Acton Institute PowerBlog - Entries from Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Turnabout is Fair Play?

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

The nation which hosted a large conference welcoming Holocaust deniers last year is now full of righteous indignation over historical inaccuracies in the film ’300’.

As Azadeh Moaveni reports from her daily travels in Tehran, “Iranians buzzed with resentment at the film’s depictions of Persians, adamant that the movie was secretly funded by the U.S. government to prepare Americans for going to war against Iran.” (HT: Disorganizational Behavior)

No word yet on whether the Athenians are upset over being called “boy lovers” by King Leonidas.

Update: Despite what are surely the government’s best efforts at censorship, the Iranian marketplace has apparently already decided that there is to be some demand for ‘300’. According to one Iranian paper, “bootleg DVDs were already available.” Iran claims to filter over 10 million websites it deems immoral. No doubt this includes the ‘300’ homepage.

Posted by Jordan J. Ballor in News and Events at 12:31 | Leave a comment | Trackback

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300, history, holocaust, iran, persia

Global Warming and Population Control

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

From the “we had to destroy the village to save it” department, check out this item from the Huffington Post by Dave Johnson, “A Global Warming Suggestion: Fewer Babies.”

It’s pretty indefatigable logic: if there are no people to be affected by environmental catastrophe, then the problem has been avoided. Johnson writes, “Yes, hundreds of millions of people will face water shortages and starvation by 2080 -- but only if those hundreds of millions of people are alive in the first place.”

He continues, “What am I getting at? One solution to the crisis is for people to stop having so many babies. We’re already using up the fisheries. The cattle being raised to feed so many meat-eaters is as big a problem as the cars we’re all driving.”

Read more background on the connection between global warming activism and population control measures here, which introduces the joint paper, “From Climate Control to Population Control: Troubling Background on the ‘Evangelical Climate Initiative’.”

Posted by Jordan J. Ballor in Environmental Stewardship at 11:57 | Leave a comment | Trackback

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abortion, climate change, global warming, misanthropy, population control

Evangelical Environmentalism’s Moral Imperative

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

In this week’s Acton Commentary, I examine recent events surrounding the conflict amongst evangelicals over global warming political activism. In “Evangelical Environmentalism’s Moral Imperative,” I compare the shape of the argument to the debate over the last decade on the topic of poverty.

In the same way that conservatives were accused of not caring for the poor because they opposed an expansive welfare state, critics of climate change politics are being portrayed as not caring for the environment. To the extent that conservative critiques have not made it a point to sharply distinguish between global warming and the broader moral mandate to steward the earth, they deserve blame for this state of affairs.

This fault is exemplified well in the recent letter from James Dobson and others to the National Association of Evangelicals questioning the activities of Rev. Richard Cizik, who is actively promoting federal policy on climate change. The Dobson letter (PDF) challenges global warming but only notes pro-life issues, marriage, and sexuality as “the great moral issues of our time.” While the letter doesn’t explicitly exclude stewardship of the environment as a “great moral issue,” its omission from this list can easily give the impression that the letter’s signatories don’t find environmental stewardship to be a compelling moral imperative.

But it also falls to the responsibility of evangelicals who favor government action to combat climate change to acknowledge “the commitment of their opponents to ‘care’ of the creation, even amidst the sometimes pointed disagreements over the means and institutions responsible for that care.”

Read the entire commentary here.

I also recommend Andy Crouch’s recent review in Books & Culture of Roger Gottlieb’s A Greener Faith: Religious Environmentalism and Our Planet’s Future, in which Crouch writes that Gottlieb’s book “could not be more calculated to inflame the suspicions of the politically and theologically conservative.” Crouch also outlines some of the recent activities and perspectives of groups like the Evangelical Climate Initiative.

Update: Bob Francis of Sojourners/Call to Renewal, reacting to reader comments, acknowledges that “whether the issue is poverty or the environment, well-meaning Christians differ on solutions.”

Kathryn Joyce at The Revealer writes about “the real point of contention between Dobson, Bauer and Perkins on the one hand, and Cizik, on the other. Not so much that Cizik is drawing energy and outrage to global warming and away from gay marriage and abortion, but that, in the mind of many conservative Christians, choosing between pro-life or environmental activism must be a zero-sum game.”

Posted by Jordan J. Ballor in Environmental Stewardship at 10:45 | Comments (3) | Trackback

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climate change, environment, evangelical climate initiative, evangelicals, global warming, James Dobson, National Association of Evangelicals, Richard Cizik, stewardship

Adam Smith, the British Grant (or Jackson)

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

The title of this post is not intended to imply anything by way of comparison between Smith and the American gentlemen. It is only to report that the United Kingdom has launched a new 20£ note sporting the visage of the Father of Economics.

Peter Heslam spins the news to good effect in a brief comment on Smith’s moral sensibility. To investigate that issue more thoroughly, see James Halteman’s 2003 article in the Journal of Markets & Morality.

Posted by Kevin Schmiesing in News and Events at 10:13 | Leave a comment | Trackback

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adam smith