Filtering by Category: Creation Care,Immigration
IPL National Conference Keynote — Rev. Joel Hunter from Interfaith Power & Light on Vimeo.
Pastor Hunter gives the keynote speech at the Interfaith Power and Light National Conference in Washington, DC, May 3, 2010.
Dr. Joel C. Hunter stands with government officials and power company executives in support of The American Power Act, which seeks to reduce carbon emissions at the country’s biggest polluters including power plants, heavy industry and transportation.
DR. HUNTER'S COMMENTS AT THE ANNOUNCEMENT (37 minutes in):
"Added to the obvious practical benefits of this package is its moral aspect. It is never too early or too late to do the right thing. All religions and non-believers alike have a sense that being a good steward of the earth and atmosphere is the right thing to do. The Bible, the Koran, the Vedas of the Eastern traditions all say that to protect the earth is to honor God. In Genesis 2:15, God orders us to cultivate the earth and keep it. That means we have to balance protection with production. We are not just interested in fighting pollution but poverty as well, 'green' should mean a growing economy as well as healthy environment.
"And the time for action is now. It is the business of those with a political perspective to calculate success, but legislative success is not the standard for moral action. I don't want to be standing before God on Judgement Day saying, 'I would have worked to protect the earth and the poor but I didn't think we had the votes.' It's never too early or too late to do the right thing."
God communicates with people through the written word and through nature, said a Florida megachurch pastor on the eve of Earth Day.
Pastor Joel Hunter of Northland, a Church Distributed, in Longwood, Fla., cited Romans 1:20 Wednesday evening at the Hope for Creation event. He said like the Bible verse, which says God’s invisible qualities can be seen through creation, God allows people to understand Him through nature.
“The word of God is really both nature and Scripture but in Scripture it commands us to do exactly what we are doing tonight, and that is to guard God’s creation,” said Hunter, who co-hosted the Hope for Creation event with Dr. Matthew Sleeth, the founder of Blessed Earth and the visionary behind the event.
Tens of thousands of people from some 40 countries attended the first-ever global simulcast for a church-based creation care event. The townhall-style conversation about creation care was broadcast online from Northland Church.
“This is a historic event. A conversation of global consequences and what I believe can be the tipping point for the church to take the lead that says today we stop the generational sin of pollution,” said Hunter. “Today we stop making the future generation sick because we have misused the great gift of God’s creation.”
During the event, Sleeth fielded questions sent in by people watching online and those in the audience at Northland Church.
He told those who wonder why creation care is important to being a follower of Jesus that the first job assignment God gave humans was to care for the Earth. Sleeth also gave a 90-second sermon on trees in which he highlighted that in the Bible trees usually symbolize God, such as the tree of life, the burning bush, and the vine. And he noted that Jesus’ father was a carpenter and worked with trees, Jesus died on a tree, and Mary mistakes Jesus as a gardener.
Sleeth stated that trees appear more in the Bible than any other living thing except humans.
“As followers of Christ we can’t go out into the world and make disciples while simultaneously destroying the water and air and creatures that God loves,” Sleeth said. “If we don’t respect the world around us we are missing a major part that God commanded us to do. Simply put the Great Commission is a green Commission. It is time for the church to take a leadership role in what God tells us to do.”
Sleeth left his job as a director of an emergency room after realizing that the biggest problem the world is facing today is that the world is dying. Around the time he realized this problem he also became a Christian.
The ER doctor-turned-creation-care minister encourages Christians to make simple lifestyle changes that include recycling, using energy efficient light bulbs, and purchasing sustainable products.
“We are a country of churches and together tonight we are gathered with a church (simulcast) that extends around the planet,” said Sleeth. “It’s my prayer, and it has been my fervent prayer, that tonight would be a beginning of our church working together in the United States and around the world in understanding the influence, power and responsibility we have to be part of this conversation and part of the solution.”
Hunter shared that in an effort to be better stewards of the earth his church has carried out waste, water and energy audits in order to set benchmarks to measure against. Though not mentioned, Northland also hosted the first-ever Creation Care Conference (C3) in 2008 and participated in a “green day of recycling” in January 2009. During the green day of recycling, congregants brought old items to the church where they were donated to charity or properly recycled.
“This (creation care) should be our subject,” Hunter said emphatically. “But people are all freaked out when you start talking about the environment. You got to defuse the whole thing and put it back in a biblical context. This is a matter of obedience.”
