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Evangelical Statements on Care for God’s Creation
Evangelical leaders and scholars have gathered
from time to time in the past few decades to declare
their concern about what is happening to God’s
good creation, and to lay the foundations for
an authentically biblical and Christ-centered
understanding of earth care.
The Evangelical
Declaration of the Care of Creation (1993)
has been signed by over 300 evangelicals —
leading pastors, theologians and scientists among
them. The Declaration is the charter document
of the Evangelical
Environmental Network (EEN). The statement
begins:
As followers of Jesus Christ, committed
to the full authority of the Scriptures, and aware
of the ways we have degraded creation, we believe
that biblical faith is essential to the solution
of our ecological problems. Read the complete statement.
For a collection of essays commenting on this
statement, see R. J. Berry, ed., The Care of Creation:
Focusing Concern and Action (Downers Grove, IL., InterVarsity Press, 2000).
Decades earlier, the National Association of
Evangelicals (NAE) had passed resolutions on Ecology
(1970) and Environment
and Ecology (1971).
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More recently, the NAE, together with the EEN and
Christianity Today magazine, sponsored a retreat
for evangelical leaders in June 2004 at Sandy Cove,
Maryland, that led to signing the “Sandy Cove
Covenant."
In reflecting on Scripture and
on the pressing environmental problems that beset
our world, we are persuaded that we must not evade
our responsibility to care for God’s creation.
We recognize that there is much more we need to
learn, and much more praying we need to do, but
that we know enough to know that there is no turning
back from engaging the threats to God’s
creation. Read the complete statement.
Other evangelical statements have included:
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