Scott Freeman

I never intended to be on the front lines of evangelicals and the environmental movement. When the ECI was first released back in February of 2006 there were 86 Christian signatories to the document.

I was the 87th.

I sent an email to the coordinators of the document expecting that there would be a rush of people like me, ministers and religious leaders aware of climate change, who wanted their voices to be heard. That was not the case. For a while there were just 87 of us.

And, somehow, I received 14 of my allotted 15 minutes of fame for being a signatory. In the last year and a half I have talked to The Dallas Morning News, The BBC, Scientists at Yale University, A reporter for The Washington Post trying to get me to release details about a press release prior to its release (I refused), NPR and a host of smaller entities.

It has never failed in each of these interviews and conversations for a certain amount of incredulity to arise. That is largely due to the fact that just two of us who are affiliated with the Churches of Christ have signed the initiative (Royce Money of ACU being the other). But also it has to do with the fact that so many of us on the conservative end of the Christian world seem to be almost violently opposed to any acknowledgment of climate change. It has even been likened recently to paganism.

Now, fortunately, most Christians who don’t subscribe to the idea of climate change are not as offensive and dismissive as the author of the aforementioned link. But there is a wide-spread rejection among many.

Invariably one of the questions I am asked is what I am doing to incorporate this position into my preaching and teaching. My answer has been uniform: nothing.
This was a personal decision and I have no interest in arguing with anyone or imposing my conclusions upon others.

However, the reasons that I signed the initiative are many and relatively important to me. Here are the top 10 reasons I signed the initiative:

10. I realized that science and faith do not need to be at war with each other. I plan to blog more in the coming weeks and months about how I came to make peace with science.

9. I realized that I had allowed my political beliefs to inoculate me from honest inquiry. What I had missed in my earlier days was that this was not a political issue and warranted greater attention.

8. The evidence seemed overwhelming in favor of climate change. We can argue and debate whether or not that is true, whether or not it is simply cyclical and whether or not it is aided and abetted by man. But, to me, the evidence was clear.

7. I wanted to underscored that God’s giving man dominion over this world does not mean domination. True, godly stewardship involves care and compassion. It involves judicious responsibility and awareness.

6. I wanted my children to see their father commit to being environmentally responsible. It’s their world and I wanted them to know that I acknowledge that and live as if that is true.

5. I wanted to give people pause from painting climate care advocates as simply “tree-huggers” and “environmentalist wackos.” The tendency we have to paint people with pejorative labels is neither conducive, intelligent or holy.

4. I was concerned with my own consumerism highlighted by my dependence on energy and oil. Being on the front lines of this issue caused me to make my own lifestyle changes. Rather than signing this document and forgetting about it the continued media coverage has spurred me to remaining vigilant.

3. The matter is urgent. The impacts of this reality can already be felt among us.

2. We can make a difference. What we do now truly matters. And by being a voice in this cause maybe we can assure a better tomorrow.

1. If climate change is real, and I believe that it is, then the greatest effects and consequences will be passed down to the least of these, the world’s poor, forgotten and marginalized. And that is a holiness issue. If we are to truly love the least of these and give them hope then we must be aware of the fact that they will bear the brunt of our decisions.

That, in a nutshell, is why I signed the initiative.

…a reporter from NPR will be here in about 2 hours to interview me. I wonder if he caught wind that I called NPR listeners one of the most dangerous cults in America?

This is good, though. As my mom always told me I have a face that was made for radio.

Or, Changes

In May of 2004, I decided it was time for a radical overhaul in my life.

I went on a diet.  At my max, I topped the scales around 250 pounds.

My cholesterol was inching higher and higher.  I was susceptible to high blood pressure and diabetes.

My culinary choices were keeping me from a healthy lifestyle.

I’ve always been overweight.  But, I realized, with two little girls that I owed it to them to do something about it.

I began a rigorous diet and eventually lost in the neighborhood of 70 pounds.

I began to exercise.  I began to run.

As a result, I began to look at life and the beauty of living a whole lot differently.

