Richard Cizik

Yesterday Kansas Interfaith Power & Light (which has a new website, btw) welcomed Rev. Richard Cizik to town. He's the former head of the National Association of Evangelicals, and he was the one who tried to get the evangelical movement to move away from a singular focus on gay marriage and abortion and toward a more broad agenda, especially regarding climate change.

He gave an interview to Carla Eckels on KMUW in the morning, and then spoke to a small group of clergy over lunch at Inter-Faith ministries, which my friend Rev. Cindy describes on her blog. Then he met with the editorial board of the Eagle, and in the evening he gave a keynote address at Asbury United Methodist Church. Today he has an oped piece in the Eagle.

Rev. Cizik is convinced that the evangelical movement as it has been constituted over the past decade or so is on its way out, for many of the same reasons the Republican Party is facing such difficulties. Younger evangelicals see climate change as the core issue for this generation, and Cizik believes (and maintains that he has proved from the response he has gotten to his new organization, in terms of both fundraising and people-raising, especially amongst younger people) that unless people get on board they risk irrelevancy.

He thinks that this cadre of young people can be very effective politically, especially in Republican primaries, as they can be deployed for the benefit of those candidates who are open to the realities of climate change and the urgent need to do something about it, which he can articulate most effectively. We happen to have a lot of political figures who are climate skeptics here in Kansas, so I'll be interested to see if this actually happens, especially as the Republican senate candidates are now busy trying to out-right each other on this issue.

To the global warming naysayers who came to the evening talk, Rev. Cizik answered with a version of Pascal's Wager. This, you may recall, is the idea that if we live as though there's a God and there turns out that there isn't a God, then we haven't lost anything, because we've lived a good life. But, if we act as if there is no God and it turns out that there is one, then we're lost. Similarly, if we act as if there's climate change and there isn't, we haven't lost anything, but if we act as if there isn't and it turns out that there is ....

I was kind of hoping he would argue science with them but he didn't, and that's probably why he's wiser than I am. He said, Look actions about this issue are happening - in Congress and on the state level - and you can continue to argue about whether it exists, which is yesterday's argument, or you can be part of the conversation about where we go from here. (Parenthetically, I looked up the scientific arguments against climate deniers and found this, "How to talk to a climate skeptic," on grist.org.)

He also had another great line: When you get up to heaven, God isn't going to ask you how old you thought the earth is or whether it was created in 6 days or not. God knows the answers to those and doesn't need your help. What God's going to ask you is "What did you do with My creation while you were here?"

For me it was also an interesting view into a world that I don't normally enter. I was happy to meet him, and I think it was energizing for KSIPL, despite the relatively small crowds.