Blessed Earth, as described by the Sleeths, is an educational non-profit that helps churches and schools learn what the Bible says about caring for the Earth. The ministry serves as a “bridge” between those who love the Creator but do not know about creation care and those that love creation but do not know the Creator.
Michelle A. Vu Christian Post Reporter
FIND THIS ARTICLE AT: http://www.christianpost.com/article/20100422/pastorgod-communicates-through-word-and-nature/
Dr. Hunter was a witness at a hearing on “Comprehensive Immigration Reform in 2009, Can We Do It and How?”, scheduled by the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Refugees, which was presided over by Sen. Charles Schumer.
On April 30, 2009, Northland's senior pastor, Dr. Joel C. Hunter, was a witness at a hearing on "Comprehensive Immigration Reform in 2009, Can We Do It and How?", scheduled by the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Refugees. Sen. Charles Schumer, who presided over the hearing, personally extended the invitation to participate to Dr. Hunter, who is a member of President Obama's Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Following is the testimony offered by Dr. Hunter.
Thank you, Chairman Schumer, distinguished members of the subcommittee, esteemed colleagues on this panel, and other guests, for providing me an opportunity to speak on the moral and religious reasons for immigration reform.
I am a one of hundreds of thousands of local religious leaders in this country. I have been a pastor for almost 40 years and that is what I want to be in all my years remaining. Even though I am also in leadership positions of national and international groups that are dealing with immigration, it is at the local level that I am continually reminded that policy truly does hurt or help people.
In my faith tradition we all start as strangers and aliens, outsiders to the commonwealth of God. But because we have a God who was willing to do what it took to include us (at great personal cost), we "are no longer strangers and aliens, but [we] are fellow citizens..." (Ephesians 2:18-19a)
So I find it a high honor to speak to those in power as an advocate for those who have no power. In a verse that would be echoed in many religions, Proverbs 31:8 commands us to "Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves."
"You will make known to me the path of life..." (Psalm 16:11) The hope of any religion is that those who have been on the wrong path can be set upon the right path. The need for Comprehensive Immigration Reform is to create a path that will help people do the right thing. A broken system produces a dysfunctional society, fractured families, and it increases the vulnerability of both legal and illegal residents. It helps criminals who thrive in the shadows and it harms decent people, consigning them to a life of insecurity, hiding, and minimal contribution to the general welfare.
A broken system produces both broken and crooked people. The cost to our nation in terms of productivity, national unity, and national security is depressing. But it does not compare to the damage being done to individuals and families.
A broken system tempts many to predatory practices. I cannot count the stories I have heard about attorneys taking the entire life savings of undocumented workers, producing no results, then abandoning those workers when the money was gone. Is that typical of the profession? We would not believe so. But "lead me not into temptation." It is a mighty temptation to de-prioritize those who are desperate and too intimidated to raise their voices to complain. And what about employers that take advantage of the powerless because there is no system of accountability? Or the bureaucrats that have no incentive to produce results (or even to keep track of the paperwork) because, who will know? Or the talk show hosts that increase their fame and fortune by picturing those without the proper papers only as conniving and dangerous parasites instead of persons made in the image of God, deserving both respect and help to do the right thing?
We are producing cottage industries of exploitation. We are also hearing millions of stories that are the opposite of the American dream.
My friend Rev. Silas Pintos tells of a family in his Hispanic congregation that came from England. Both the husband and wife were successful business people, and they hoped that in the U.S. their children would be immersed in a better environment for family values. So they came to start an alternative energy company.
After a two-year ordeal with the immigration system and absurd legal fees, the immigration department could not even clearly explain to them why their residency application had not gone through. They returned to England emotionally and financially devastated.
My friend Imam Mohammed Musri told me the wife of a 60 year old man in his congregation was very sick. The man had papers but when the attorney handling his case took a judgeship, the man was not told he needed to re-register. He was deported even though his wife was too sick to go with him. She was hospitalized and died without him because he could not get back into the country to be by her side.
Pastor Augustine Davies is on the staff at my church. He and his wife are from Sierra Leone and have just completed the long and arduous task of becoming citizens, but they have special relationships with many of the Africans inside and outside our congregation who are caught in the system. One of them is George.