That was a huge accomplishment for the guy in the past whose idea of a healthy meal were extra onions on a hamburger and whose exercise regimen consisted of running to the refrigerator between commercial breaks. (I had wanted a house where the living room television was viewable from the kitchen. That would have eliminated any rash decisions of choosing what to eat before the game resumes. But, alas,it was not to be.)

I have since leveled off around 200 pounds.  I would like to lose that extra 20 back and am resolving again to eat healthier.

My running suffered a huge blow toward the end of last year.  After topping off at 10 miles, I hit the wall.  But, slowly, I am building myself back to where I was.

The reason this is part of this series is because of the added perspective living the healthy lifestyle has given me.

I began to be concerned about what I ate.  I began to be concerned about how the additives and preservatives in food contribute to the breaking down of the human body.

I began to be interested in organic and whole foods.

I realized that diet and exercise corrected many of my physical problems and that dependence upon pharmaceutical companies was unnecessary.

This new healthy lifestyle was the impetus for my environmental shift.

What’s more I began to ask myself some questions about the rest of my life.  If I could benefit from a physical makeover, what about a spiritual one?

Are there parts of my spiritual diet that need to be questioned?  Are there some long held beliefs that need to be overhauled?

Is Calvinism viable?

What about Democrats? Do they know anything?

I began to open myself to ask questions about every aspect of my belief system.

It seems a tremendous jump from a diet to questioning all of my beliefs.

But what that change of lifestyle did was open me up to the realization that I had been living one of aspect of my life so wrongly.  So maybe I was doing the same in others.

I am 75% of the man I used to be.

Next: The prayer that transformed everything.

God’s green earth: Local pastor takes environmental focus

Here’s another article about me.  Since most people won’t click the link, here is the text.

Thursday, April 13, 2006

By Katy Moore

Tribune-Herald staff writer

When pastor Scott Freeman prayed last year for God to help him be more loving toward other people, the Hewitt resident thought perhaps God would direct him to be a bit more extroverted with his congregation at Northside Church of Christ in Bellmead.

Freeman describes himself as something of an introvert, which may seem contradictory for someone who speaks from a pulpit every Sunday morning. But he notes that preaching is a private, one-dimensional thing. It’s easy to go back and forth between his study and the pulpit without interacting much with his parishioners, he said.

So Freeman did not expect that he would become a part of an evangelical movement to encourage environmental awareness. Nor did he anticipate the attention he’s recently received from the Dallas Morning News and the British Broadcasting Corporation. On Sunday a crew from the BBC was present during the church’s morning service and interviewed Freeman for a documentary on evangelicals and the environment. In September, Freeman joined nearly 100 other church leaders nationwide in signing the Evangelical Declaration on the Care of Creation, a call for environmental awareness from religious conservatives.

“Because we worship and honor the Creator, we seek to cherish and care for the creation,” the declaration states. “Because we have sinned, we have failed in our stewardship of creation. Therefore we repent of the way we have polluted, distorted, or destroyed so much of the Creator’s work.”

Before he began researching green-friendly issues, Freeman thought of concern for the environment as a bunch of “liberal politics.” But his view has changed, and he now considers caring for creation part of a larger call — to care for the poor.

“When I began to pray the prayer, I thought God would move me toward loving people in my own congregation more, but I think he had bigger plans for me in that I began to love everyone more,” he said. “It began to help me rethink some of my long-held convictions and misconceptions about people. I began to question my political views, my sociological views, everything.”

Freeman said those questions brought up more questions — about how he might be understanding Jesus’ call to be a steward of creation. He said he began to contemplate what it meant to have “dominion” over creation. Many Christians believe God gives humans dominion, or authority, over the earth, which Freeman said he thinks many people could take to mean dominance rather than stewardship.

“I’m not chaining myself to any trees or anything like that, I’m just trying to take more personal responsibility,” he said, explaining how his family is getting more deliberate about recycling and the efficient use of energy.

“That’s one of the things I loved about this initiative,” he said. “It wasn’t in support of any specific legislation or in conjunction with any political party. It was a group of conservative Christians saying we acknowledge that this is true, and it’s time for us to be a voice.”