By John Lyon
Arkansas News Bureau
LITTLE ROCK — People of faith have a responsibility to address the issue of global warming, a gathering of about 20 Arkansas church leaders was told Thursday.
“I think it is safe to say that people of faith share a call to be stewards of the earth, to care for fellow human beings and to respect all life,” Martha Lyle Ford of the National Wildlife Federation said at an interfaith conference at Little Rock’s Second Baptist Church.
“Climate change and caring for creation, it’s not just a political thing,” Ford said. “It’s not even just an economic matter. It really is a matter of faith and spirituality, and it is fundamentally a religious issue.”
The National Wildlife Federation has launched a faith outreach program on global warming, which Ford acknowledged has raised some eyebrows.
“When people ask me what I’m doing and I tell them, they say, ‘But you work for a wildlife organization. What are you doing?’ I’m like, ‘They are so interconnected,’” she said.
Ellen Wilson McNulty of Pine Bluff, Arkansas outreach coordinator for the National Wildlife Federation, said the conference, titled “A Faithful Response to Global Warming,” was intended to educate faith leaders and encourage them to advocate for policies to address global warming.
One of the top concerns of the faith community is caring for the poor, and poor people in developing nations are the people most affected by climate change, McNulty said.
Some who attended the conference said their churches have programs aimed at reducing their contributions to global warming. Others said they were interested in starting programs.
Liza Godwin, leader of the “Green Team” at Lakewood United Methodist Church in North Little Rock, said the church has reduced its use of foam products, has begun using energy-efficient light bulbs, has set out containers for recyclable materials and has held recycling drives for electronic items.
“We’re taking baby steps,” she said.
Carolyn Staley, education minister at Pulaski Heights Baptist Church in Little Rock, said the young-adult Bible study class at her church has launched efforts to do away with foam plates, reduce heating and air conditioning usage, collect old cell phones for recycling and encourage members of the congregation to switch to energy-efficient light bulbs.
“As a faith person I am commanded in Genesis, right off the bat, to tend and care for the earth,” she said.
But Staley said not all members of her church see eye-to-eye on the issue. Plans to show Al Gore’s movie “An Inconvenient Truth” were canceled because of concerns that it was too political, she said.
“Until we all can have consensus that global warming really is an issue, I think we still are going to have some folks who don’t buy in,” she said.
