When the Christian Reformed Church in North America (CRCNA) passed a synodical resolution on climate change in 2012, some wondered "how will doing this hurt?" They concluded that if the church was somehow wrong, "we will have lost nothing." For his part, the executive director of the CRCNA, Steven Timmermans, applauded Pope Francis' encyclical Laudato Si' as a welcome addition to the fight against climate change.
"The Christian Reformed Church welcomes Pope Francis’ encyclical on environmental stewardship, integral ecology, and climate change," said Timmermans. "The Christian Reformed Church is engaged in a number of concrete actions that seek to live out our conviction that we are called to serve and protect the creation."
Timmermans pointed to the work to make the CRCNA's denomination headquarters Energy Star certified, as well as to the 2012 synodical statement. The synodical action has provided some significant impetus for denominational advocacy, which has costs both material and otherwise. However, it is doubtful that the true costs of this kind of church advocacy were considered in 2012 or are being considered now. With a finite reserve of income from ministry shares, a denomination like the CRC should scrutinize any outlays to make sure they meet the standards of good stewardship and truly advance the mission of the institutional church.
Ahead of the Paris Conference of the Parties to the 1992 UN Framework on climate change, the CRCNA has, for example, launched a "Climate Witness Project," which involves three main tasks: 1)"advocate that COP 21 agrees to reductions in greenhouse gas emissions"; 2)"begin working with members of Congress and Parliament, and their staff who are present at the conference, to help ensure that nothing happens in Congress and Parliament to impede or diminish the intended reduction of greenhouse gas emissions"; and 3)"begin using COP 21 as an opportunity to recruit and equip members of at least 30 congregations in the CRCNA to advocate with members of the U.S. Congress and the Parliament of Canada" to these same ends.
The project’s outlays will include sending a four-person delegation to Paris, hiring of "10 part-time, short-term local organizers" in the United States and Canada, retention of a public relations firm "to help CRC staff to craft an overall communications strategy," and two hires of project co-coordinators. All of this involves material costs, resources devoted to this advocacy that might also be used elsewhere. The CRCNA's Office of Social Justice, which is leading the project, has a broad mandate that includes many issues other than climate change, including abortion. (If there has been a CRCNA project to protect the life of the unborn comparable in scale to the Climate Witness Project, I am unaware of it.)
One of the ways of rationalizing such outlays is the argument that the risks of climate change are so extensive, so vast, and so potentially destructive that such dangers eclipse nearly any potential cost. This is sometimes called a "fat tail" phenomenon. As the economist Martin L. Weitzman of Harvard University states, "Deep structural uncertainty about the unknown unknowns of what might go very wrong is coupled with essentially unlimited downside liability on possible planetary damages." There is, thus, an unavoidable element of uncertainty in the economic calculations of the impacts of climate change: "It is difficult to judge how fat the tail of catastrophic climate change might be, because it represents events that are very far outside the realm of ordinary experience." It is curious that such uncertainty becomes an argument for rather than against substantial advocacy by the institutional church, which inherently involves a greater level of moral and spiritual authority than advocacy by laypersons or action committees.
Thus there are other, non-material costs that should be counted, as well. As Calvin Van Reken, professor of moral theology at the denomination's seminary, put it in regard to social justice advocacy more broadly, "To link the cause of Christ with specific social policies that are not morally obligatory seriously impedes the primary work of the church. For these reasons, we ought to resist the temptation to use the institutional church as a mouthpiece for our political convictions."
Van Reken's category of "moral obligation" is a high standard to meet. But perhaps climate change is one of these kinds of issues upon which specific policy prescriptions are morally obligatory. The synodical resolution might lead us to this conclusion, especially since, as Van Reken also argues, "It is my opinion that when a synod, rather than some denominational committee or worker, speaks out against some social injustice, it helps guarantee that the specific policy is clearly immoral."
It is one thing, however, to speak about environmental stewardship, creation care, and even climate change in relatively broad, principled moral terms, leaving the role of prudential enactment to the properly catechized laypersons in their areas of responsibility. It is quite another for the institutional church itself to advocate a specific agenda or action as entailed by that broad moral commitment. The church engaging in such advocacy is, in fact, a danger Van Reken cautions against. The institutional church, he writes, "should speak out on the clear moral injustices of the day. The truth is, however, that most political issues, in the Western world at any rate, are debates between two or three morally permissible policy options. Choosing among such options requires a kind of worldly wisdom to which Christians as such have no special claim."
Is it clear that whatever agreement might arise out of the COP 21 meeting is morally obligatory for governments to adhere to and or churches to bless? Church advocacy to this effect would lead us to conclude as much. But it is not at all clear that there is only one morally acceptable path forward for different nations and peoples to undertake with regard to stewardship of the climate. So, despite intentions to the contrary, this level of church advocacy only deepens the uncertainty surrounding climate change and responsible Christian stewardship.
