Conservation Is for Conservatives: Francis Schaeffer wouldn’t recognize the religious right he helped create, not least when it comes to environmentalism. (John Murdock, MAY 24, 2024, Plough)
Russell Kirk, whose The Conservative Mind remains a classic text of the modern right, once said: “The issue of environmental quality is one which transcends traditional political boundaries. It is a cause which can attract, and very sincerely, liberals, conservatives, radicals, reactionaries, freaks, and middle class straights.” While some conservatives such as Roger Scruton, author of How to Think Seriously about the Planet: The Case for Environmental Conservatism, still demonstrate the truth of Kirk’s sentiment, a squeamishness about being seen with liberals has led most to abandon the field. What’s more, many now feel it is their duty to disparage those conservatives who stayed behind.
Political tribalism split apart concerns that, as Schaeffer demonstrated, can be held consistently and passionately within a biblical worldview. Schaeffer wrote of once going out of his way to compliment the residents of a lushly landscaped hippie commune which stood on the other side of a deep valley from a treeless Christian school campus he was visiting. Those who warmly greeted him noted that he was the first to come from “across the ravine.” In the decades since, the chasm between socially conservative evangelicals and planet-conserving environmentalists has only grown wider. […]
Can we then just ignore politics if we hike the Appalachian Trail, switch to pastured eggs and grass-fed beef, wrap our water heater, and put solar panels on the roof? Not quite. Even if too much emphasis has been put on politics during recent decades, in a democratic republic Christians do not have the option of simply washing their hands of public affairs.
Of course, the relationship of Christians to politics has often been a point of friction between Anabaptists and the more politically engaged wings of Christianity. Some would argue that we serve Christ better by being “the quiet in the land” rather than by putting signs in our hands. Perhaps the tension is overstated, though. Ron Sider, for example, has spent decades as an Anabaptist activist, and has done so without contorting his beliefs to toe a party line. Operating primarily in political circles on the left, the founder of Evangelicals for Social Action has nevertheless continued to affirm the importance of things such as evangelism, unborn life, and traditional marriage. Though one may disagree with some of Sider’s political priorities and policy suggestions, his witness bespeaks a man striving first for fidelity to the kingdom, not a party.
Sider told Christianity Today in 1992 of a trip to Switzerland he initiated after being criticized by the post-Schaeffer leadership at L’Abri. Unable to crack their perception that he was a dangerous man, an exasperated Sider later lamented, “Francis Schaeffer – I’m so close to him!” At least on the protection of unborn children and the care of creation, the views of the godfather of the evangelical left and the godfather of the religious right were indeed rather close. It is time for their political progeny to get close again. Instead of arm-wrestling with itself, the body of Christ should be extending both hands to a broken culture and a broken creation.
Dominion imposes responsibilities.