Did Evangelicals Change the Climate Change Conversation?
Agnostic scholar Katharine Wilkinson looks at the legacy of the Evangelical Climate Initiative.Ruth Moon
Christianity Today
Katharine Wilkinson has been interested in the environment and religion's role in culture since her undergraduate years at Sewanee: The University of the South. So when the Rhodes Scholar began studying for a Ph.D. in environmental studies at Oxford University, she paired the two to study the evangelical community's discussions of climate change.
Wilkinson's published dissertation, Between God and Green: How Evangelicals Are Cultivating a Middle Ground on Climate Change(Oxford University Press), outlines the history of the climate change discussion within evangelicalism, centering around the Evangelical Climate Initiative's 2006 document, "Climate Change: An Evangelical Call to Action." That document had a number of well-known evangelical signatories and, Wilkinson argues, served as a "watershed document" in setting the tone for current climate change discussions in the evangelical church.
Wilkinson, who was raised Episcopalian and now identifies as an agnostic, works with the Boston Consulting Group, a global management consulting firm. She spoke with CT about her book, the importance of the "Call to Action," and the future of the climate change discussion within evangelicalism.
Read the interview here.