George is from Liberia, West Africa. He is married and has four adult children who live in poverty back in his home country. When George arrived, INS approved the refugee for TPS. George completed a nursing program and got a job. He was turned down for TPS renewal, but now George feels the almost crushing pressure of providing for his family and other countrymen who need the money he can send them because of his job. He stays in the shadows for now. I do not agree with what he is doing, but I know his present life is because he loves his family, not because he is out for himself.
Our immigration system can also intimidate congregations as well as individuals and families. My friend Rabbi Steven Engel told me that his congregation had sponsored a family from Argentina to come to the U.S. The INS lost the paperwork many times, and they made regular visits to the synagogue, suspicious that the congregation might be doing something wrong. The whole process was so stressful and unwelcoming that when Sergio died from a heart attack at the age of 43 the remaining family returned to Argentina.
These stories and many others don't live up to the ideals of our country. We can do better, and we know it. Everyone is frustrated with the present system. Our immigration system in many cases has us echoing the words of the despairing saint who proclaimed, "I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate." (Romans 7:15)
The urgency for immigration reform that yields efficiency and compassion cannot be overstated because it is so overdue.
The moral principles for a better system Some of the central principles that comprise most major religions are also woven into our country's history and can be used as a standard for immigration reform:
These principles deem each person as valuable, "endowed by their Creator" with a dignity that transcends earthly circumstance. Therefore, our system must treat each person respectfully.
They acknowledge the family as the bedrock of personal and social development, and the support of the family as the foundation of a strong society. Therefore, our system should prioritize the family.
They see law as not only necessary for restraining evil, but as needed for structuring healthy relationships. It is right that wrongdoers are restrained and/or punished, but it is a better justice when the laws yield correction and the redemption of bad circumstances. Therefore, our system should have ways to choose to live upright lives after the penalties for wrong decisions.
So most people of faith are hoping for policies that will prioritize family togetherness, respect for the law, personal productivity, and compassion for those who are most helpless.
Conclusion We do not envy you your charge. Immigration reform is a morally complex as well as a politically explosive challenge. But many of us are praying earnestly for you and for God's wisdom in this matter.
Including the stranger is not just a matter of compassion but a necessity for greatness. Loving your neighbor as you love yourself is not only a moral commandment but a path to national nobility, if we can build a nation of families and support networks that not only help the marginalized to be successful, but help the successful to be helpful, then we can better live up to our potential as a people.
In the end, I believe our nation will be not be judged by the productivity of our budgets, or the genius of our laws, or even the earnestness of our faith communities. We will be judged, both by history and by God, by the way we treated people, especially those who needed our help.
This educational mini-documentary reveals how faith, science, art, and conservation voices are joining together to discuss the threat of climate change to wildlife and talk about hope for the future. It features several Christian leaders including Northland's senior pastor, Dr. Joel C. Hunter.
Dialogue, by Mark I. Pinsky, Harvard Divinity Bulletin Riding the train down to London last summer, after a two-week fellowship on science and religion at the University of Cambridge, I noticed an article in the Independent newspaper about a new book which reinforced that notion of an increasingly irreligious Europe. It is true that outward signs of faith-apart from biblical passages emblazoned on London's famed red double-decker buses by jesussaid.org-are difficult to come by.
But I found deeply felt Christianity alive and well in an unlikely setting: the academy's scientific community. To many, this may seem counterintuitive. The evangelical theologian Alister McGrath told us he once believed that "science was the ally of atheism." Yet among our other lecturers at the Templeton-Cambridge program were major figures in science, from cosmologists to biologists to particle physicists, who pronounced themselves believers. Of course, given the interests of the late Sir John Templeton, who endowed the fellowships, in the relationship between science and religion, this should not have been surprising.
Still, these towering figures-Simon Conway Morris, John Polkinghorne, Sir Brian Heap, Sir John Houghton-characterized themselves as evangelicals as well. Polkinghorne, author of Science and Theology, preaches at a Cambridge church on weekends. To be sure, these are evangelicals of a particular sort. By and large, they reject creationism and intelligent design, embracing the concept of "theistic evolution," a God-created, billions-years-old universe. None numbered themselves among any of the apocalyptic American evangelical tribes of arrogant dominionists or fanciful premillennial dispensationalists of the "Left Behind" stripe.
Much of the modern dialogue between science and religion deals with the origin of the universe and the development of life on earth-surrogate discussions over the existence of God and the divine role in life. In my relatively brief time at Cambridge, a day did not pass without some mention of Charles Darwin-an alumnus-and Richard Dawkins, the best-selling Oxford atheist. Yet to me, these exchanges have become tiresome, repetitive, and unenlightening.
