Environmental Stewardship News Round-Up

Friday, May 11, 2007
The following items appear in the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation Newsletter, May 11, 2007:

Interfaith Stewardship Alliance Becomes Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation

Welcome to the first edition of the newsletter of the newly named Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation. The Interfaith Stewardship Alliance took on the new name both to make more explicit the creation stewardship we have in mind and to tie ourselves more clearly to our foundation document, the Cornwall Declaration on Environmental Stewardship (PDF). Our more vigorous and newly streamlined organization will continue to bring a responsible and balanced Biblical view of the earth’s stewardship to critical issues of environment and economic development.

Also, through the Cornwall Stewardship Agenda, now under development, the reconfigured coalition will work more aggressively with congregations, educational institutions, and other entities worldwide to promote the important principles of the Cornwall Declaration on Environmental Stewardship.

That Declaration is an authoritative document put forward in 2000 that has been signed by approximately 1,500 clergy, theologians, religious leaders and other people of faith. It has come to be viewed as one of the most significant expressions of belief about religion and the environment in modern times.

The Cornwall Alliance is organized and built around the principles of the Cornwall Declaration, and the new name is designed to reflect that. The new name also brings in the very significant concept of the “stewardship of Creation,” which recognizes that God created this world with great wisdom and power, and has entrusted those made in His image, men and women, to exercise faithful stewardship over it. Our new motto expresses our aim: “Bridging Humanity and the Environment through Faith and Reason.”

We are also forming a Cornwall Stewardship Agenda task force designed to take the broad Biblical principles of the Cornwall Declaration and translate them into specific public-policy recommendations. The first two areas the task force will undertake are those of “poverty and development” and “climate and energy.” We’re excited that Dr. Stephen Livesay, president of Bryan College, and Dr. Barrett Duke, vice president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, have agreed to co-chair the task force.

These and other developments were announced at a breakfast seminar in Washington, D.C., May 2 with eight featured speakers. Theologican/ethicist Dr. E. Calvin Beisner and climatologist Dr. Roy Spencer spoke on theological and scientific perspectives on global warming. Rev. Abdul Karim Sesay and energy policy analyst Paul Driessen spoke on impacts of environmental policies on the poor. Theologian Dr. Henry Krabbendam, president of the African Christian Training Institute, and David Rothbard, village project coordinator for Uganda for the ACTI, spoke on new environment and development stewardship initiatives under way in Africa. Rev. Dr. Jay Dennis, senior pastor of First Pastor Church in Lakeland, Florida, spoke on a pastor’s perspective on Biblical stewardship, warning, “When forming political alliances, we need to be very careful not to become too closely associated in the eyes of the world with those whose world views are diametrically opposed to ours.” And Rev. Dr. James Tonkowich, President of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, spoke on “What ‘Population Control’ Reveals About Unbiblical Approaches to Environmentalism.” Janet Parshall, host of Janet Parshall’s America, emceed the seminar and a press conference that followed it.

For more information about the Cornwall Alliance, visit our new and growing website at www.cornwallalliance.org. Our old website, www.interfaithstewardship.org, will continue to function until we have transferred all documents to the new one.

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Does the Pope Blast Capitalism?

Friday, May 11, 2007
Jesus of Nazareth, the new book by Pope Benedict XVI, has been described as an attack on capitalism. But Rev. Robert A. Sirico offers a closer reading and finds that no such thing is true. The book, he says, “is explicitly a spiritual reflection on our own interior disposition toward those who are ‘neighbors’ to us and for whom we have some moral responsibility.”

Read the full commentary here.
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Scientists Against Technology

Friday, May 11, 2007
An addendum to my Wedesday commentary, in which I highlighted the positive ecological role human beings play by developing new technologies:

Joel Schwartz at NRO draws attention to the fact that there are some scientists who, for various possible reasons, actually oppose the development of technology that minimizes or reverses the impact of human activity on the environment (called, with respect to climate change, geoengineering). To wit,
For many climate scientists, however, the goal of studying geoengineering isn’t to determine whether any particular proposal is practical or safe, but “to show, with authority, that all such paths are dead-end streets,” and that the focus needs to be on requiring large reductions in people’s fossil-fuel energy consumption.
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