As oil blowout continues, Southern Baptists support stronger environmental regulation

The Gulf of Mexico oil blowout has led many in the Southern Baptist Convention to reverse their long-held distrust of government regulation by calling for more government protection for the environment. A seminary dean who helped push through a convention resolution calling for more regulation says "the catastrophe has the potential to galvanize conservative evangelicals just like the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion," Peter Smith of The Courier-Journal in Louisville reports. The resolution, which called on "governing authorities to act ... with undeterred resolve to end this crisis," passed overwhelmingly.

"In many ways, this ecological catastrophe can provide the exact same awakening for evangelicals," said Russell Moore, dean of the School of Theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville and chairman of the resolutions committee at last week's convention in Orlando. The resolution called for the government to "fortify our coastal defenses; to ensure full corporate accountability for damages, clean-up, and restoration; to ensure that government and private industry are not again caught without planning for such possibilities; and to promote future energy policies based on prudence, conservation, accountability, and safety."

Southern Baptists have generally favored private stewardship of the environment. In 2006 the convention "charged that some unspecified government policy proposals were based on disputed claims of  'extremist' and 'neo-pagan' environmental groups," Smith writes. Moore, who supported a 2007 resolution that cast doubt on the ability of proposed carbon-emissions regulations to stop global warming, told Smith his views were altered after a recent trip to Biloxi, Miss. Jonathan Merritt, a Southern Baptist and author of the book Green Like God, told Smith he hopes this is a sign of things to come. "My hope is if this kind of transformation can happen with a conservative dean at one of the most conservative seminaries in the United States, then this type of experience can easily happen in the churches and pews and universities ... in even the most conservative places in the United States," Merritt said. (Read more)