There have been similar debates among scientists of faith over the morality of stem cell research and end-of-life issues. But a more recent (and intriguing, to me) subset of the science and religion dialogue has emerged among evangelical scientists over climate change. Books arguing the religious case for curbing global warming seem to appear every week with titles like A New Climate for Theology: God, the World, and Global Warming and Jesus Brand Spirituality: He Wants His Religion Back, which asks, "Was Jesus Green?" In A Moral Climate: The Ethics of Global Warming, Michael Northcott asserts that "Christ is present among those suffering already from climate change."
This discussion among Christian researchers raises a host of larger issues, as does another new book, Descartes' Bones: A Skeletal History of the Conflict Between Faith and Reason by Russell Shorto. That is, how does-or should-religious faith motivate, influence, or inform scientific research and its application? Is there a religious foundation for science? Should science glorify God? Can it even be a ministry? Should scientists use their research and that of their colleagues to become activists in causes like global warming? Is it possible for evangelical researchers to reconcile their religious faith and the scientific method?
Increasingly, well-educated, middle-class suburban evangelicals from the Sun Belt are embracing what many Christians call, in a brilliant semantic stroke, "creation care"-a more politically palatable label than "environmentalism." This activist approach to climate change emphasizes biblical stewardship of the earth. There is, to be sure, resistance to this view from evangelical theologians and scientists who argue that global warming does not exist, or that it is part of a natural cycle and in no way the result of human activity and abuse of the earth. Some even argue that the world will soon end with Jesus' return, so don't worry. Thus, Christians are under no obligation to support measures, like the Kyoto Protocols, to drastically limit greenhouse gas emissions. Their scientific advocates are researchers like Calvin Beisner, who has appeared before the Vatican's Pontifical Council on Climate Change and Development. They have organized their own groups, like the Interfaith Council for Environmental Stewardship. Theologically, these opponents agree with the late ultraconservative theologian R. J. Rushdoony, that science must first serve religion: "If Jesus Christ is Lord of the family, he is also Lord of the laboratory."
Yet increasingly, the fundamentalist view of climate change is losing force and is being challenged by other scientists who are equally devout in their evangelical beliefs. At Cambridge the renowned reproductive biologist and ethicist Sir Brian Heap, a self-described "open-minded evangelical," is a leading advocate of addressing climate change. He said he had no difficulty reconciling his personal faith and scientific discovery and advocacy. "When doing my own bench research, it was clear that personal faith influenced decisions about the wisdom of carrying out certain experimentation." He continued, "The religious foundation comes from the Christian motivation to seek the best for others...for the world we too easily damage."
Researchers like Heap have glittering academic credentials, and to bolster their influence, they have joined in groups like Christians in Science in Great Britain. There are prominent American counterparts, like Francis Collins, until recently head of the U.S. Genome Project. The Au Sable Institute of Environmental Studies in the U.S. was founded by a group of evangelicals, including Calvin DeWitt, professor of environmental studies at the University of Wisconsin. Similar groups of evangelical scientists, like the American Scientific Affiliation, began in the late 1960s.
"I'm excited and passionate about understanding the world, its biosphere and ecosystems, and our human place and vocation in creation, to the honor and praise of its Creator," said DeWitt. "It's because of my religious foundation that I've chosen to be a scientist," he continued. "And for all of us in science it is either this, or the inspiration we get from creation, or both that has brought us into this wonderful vocation." DeWitt acknowledges that his lectures sometimes sound like sermons: "Scientific inquiry in some settings can even be a form of worship, I believe-a kind of singing a living psalm to the Lord of creation....My faith inspires my scientific research in helping me to move with passion to discover how the world works, and to do so with integrity."
What happens in the minds of evangelical researchers who may find their religious faith and the scientific method in conflict? Some, like John Polkinghorne, a particle physicist, dismiss the question, saying, where research is concerned, there is no connection between his science and his faith. "I can't tell the difference in research in physics done by a religious believer and that done by an atheist." But he added, "If you see the world as a divine creation, that's a further motive to explore its order."
