and the world that is to come getting very, very thin in certain places. And sometimes I see that in nature and it’s a glorious expression of that which is to come.

Judith Curry, Georgia Tech professor and climate-modeling expert, shows projections of the coming climate shifts during Mercer University's conference on ethics and climate change Feb. 27. (PHOTO/Mercer)

“So creation care and caring for creation, to me, means that we become enchanted, we become re-enchanted,” Johns continued. “We can be great scientists and wonder. We can be astute physicians and wonder. We can be wonderful people, who are teachers and lawyers and pastors, and wonder, can’t we?”

The event included more than 200 students, faculty and staff from the Atlanta campus, as well as a contingent from Mercer’s main campus in Macon, Ga.

David Gushee, a Christian ethics professor at Mercer and one of the event’s organizers, said the conference stemmed, in part, from his work with a group of scientists and evangelical leaders examining whether the two groups could “come to a common mind on issues of climate change.” The Mercer event was the first full-scale event on a college campus highlighting those issues as a part of the scientist-evangelical effort, which began in 2006.

On Feb. 28, the conference broke into sessions focusing on ways to address climate change including public health, greening the campus, individual lifestyle changes and public-policy efforts.

In a session on the ethical implications of climate change, Gushee (who also writes a regular column for Associated Baptist Press) said Christians need to focus their energies on creation care because it is part of their overall calling. It goes hand-in-hand with their care of all life, human and animal -- and particularly in light of their role as stewards who were given power over the Earth by God.

“Climate change is an example of a moral issue, where even paying attention to the well-being of humanity requires some address of this problem,” he said. “I think we are in a time where we need to re-read sacred Scriptures to see the connections, for example, between human beings and other creatures, to see the web of life that was already set up as revealed in the early chapters of Genesis. We need to reinterpret rule as stewardship and care. We need to see the way in which the Bible teaches us the covenant relationship between God and the other creatures and between us and the other creatures.”

Johns also highlighted the stewardship called for by faith and, even with interpretations of the Bible’s apocalyptic passages that seem to indicate that global warming may hasten the return of Christ. Christians, she said, should focus on making the world like it will be on the day he does return, rather than on hastening his return through indifference to climate destruction.

“Let us not live with our eschatology out there.... Let us live with the eschatology of the day here, and that’s a very different theme, because if we live with that day here, that day will judge this day,” Johns said. “That day will judge how I live, so if that day is going to be a day of beauty and creation, it’s judging this day in which I live. So eschatology to me doesn’t hinder creation care, as much as it facilitates creation care.”

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Mark Vanderhoek is director of media relations at Mercer University.

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