I met Rusty Pritchard (founder and president of Flourish) several years back when we were both at different organizations and I ended up writing a story on surfing and creation for his then journal Creation Care.  I found him to be profoundly passionate about the environment and the impact it has in our lives. 

Flourish exists to inspire and equip “churches to better love God by reviving human lives and the landscapes on which they depend” -- a decidedly de-political mission and message.  With a background in environmental academics, research, policy, ministry, and consulting he has touched and seen a lot; and it would seem that he continues to find the overwhelming truth that God through His creation is still transforming hearts and minds one person at a time. 

 

We spoke over the phone last year for my book, but given the current economic, political, and most of all environmental debacle that is the gulf oil spill, I thought some of our conversation would be worth posting. 

 

CB:  Why is environmentalism considered a political issue and yet that’s less the case with homelessness, poverty, hunger or disease?

RP:  It didn’t really start out that way.  The clean water act, the clean air act, the creation of the EPA - those things happened with bipartisan support under several presidents.  It hasn’t been a historical divide and for a lot of people it has never become a liberal-conservative divide.  For example the Hunter-Angler movement has been portrayed as right-wing, but many of those people are very concerned about the places where they grew up and the heritage of outdoor sports.  They vote for land conservation and actively work and invest in protecting them.  They are actually out in those places, concerned with those places, exposed to those places.  So it’s still not as left – right as you might think when you get down to the local level. 

 

But on the national level, I think the left likes to beat the right up on environmental stuff as a useful political weapon, and so they never talk about all of the great progress we’ve made environmentally and the environmental protections that we’ve enjoyed in cleaning up the environment.  They prefer to paint a picture of crisis and intransigence from the right.  People on the right like to beat up people on the left as anti-free market, and they don’t like to talk about environmental successes that we’ve done in a bipartisan way in the past because it shows that you can regulate environmental harm without destroying the economy. 

 

I think it’s partly because of inside Washington politics that the environment has become a political football.  Both sides make their reputations by sending their warriors out as gladiators in the fight about the environment versus jobs.  It’s useful for keeping the nation’s politics polarized and so it keeps appearing really political, but I don’t think in the end it really is, especially when you get down to the local level and start talking about the places that people really care about.  

 

CB In what ways have we failed to understand what the issue really is?

 

RP:  I think we have failed to consider the human face of the issue.  The environment has been portrayed by its proponents as a sort of “protect the polar bears” movement.  And environmentalists have not done a very good job of connecting environmental stewardship with caring for people.  We’ve let secular environmentalism develop a reputation for caring more about animals than about people.  One of the things that you get a good picture of when you talk to people on the mission field is the connection between environmental concerns and caring for people who need to make a living.  I think Christians have got to really help to broaden that perspective.  I’ve gotten in trouble before with environmentalists by saying, “I’m not an environmentalist.”  I think that dialogue has just gone too far down the road of being too political and too divorced from the welfare of people.  The environmental conversation has left people out of it, in large measure.   

 

CB:  At Flourish you talk about reviving lives and landscapes.  That is a powerful visual for me in thinking about what you guys are about.  What’s the intersection there for you when you look at what’s being done in the area of landscape revivals, whether it’s urban renewal or massive projects in third world countries where the environment has just been crushed?

 

RP:  It’s really hard for me to think about huge concepts like inhabiting the planet or being a global Christian in an ecological sense, but I can look out and see the houses and streets that people in my neighborhood inhabit.  I look out right now and I see a day where’s there’s a sort of gray haze outside.  It started as a hot, clear summer day, but now it’ss one of those days when need to tell the kids that they need to stay inside because the atmosphere is too risky for their young lungs.  Conditions like this mean that kids who are on the verge of developing asthma are going to get worse and the kids that have asthma may end up in the emergency room.  Those are things that are part of the landscape that are broken, where shalom doesn’t exist, and I think it’s really important for Christians to take responsibility for those places where they live and do what they can to restore them and make them healthy and good. 

 

I want the kids in my neighborhood to develop a sense of Jehovah-Jireh, the One who can provide.  They should get a sense of the attributes of God – His power, His divine nature by looking at the creation, as Romans 1:20 says we should, but sometimes human action gets in the way of that.  Reviving landscapes means bringing God’s dominion and power back into those landscapes, making them healthy, and magnifying the witness of God.

About the Book and Interviews  “A corrective and a call to action all in one, Humanitarian Jesus shows that evangelism and humanitarian works can and should coexist harmoniously. In an accessible and non-academic style, Christian Buckley and Ryan Dobson outline the biblical case for social and humanitarian investment and engage the topic through interviews with leading Christian thinkers, activists, and humanitarian workers—including Franklin Graham, Gary Haugen, Ron Sider, Tony Campolo, Francis Chan, Mark Batterson, David Batstone, and more.”  For a complete list of interviews and more information go to humanitarianjesus.com.