Written by E. Calvin Beisner |
Saturday, November 12, 2022
Because much of the environmental movement embraces socialism and global governance to replace capitalism and sovereign nations—recipes for poverty and tyranny—we sometimes compare what we’re doing with fighting “Cold War II.” In Cold War II, the threats to liberty and justice don’t come so much from foreign nations—though those remain. Instead, they’re right inside America—and every nation. They come from the elite leaders of the Green movement, which threatens, ironically, to rob America of its productive capacity in the name of saving the planet. 

Two scenes from my toddlerhood in Calcutta, India, have flashed in my mind thousands of times over the last 60-plus years. The first was of a beautiful tree with a red-flowered vine hanging from its branches. The second was of the emaciated bodies of people who had died overnight of starvation and disease.
I saw the tree and its vine as my aia, or nurse, led me by the hand through the courtyard of the building housing my family’s apartment while my father worked with the U.S. State Department. I stepped over the bodies as she led me block after block to the home of an Indian family who cared for me through the day while my mother was paralyzed for six months. Ever since I became a Christian in middle school, the first image has reminded me of the beauties of God’s creation. The second, of the horrors of poverty.
Caring for the Planet & the World’s Poor
After spending much of the first two decades of my Christian life in personal evangelism and apologetics, I found myself led into work that addresses both creation stewardship and the conquest of poverty, along with the gospel.
My two books, Prosperity and Poverty: The Compassionate Use of Resources in a World of Scarcity (1988) and Prospects for Growth: a Biblical View of Population, Resources, and the Future (1990), opened doors for me, initially, to speak at churches and conferences on poverty and the environment, and later, to teach, first at Covenant College and then at Knox Theological Seminary.
In 1999, some thirty scholars and I worked together to produce “The Cornwall Declaration on Environmental Stewardship,” issued the next year with over 1,500 endorsements from religious leaders, scientists, and economists, and later signed by many thousands. Then, in 2005, I founded the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation.
Over the years, Cornwall Alliance scholars have developed ideas about environmental protection and about how mainstream environmentalism actually posses a significant threat to the world’s poor, despite environmentalists’ frequent warnings that environmental abuse harms the poor more than anyone else.
Cornwall’s thinking on environmental protection rests on the idea that the bottom-line measurement of environmental quality is human health and well-being, coupled with the understanding that a clean, healthful, beautiful environment is a costly good and that wealthier people can afford more costly goods than poorer people can. (Hence, one looks for the dirtiest parts of a city in the poorer areas—not because the poor don’t care about cleanliness, safety, and beauty, but because they can’t afford them as much as the rich.) The number-one aim of environmental protection, then, should be human thriving, though this doesn’t mean jettisoning or even ignoring the health and well-being of the rest of creation. Those matters, too, can and should be pursued.
Another idea the Cornwall Alliance weaves into environmental protection is the economic reality that life is full of tradeoffs. Hence, for example the proper answer to the questions, “How clean is clean enough?” or “How safe is safe enough?” or “How beautiful is beautiful enough?” is not “As clean or as safe or as beautiful as possible,” but “As clean, safe, or beautiful as we can make it before the cost of making it cleaner, safer, or more beautiful exceeds the value of the added cleanliness, safety, or beauty.” (If you doubt this, just ask yourself: Why don’t you spend all your time sanitizing your house? Clearly, because the cost would exceed the benefits. Could it be cleaner? Yes. Should it be? Not if making it so costs more than the benefits.)
It’s not that no other living things matter, but that human beings—alone created in the image of God—are the most important, and that their God-given vocation to subdue and rule nature (Genesis 1:28) is going to be practiced one way or the other, for good or for ill. We should want to practice that rule—what the Bible calls dominion—for good, not ill.
Granted that a clean, healthful, and beautiful environment is a costly good, and that wealthier people can afford it more than poorer people, it becomes clear that economic development.
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Written by Forrest L. Marion |
Tuesday, June 4, 2024
It’s been said many times, he who controls the language controls the culture. For believers in Jesus Christ to use the term “biological men” amounts to a surrender to the culture’s mistaken notion that there exists the possibility of a man/male other than one who is identifiable biologically as a man/male. If we know there is no such possibility – and we do know it according to “what sayeth the Lord” in Scripture – then to add the one word “biological” becomes, at best, unnecessary and useless; and, at worst, an acknowledgment and promoting of a new teaching we know to be false and harmful.

