Excerpts from Major Faith Community Statements
Excerpts from Academy of Evangelical Scientists and Ethicists on the Critical Importance of Conserving Endangered Species :
The beauty, joy, and health of human life on earth depend deeply upon the wide variety and great richness of plant and animal life God has provided. This abundant life brings immense and continuous praise to God (Psalm 148), leaving all people without excuse about knowing God's divinity and everlasting power (Romans 1:20 ). Beholding God's creatures and the whole creation supports our spiritual well-being, while living in a world that sustains creation’s marvelous variety protects our physical welfare.
However, as evangelical Christians and scientists in our time, we see a most profound threat to the integrity of God's creation in the destruction of endangered species and their God-given habitats. . .
Among the great and effective models of conserving endangered species is the U.S. Endangered Species Act . . . As in the act of Noah, it serves as a safety net for plants and animals that are on the brink of extinction. . . .
While we owe it to our children and grandchildren to be good stewards of creation, leaving them a legacy of protecting endangered species and their habitats, we also owe this to our Creator through whom and by whom these creatures have been created and are sustained. We count it a privilege to be good and faithful stewards of creation and to image in our lives and landscapes God's care for us and all creation. For us, stewardship also requires witness and includes raising our voices against attempts to weaken public policies that protect the common good, such as the U. S. Endangered Species Act. . . .
Weakening of the Endangered Species Act does not serve the common good and undermines our efforts to be faithful stewards. As a society, we must not presume authority to achieve self-interest at the expense of God's creatures and God's creation. Turning away from care for God’s creation and the common good in order to promote self-interest shifts seeking the kingdom of God out of its appropriate and necessary first place. . . .
All this means that we, as professional scientists and ethicists, and as believers, find God's creation to be rich and full--created, sustained, and reconciled as beautifully described in Colossians 1:15-20. . . .
Among the membership of the Academy are professionals across the full range of evangelical churches, evangelical denominations, and evangelical colleges and universities. All confess that to be evangelical is to be unselfish in sharing knowledge about the good news as summarized for example in Mark 16:15, "Go ye into all the world and preach good news to every creature" (Greek: pas ktisis). The Academy professes that extinction is not good news for any of God's creatures.
Excerpts from The Entirety of Creation:
A Jewish Call to Protect the Endangered Species Act :
The passage of the Endangered Species Act thirty-two years ago marked a moment of great human nobility. . . . Of more than 1,800 species under the Endangered Species Act’s protections during the past three decades, only nine have been declared extinct . . . . This represents stewardship in keeping with America ’s great conservation heritage.
Today, however, the Endangered Species Act is itself endangered . . . . Some organizations and members of Congress have been seeking to weaken its habitat protections, hamper the processes of identifying and listing fragile species, politicize what is supposed to be scientific decision-making, and otherwise alter the law in ways that would violate its beneficent vision and set back its accomplishments.
Distinguished voices from diverse communities are forging unique partnerships to prevent such action. Religious leaders and scientists, who may have different visions of how and why the Earth originated, are together affirming a universal moral imperative to protect all life on Earth. . . .
In this spirit, therefore . . . we seek here to affirm the Jewish community’s longstanding commitment to protect biological diversity. We also affirm our conviction that the Endangered Species Act is one of our generation’s richest fulfillments of our biblical destiny as b'tselem elohim, created in the image of God (Genesis 1:26), with the unique power and responsibility to shape, preserve, and renew creation through the work of our hands, our hearts, and our minds.
Jewish texts clearly state that all species deserve our wonder and protection. . . . Furthermore, Jewish tradition puts preservation of the environment squarely on our shoulders. “Do not spoil My world, for if you do, there is nobody to fix it after you” (Kohelet Rabbah 7:13 ). . . .
We call upon U.S. policymakers to emulate the forethought, self-restraint, and prodigious effort modeled by the biblical Noah — “a righteous man . . . blameless in his age” (Genesis 6:9). While the Bible says little about the actual labors that Noah and his family endured to save Earth’s countless species from the floods of extinction, the 16 th century Midrash Tanhuma portrays him as a man of foresight who planted and cultivated cedar trees over the course of a century — all the while planning the construction of his cedarwood ark and withstanding the mockery of his neighbors.
To us, the Endangered Species Act is the legislative equivalent of Noah’s cedar grove. We are determined, with our allies in other faith communities, to see it maintained and strengthened as a resource for building our environmental future.
For further information, please see www.noahalliance.org or contact Suellen Lowry, 707-826-1948, suellenquaker@cox.net .