Guest post by Ben Lowe
Good news: Evangelical Christians are stepping back up to be part of overcoming the climate crisis.
After months of careful preparation, a new national advocacy initiative called Young Evangelicals for Climate Action (Y.E.C.A.) has just gone live and can be found at YECAction.org as well as on Facebook (facebook.com/YECAction) and Twitter (@YECAction).
Y.E.C.A. was founded by a core group of evangelical students and young professionals at a planning retreat convened by the Evangelical Environmental Network in Washington, DC, at the beginning of the year. Y.E.C.A. quickly grew into a national initiative with activists and supporters across the United States. In this short time, Y.E.C.A. leaders have already met with many senior evangelical leaders, as well as senior officials at the White House, to introduce Y.E.C.A. and share their concerns.
As Evangelical Christians, Y.E.C.A. participants follow Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, and strive to live out what Jesus said was most important: loving God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and loving our neighbors as ourselves. For Y.E.C.A. this means proclaiming the whole Gospel, nurturing all of life, and caring for the poor and vulnerable.
In seeking to live as Christ’s disciples, Y.E.C.A. has come to see the climate crisis not only as a pressing challenge to justice and freedom, but also as a profound threat to “the least of these” whom Jesus identifies with himself in Matthew 25. The early effects of climate change are already impacting many of our neighbors, both in the U.S. and around the world, and our time to act is running short.
Y.E.C.A. believes that God is calling us to take action towards overcoming the climate crisis. For Y.E.C.A., this means living as good stewards of God’s creation, advocating on behalf of the poor and marginalized, supporting our faith leaders when they stand up for climate action, holding our political leaders accountable for responsible climate policies, and mobilizing young evangelicals and the larger church community to join in.
In 2006, over a hundred senior evangelical leaders, including Rev. Rick Warren, Rev. Bill Hybels, and the presidents of numerous Christian colleges, organizations, and denominations, came together to release the groundbreaking Evangelical Climate Initiative. Growing to over 300 influential signatories, their joint statement affirmed that human-induced climate change is real, its impacts are significant – especially on the poor – and Christian moral convictions demand that the church respond. Their statement generated a lot of media coverage and frankly stirred up considerable backlash from skeptics both within and without the faith.
This was the high-water mark (no pun intended) of broad-scale American Evangelical concern about the climate crisis. Regrettably, over the last several years, the climate crisis has largely dropped off the radar across the evangelical Christian community, just as it has within much of American politics. There are many reasons for this – one is that the climate deniers have been all too effective in spinning concern about this crisis into a politically toxic and culturally controversial issue – and all lead to the same urgent conclusion: things needs to change. Y.E.C.A. is planning and praying to be part of re-awakening the American Church and the our Nation to its critical role in overcoming the climate crisis. There is no time to lose.
Please watch and share our video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyhS9ae2yjg)
You can learn more about Y.E.C.A., find ways to get involved, and support this new initiative by going to YECAction.org or emailing [email protected]