The Human Hybrid Known as a Green Evangelical

THE Rev. Jim Ball is an evangelical Christian minister whose pulpit is parked in front of his townhouse. It’s a deep blue hybrid Toyota Prius, but it is not just any Toyota Prius. It is the original “What Would Jesus Drive?” car.

Four years ago Mr. Ball, the executive director of the nonprofit Evangelical Environmental Network, and his wife, Kara, drove the Prius from Texas east across the Bible Belt in a provocative stunt that, in keeping with the core mission of his organization, awakened evangelical churches to the threat of global warming. It also awakened Americans to the existence of the human hybrid known as a Green Evangelical. [ ]

Raised in Texas as a Southern Baptist, he knew that conservative evangelicals had long been allergic to anything like environmentalism, associating it with hippies, communism, feminism, anti-corporatism, gun control and nature-worshipping paganism.

Mr. Ball spent the last seven years inviting evangelical pastors to sit down with climate scientists who shared the same born-again faith and corporate executives who were making an effort to reduce pollution. Progress was slow and he did not convince them all, but in the last year he has led an effort that has persuaded more than 100 influential evangelical pastors, theologians and organizational leaders — many of them political conservatives — to sign an “Evangelical Call to Action” on climate change.

Since his leading role in the “What Would Jesus Drive?” campaign, Mr. Ball has preferred to stay out of the limelight while pushing his new converts forward as frontmen. He figured that the Rev. Rick Warren, the megachurch pastor and author of “The Purpose Driven Life,” could attract far more Christians to the climate-change cause by preaching about creation care than he could. [ ]

In the seminary, he had dismissed environmentalism as unimportant compared to poverty and oppression and war. But while studying for a Ph.D. in theological ethics at Drew University, he was challenged by another student to reread what the Bible had to say about care for God’s creation.

“Colossians, chapter 1, verses 15 to 20 is the touchstone text for me,” he said. “ ‘All things have been created by Him and for Him. All things have been reconciled by His blood on the cross.’ The Apostle Paul tells us we are called to be ministers of reconciliation, and that means caring for all things.”

Thanks to Melissa Rogers for the link.