"Science and theology offer complementary perspectives," said Fraser Watts, professor of theology at Cambridge, a weekend preacher, and editor of Science Meets Faith. "Science tells us how, religion tells us why." Robert White, professor of geophysics at Cambridge, and co-author of Christianity, Climate Change and Sustainable Living, as well as a contributor to Real Scientists, Real Faith, agreed. "Our work, the attitudes we bring to it and the way we do it should be as much part of our worship of God as is the hour or two we spend in church on a Sunday," he said. "Science is a secular activity insofar as its very strength is in not appealing to any external causes-such as divine activity."
Sir John Houghton, in his former capacity as chief executive of England's Meteorological Office, said that in his groundbreaking research he was acting "absolutely as a scientist looking for the truth." He said he didn't approach his scientific research on the issue "from an ethical or moral side," and his religion had no influence on his findings. Once he reached his conclusion, however, he acknowledges pursuing the cause as a "missionary." "I believe the problem we're facing is not just a technical and scientific one," Houghton said, "but a moral and spiritual one."
"The impact of global warming is such that I have no doubt in describing it as a weapon of mass destruction," Houghton told a meeting of British Baptists. The scientist is credited with influencing the climate change debate beyond his own country to the United States, where some evangelical groups, like the Southern Baptist Convention, are deeply divided on global climate change.
Houghton has personally influenced American religious leaders like the Rev. Richard Cizik, head of the 30-million-member National Association of Evangelicals. Cizik's 2002 Oxford "conversion" on the issue-which has been compared to the Apostle Paul's on the road to Damascus-led to charges by fundamentalists that he was advocating "his own political opinions as scientific fact." This led to a concerted effort by conservative leaders like James Dobson, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and Richard Lamb to get him fired.
Nonetheless, support for an activist role in dealing with climate change has become a major tenet among a cohort of younger, mega-church pastors now bidding to assume national leadership of the evangelical movement. (However, the debate over climate change among American believers is not solely sectarian-or scientific. It is also generational, and is even being used as a classic wedge issue.)
In Central Florida, the Rev. Joel Hunter, of Northland, a Church Distributed, has become a major proponent of creation care, and a member of this cohort. Hunter has met with Houghton three times, for several hours at a time, in various conferences around the world. His congregation has gone "green" with a vengeance, recycling just about everything they use and educating themselves on the larger issue of climate change. The church has also hosted national conferences featuring DeWitt in person and Houghton through video.
Support on the global climate change issue from believing researchers like Houghton is very important, said Hunter. "American evangelicals respect good, peer-reviewed science done by respected and recognized scientists," even more so when they are also committed Christians. This is especially true given the influential role evangelicals exercise on America's political dynamic.
Many believe that ideally science and religion should be inseparable. As Houghton put it, "We are integrated people. Theology was once called the 'Queen of the sciences.' "
Mark I. Pinsky, former religion writer for The Orlando Sentinel, is author of A Jew Among the Evangelicals: A Guide for the Perplexed (Westminster John Knox Press, 2006).
Find this article at: http://www.hds.harvard.edu/news/bulletin_mag/articles/37-1/pinsky.html
Dr. Joel C. Hunter is the Pastor of Community Benefit at Action Church, a multi-site congregation based in Winter Park and his one-minute daily devotionals can be heard worldwide on Z88 radio. He is the Chairman of the Central Florida Pledge campaign; a call to action for residents of Central Florida who are tired of hateful discourse and want to create a safe and inclusive community for all. The pledge asks residents to commit to treating all people with kindness and respect, especially those with whom they disagree. To learn more: https://www.centralfloridapledge.com/
He is a nationally and internationally known advocate for the poor, the marginalized, and those dealing with disabilities. He served a three-year term as the Chairman of Central Florida’s Commission on Homelessness. And, after 32 years as the senior pastor of Longwood, Florida’s Northland Church’s congregation of 20,000, he spent five years leading a non-profit in networking with churches and local charities to locate available resources and benefit the struggling in our community. Orlando Magazine highlighted his efforts naming him as the #1 most powerful voice for philanthropy and community engagement. And listed him among “Orlando’s 50 Most Powerful” six years in a row.
Approaching today’s challenges in a biblical and balanced manner, Dr. Hunter is neither partisan nor politically oriented, but often relates to public officials in a pastoral role; he served as a spiritual advisor to President Obama during his eight years in office.
Dr. Hunter has served in leadership roles of the World Evangelical Alliance, serving more than 600 million evangelicals, and the National Association of Evangelicals, serving more than 40 denominations and thousands of churches.
Married in 1972 to his wife, Becky, he is the father of three sons, grandfather of seven, and great-grandfather of two.
