Dan Russ on Cizik and Chivian

In the spirit of “critical loyalty,” I offer the following reflections on the convocation presentations of Richard Cizik and Eric Chivian. I emphasize loyalty because I affirm their passion to address the very real problem of environmental degradation including global warming, and I am grateful for their willingness to forge a friendship and, hopefully, cooperation for creation care between the scientific community and Evangelical Christians.

However, I was disappointed in three aspects of the presentations. First, Chivian’s cogent and compelling description of his work on both the nuclear and environmental issues clearly explained in layman’s terms the current state of the environment and the urgency to attend to healing it. However, like most scientists, his presentation lacked the humility of the mea culpa that confesses that modern science and scientists are major contributors to creating the environmental crisis. Without their discoveries and often-blind manipulation of the natural world, we could not have damaged creation as much as we have. I know that most of the damage that they have helped create arises from unintended consequences and, in my opinion, a bit of hubris that what we can do we should do. I also think that some of this blindness arises from the hyper specialization of modern sciences that precludes or ignores the need for scientists to be educated to think systemically, historically, philosophically, politically, and ethically. In short, while I know and regret that many evangelicals and others distrust scientists because of the debate over origins, many thoughtful Christians distrust them because they were an integral apart of our unsustainable uses of fossil fuels, plastics, and atomic energy, to name a few. I hope and trust that this shortsightedness and narrow-minded education is changing, but not unlike Wall Street, why do we think the folks who were very responsible for creating the mess should be trusted to clean it up? Even if they can justifiably blame government, military, and industry for abusing their scientific discoveries, what prevents current and future scientists from losing control of their work to future politicians, military leaders, and industrialists? Scientists should be honest enough to face as one of the “brutal facts” of our current crisis their responsibility in helping create it.

My second concern is that Cizik almost addressed Chivian’s quote of Carl Sagan that we are a dot at the edge of the galaxy and there is no one and nothing out there that will help us. Obviously, if Christians buy into such a cosmological and metaphysical naturalism, we deny not only the Creator but also the incarnation. For some reason, Cizik started to address this and then interrupted himself with a digression. Christians bring to this partnership with secular scientists—remember that there are believing scientists—something that the secularists cannot offer: hope. We do not believe we are alone in the universe and merely the top of the food chain. So we can embrace all of the good science and good public policy that can heal creation right alongside our secular partners and affirm to that creation that life is larger than “the planet” and the world is not an accident of time and space and chance.

Finally, I was disappointed that Cizik’s presentation was scattered, because his part of the story is important. What he did say about Evangelicals ignoring or even opposing the environmental movement rings true, but the way he did so sounded more like an impassioned and poorly prepared sermon than like a cogent and compelling discourse. Indeed, the contrast with Eric Chivian’s remarks reinforces Professor Karl Giberson’s concern that too few Christians in the sciences or who write and speak about scientific issues are as articulate as their secular counterparts.

These criticisms are intended not to diminish either the substance of their cause or the courage they have shown in leadership. I hope and pray for their success and that their tribe will increase.

Dan Russ, PhD - director of Center for Christian Studies and author of Flesh-and- Blood Jesus