The US Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works on Thursday heard from a variety of Catholics, mainline, & evangelical Protestants on global warming & the Bible. While all who spoke agreed that Christians should care about the environment, that the Bible encourages human responsibility for the care of the earth, speakers & the literature they provided were strongly divided on how bad global warming was, what its chief causes were, & how various human responses to global warming would impact the world's poorest & neediest.

The first speaker, the Most Rev. Dr. Katharine Jefferts Schori, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church of the United States (ECUSA), strongly supports the belief that global warming is real, is mainly human induced, & must be controlled by stringent human intervention. She was supported by John Carr, secretary of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Department of Social Development & World Peace & Jim Ball, president & CEO of the evangelical Evangelical Environmental Network (EEN).

Evangelical ethicist & seminary professor Dr. E. Calvin Beisner,national spokesman for the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation (CASC), formerly known as the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance (ISA), was quoted on behalf of Christians who dissent from the typical position espoused by EEN. According to Beisner, global warming is not as scientifically confirmed as the popular press reports, it is not due primarily to human action, & addressing it with draconian measures against human actions would produce grave harm to the world's most vulnerable needy people since it will slow economic development, reduce overall productivity, & increase cost of all goods for the poor.

Others who spoke to the Senate committee included Dr. Russell Moore of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (SBTS), the Rev. Dr. Jim Tonkowich, president of the Institute on Religion & Democracy, & Rabbi David Saperstein, director & counsel of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism.

[NOTE: Beisner is the brother of Answers In Action director Gretchen Passantino. Passantino is also on the advisory board of CASC/ISE.]

For the full story: Bible-backed Christians Debate Global Warming Before Senate.