c. 2006 Religion News Service

NEW YORK _ The Rev. Jim Ball has gotten 85 other Christian evangelical leaders to launch a national campaign against global warming, a feat that just might make him the most important environmentalist of 2006.

The Evangelical Climate Initiative, which Ball organized with a handful of other like-minded Christians, declared the “basic task for all of the world’s inhabitants” is to cut emissions of heat-trapping carbon dioxide.

It is spreading the word in newspaper, television and radio ads; meetings with key legislators; and events at churches and Christian colleges around the country.

That has irked some influential evangelicals, who sabotaged Ball’s efforts to recruit the National Association of Evangelicals to the cause last month. But it has thrilled mainstream environmentalists.

Ball and his wife, Kara, sat down in a New York hotel lobby after a recent television appearance to answer Christian critics and explain the brand of environmentalism he calls “creation care.”

“Look what’s going to happen to God’s people, look at what’s going to happen around the world and to our kids,” Ball said. “Look at the projections. Millions are going to die because of global warming. Those are people Jesus loves.”

Ball, 44, was born in Baton Rouge, La., but his family lived in several Southern states during his childhood.

Ball said he felt called to become a minister at 19. He earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Baylor University in Waco, Texas, and a master’s of divinity from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky.

A few years later, when Ball was doing graduate studies at Drew University in Madison, N.J., a fellow student told him she was interested in a “Christian approach to nature.”

“I said, `Why?”’ he recalled. “`Are you meaning to tell me this ant here is more important than your son?’

“She said, `Why don’t you read the Bible in light of this question?”’

He did. Then he started reading about environmental degradation and came to appreciate its impact on the poor. Before long, he found himself in a national network of Christian environmentalists.

“At that time, being an evangelical and being concerned about the environment was still kind of almost crazy sounding, weird, new,” he said. “People would say, `I’m so glad I found other Christians who care about this issue.”’

Ball became the climate-change policy coordinator for the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington, D.C. It’s a largely secular crowd, and Ball said he viewed his time there almost as “cultural anthropology” _ an effort to understand how the other half thinks.

“It was very interesting to have a reverend working in our office,” said Rich Hayes, press secretary for the organization. “He was focused on the science and studying it. But even at the water cooler his Christianity was something he would bring up on occasion in a way that was much different than what you would normally hear around the office.”

Ball met Kara, also an environmentalist, at a Christian rock music festival. They live in Brunswick, Md., with a dog, three cats and an iguana. Since 2000, Ball has been the executive director of the Washington D.C.-based Evangelical Environmental Network, which was founded in 1994.

The network helped develop the Evangelical Climate Initiative. Ball is one of six designated spokespeople, along with the national commander of the Salvation Army, megachurch pastors in Florida and Minnesota, the president of Wheaton College in Illinois and the executive director of World Hope International.

Among the 80 other signatories is Rick Warren, best-selling author of the “The Purpose-Driven Life”; popular televangelist Jack Hayford; and David Neff, the editor of the conservative Christian periodical Christianity Today.

The nation’s largest evangelical group, the National Association of Evangelicals, was set to endorse the effort until James Dobson, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and a few other influential leaders asked it not to in a letter last month.

E. Calvin Beisner, associate professor of historical theology at Knox Theological Seminary in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., helped organize the opposition group, which calls itself the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance.

“The big news is they couldn’t get a consensus statement,” Beisner said in a telephone interview. “The small news is, they did get the 86 who signed it.”

Beisner is an adjunct scholar of the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion & Liberty, which is partly funded by Exxon. But he said the position does not pay, and that his opposition is rooted in doubts that humans are causing climate change, and a concern that anti-global warming measures could harm the economy, hitting the poor the hardest.

Ball called that “factually wrong.” He said the First World’s power grid was a bad model for developing nations to copy. In fact, portable solar installations and other renewable-energy options would literally decentralize power, he said.

“This is conservative,” he said, growing animated. “Stop thinking it’s the hippies that love this stuff. Get with it.”

For too long, he said, it has been scientists, environmentalists and Democratic politicians sounding the alarm on global warming. Ball said he believed he and his fellow evangelical messengers would be more credible to Christians.

“They’re going to say, `OK, this isn’t a bunch of liberal claptrap cooked up by enviros to wreck the economy,”’ he said.

Many of those enviros, however, are quite pleased to have prominent evangelists on their side. For years, they have found the millions of evangelical Christians in America to be a largely unreceptive audience.

“We don’t have as much experience working together as we should,” said Dale Bryk, who works on climate change for the Natural Resources Defense Council. “I think this is great.”

As if to prove their conservative bona fides, the signatories to the Evangelical Climate Initiative lauded Christian efforts to “protect the unborn” and “preserve the family and the sanctity of marriage.”

And though they favor mandatory, not voluntary, curbs on carbon emissions, they said the measures should be business-friendly and market-based.

Ball likes to turn the popular question “What would Jesus do?” into “What would Jesus drive?”

For his part, Ball drives a hybrid. But he showed little appetite for delving into a larger political discussion of, say, whether Jesus would cut taxes or invade Iraq. And he would not say whom he voted for in 2004.

“The Evangelical Environmental Network is a nonpartisan organization,” he said. “I don’t disclose my own personal politics.”

MO PH END LANE

(Alexander Lane writes for The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J.)

Editors: To obtain a photo of the Rev. Jim Ball, go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug.