It’s been more than a decade since various Christian factions began adopting a mantra called “creation care,” an idyllic and self-referential view that interprets biblical doctrine to call on Christians as protectors of the natural world from the ills and harms of mankind. The movement has picked up pace in recent years, especially among evangelical Christians; last summer, leaders staged a national day of prayer for creation care and marched on Washington, D.C.
In Tennessee, more than 2,000 Christian churches carry and promote materials from LEAF, the Lundquist Environmental Appalachian Fellowship, a Knoxville-based creation care group whose bill to curb mountaintop removal in the state has died on the vine the last two years. And Nashville’s Lipscomb University, a Church of Christ school, has undertaken a progressive new calling to promote sustainability.
Needless to say, the real estate on which old-school evangelical crusaders used to mount their stands against federal regulation of greenhouse gases, carbon emissions and destructive coal mining practices has largely been foreclosed on.
But a group announced in June 2010 and bearing the catatonic name “Resisting the Green Dragon” is now using The Tennessean to peddle its wares, according to an article that appeared Tuesday. The group, a top-down kind of affair composed of a few heavy-hitters in the evangelical community, is suggesting the creation care movement is a “cult” and that Christians who believe in environmental stewardship are “radical.”
For an idea of the logical long-jump the group is making to promote its view that environmentalism’s endgame is global domination of organized religion, poor people and the unborn, take this quote from Janet Parshall, a Christian radio talk show host, in the third paragraph of the fish-wrapper’s story: “Around the world, environmentalism has become a radical movement. Something we call the ‘Green Dragon.’ And it is deadly. Deadly to human prosperity, deadly to human life, deadly to human freedom. And deadly to the gospel of Jesus Christ.”
Leaving aside sticky biblical questions over who’s called to do what and where the Good Book demands less government regulation over companies polluting God’s Green Earth, The Tennessean conspicuously ignored a few key facets of this organization. Chief among them: who’s funding it.
