The Gulf Coast spill is being described as the “largest oil spill in United States history” eclipsing the Exxon Valdez spill of 1989. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has said the spill is “potentially very catastrophic.” Suffice it to say, the situation in the Gulf is serious.
As I write this post on Sunday night, the Christian response to the largest oil spill in history has been, well underwhelming. Actually, the Christian response has been almost nonexistent. Popular websites such as Faith in Public Life are flooded with articles and press releases about immigration reform and the controversial Arizona law. Not one mention of the Gulf Coast oil spill as of Sunday night @ 8pm EST.
While Christian advocacy groups have thus far not spent much time addressing this crisis, local news outlets are reporting that churches in the region are gearing up to assist in the cleanup.
Church Members Ready to Assist in Coastal Crisis (WLOX - Biloxi)
BILOXI, MS (WLOX) - The oil spill has not even reached the shores of South Mississippi yet, but there are already many ready to help out in the cleanup process. “It’s our obligation, it’s our calling,” Pastor Joe Reynolds said. “God has called us to be good stewards of this world.”
Members of Coalville United Methodist Church have answered that call and signed up to get involved. Jan Garner who does public relations for the church wasn’t surprised by the overwhelming response.
Dr. Russell Moore, Dean of Theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, has a thoughtful response to the Gulf oil spill crisis.
The Gulf of Mexico and the Care of Creation
As I type this, I am looking out at the Gulf of Mexico. You could have seen a similar sight out the window of the hospital where I was born, just a few miles down the road here on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi. Now, though, those waters I grew up with, gently lapping against the sand, are threatening to bring with them millions of gallons of oil, spewing up from an exploded rig out in the Gulf. Five years after Hurricane Katrina leveled this hometown of mine, it is bracing for the worst environmental disaster in the history of the United States.
Some conservatives, and some conservative evangelicals, act as though “environmentalism” is by definition “liberal” or even just downright silly. Witness a lot of the evangelical rhetoric across social media on Earth Day a while back: mostly Al Gore jokes and wisecracks about cutting down trees or eating endangered species as a means of celebration.
Do some environmentalists reject the dignity of humanity? Yes. Do some replace the reverence for creation with that due the Creator? Of course. This happens in the same way some do the same thing with reverence for economic profit or any other finite thing.
There’s nothing conservative though, and nothing “evangelical,” about dismissing the conservation of the natural environment. And the accelerating Gulf crisis reminds us something of what’s at stake.
Read Moore’s entire post here.
Hopefully we’ll hear from more Christian voices soon…
UPDATE:
Southern Baptist pastor Bart Barber has published the following blog post, British Petroleum and the Problem of Theodicy.
How BP greenwashes me and thee (religion blogger and conservative editorial writer for the Dallas Morning News)
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[...] on May 2, 2010, I wrote a post about the underwhelming public Christian response to the BP Oil Spill. Since then, many Christian [...]