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E. CALVIN BEISNER E. CALVIN BEISNER, Ph.D., is President, Founder, and National Spokesman of The Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation. Former Associate Professor of Historical Theology and Social Ethics at Knox Theological Seminary and of Interdisciplinary Studies at Covenant College, he is the author of over fifteen books, including Prospects for Growth: A Biblical View of Population, Resources, and the Future (1990), Man, Economy, and Environment in Biblical Perspective: The 1992 Staley Distinguished Christian Scholar Lectures at Covenant College (1994), Where Garden Meets Wilderness: Evangelical Entry into the Environmental Debate (1997), What Is the Most Important Environmental Task Facing American Christians Today? (2008; rev. 2014), and Is Capitalism Bad for the Environment? (2018), as well as books in Biblical studies, theology, and apologetics.
D O E S C H R I S T I A N C R E AT I O N C A R E U N D E R M IN E
The Pro-Life Movement? ‘When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.’ —Humpty Dumpty
a dead baby, or to (not therapeutic procedures intended to heal but) experiments on embryos that also produce dead babies.
Ever looked up “pro-life’ in a dictionary?
PLAYING HUMPTY DUMPTY WITH THE TERM ‘PRO-LIFE’
Merriam-Webster defines it tersely: “opposed to abortion.’1 Collins defines it in two slightly different ways: in American usage, “opposing the legal right to obtain an abortion’; in British usage, “(of an organization, pressure group, etc.) supporting the right to life of the unborn; against abortion, experiments on embryos, etc.”2 The Cambridge Dictionary defines it as “supporting the belief that it is immoral for a pregnant woman to have the freedom to choose to have an abortion (= an operation to end a pregnancy) if she does not want to have a baby” or “opposed to the belief that a pregnant woman should have the freedom to choose an abortion (= the intentional ending of pregnancy) if she does not want to have a baby.”3 On Wikipedia, ‘pro-life’ redirects to ‘Anti-abortion movement’, which begins, “Anti-abortion movements, also referred to as pro-life movements, are involved in the abortion debate advocating against the practice of abortion and its legality. Many anti-abortion movements began as countermovements [sic] in response to the legalization of elective abortions.” Significantly, it immediately adds, “Abortion is defined as the termination of a human pregnancy accompanied by the death of the embryo or fetus.”4 So in standard English usage—American and British alike—‘pro-life’ describes opposition either (most commonly) to abortion, a procedure that, if it achieves its intended purpose, produces
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Yet some Christians dedicated to ideas they express by terms like ‘creation care’ and ‘stewardship of creation’ apply the term ‘pro-life’ to other concerns entirely. The ‘Catholic Climate Covenant’ asserts ‘Creation Care is ProLife.’5 Ben Lowe, organizer of Young Evangelicals for Climate Action, says, We believe that life is sacred, so when we say we’re “pro-life,” we believe we need to care about our human life from what some people have called from the womb to the tomb. We are concerned about abortion, and we realize that it’s a very complicated issue that Christians haven’t always engaged in a way that’s very loving or very thoughtful. But we’re concerned about all factors, including environmental factors, that affect human life.6
Cheryl Bridges Johns argues similarly in an article published on the website of the International Pentecostal Holiness Church.7 Ronald Sider, author of the best-selling Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger and founder of Evangelicals for Social Action, says creation care is part of being “completely pro-life.”8 The Mennonite Creation Care Network claims its position on creation care is “pro-life’ and lists sixteen Christian organizations that do likewise.9 This article will focus on just one organization: the Evangelical Environmental Network (EEN), one of America’s better known and more influEzra Institute for Contemporary Christianity