For starters, please don’t assume this year’s Overture 15 is similar to last year’s. During 2022-2023, the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) dealt with an Overture 15 that had to do with homosexuality. This year’s Overture 15, rather, has to do with the madness called transgenderism.
The PCA’s 51st General Assembly (GA) will consider Overture 15, which requests a one-word amendment to the final sentence of Book of Church Order (BCO) 7-2, that would add the word “biological” to the requirement for church office, so if approved would read: “In accord with Scripture, these offices [elder, deacon] are open to biological men only.”
The above sentence was rejected by a presbytery but adopted by a church session in that presbytery and the overture was submitted to GA. I do not know what the rationale was for the rejection and I refuse to speculate. If there is one thing I’ve learned from my experience as a commissioner to previous GAs, it’s this: There are various rationales for a “no” vote, sometimes unexpected ones.
The Apostle Paul’s first letter to Corinth may help here. In chapter 8, Paul addresses, within the context of knowledge and love, the liberty of eating or not eating meat that has been offered to an idol. He writes, “. . . we know that there is no such thing as an idol in the world” (8:4). In verse 7, he continues, “. . . but some, being accustomed to the idol until now, eat food as if it were sacrificed to an idol.”
In his commentary on 1 Corinthians 8:4, Calvin says that Paul
. . . explains particularly, what is the kind of knowledge on which they valued themselves – that an idol is an empty figment of the human brain, and must therefore be reckoned as nothing; and accordingly, that the consecration, that is gone through in name of the idol, is a foolish imagination, and of no importance [emphasis in original].
(Although Calvin says the Corinthians abused this teaching “in opposition to love,” Paul did not set it aside as false, “. . . for it contains excellent doctrine.”)
Calvin goes on to say that “inasmuch as there is but one God,” he prefers the older rendering, “An idol is nothing,” over that of Erasmus, “An idol has no existence.”
That said, just as an idol does not actually exist – or, is nothing according to Calvin – so also a man/male other than one who is biologically identifiable as a man/male, does not actually exist. Rather, today’s Western culture seemingly bent on suicide engages in foolish imagination, or, as in Psalm 2, it rages against the LORD and imagines a vain thing.
It’s been said many times, he who controls the language controls the culture. For believers in Jesus Christ to use the term “biological men” amounts to a surrender to the culture’s mistaken notion that there exists the possibility of a man/male other than one who is identifiable biologically as a man/male. If we know there is no such possibility – and we do know it according to “what sayeth the Lord” in Scripture – then to add the one word “biological” becomes, at best, unnecessary and useless; and, at worst, an acknowledgment and promoting of a new teaching we know to be false and harmful.
So as not to be misunderstood: all persons deserve both dignity and respect. Why? Because all mankind are created in the likeness of God, whom He made male and female. “And God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good.”
As one PCA elder says, “If this [Overture 15] were to pass, it would unwittingly introduce the [LGBTQ+] ideology into the BCO.”
The Overtures Committee should answer this overture in the negative. But should Overture 15 be approved and sent to the floor for a vote, I urge Commissioners to vote “No.”
Forrest L. Marion is a ruling elder in the First Presbyterian Church (PCA), Crossville, Tennessee.
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I have been to many outreach events; I have yet to see one this productive. Many people seemed truly moved by the conversations they had with those with whom they shared the Good News.  If it weren’t for a scheduled meeting at GA, we are convinced these witnesses would have been out there for another hour or more.

There were some curious glances, smirks and even comments made as passersby witnessed a group of Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) ruling and teaching elders and some of their family members taking the Apostle Paul’s example to heart and placarding the gospel before others, not fearing to be seen as “fools for Christ.”
TE Jonas Brock of Golden Isles Pres., St. Simons, GA spearheaded the face-to-face evangelism outreach, but did not have to work too hard, as brothers and sisters eagerly engaged in sharing their faith naturally as they hit the streets with fervor.  Up and down the Beale Street in Memphis one could see REs Travis Peacock and Mark Board, TEs Geoff Gleason, Evan Gear, David Bradsher, Jonathan Rowe, Rick Holbert and his wife and daughter, Scott Moreland and his wife, and Jonas Brock engaging in deep gospel conversations with people who’d come out to party on the Beale.  TE Shaw brought out an amplifier to preach a gospel message to those in hearing range and TEs Holbert and Bradsher followed suit.

I have been to many outreach events; I have yet to see one this productive. Many people seemed truly moved by the conversations they had with those with whom they shared the Good News.  If it weren’t for a scheduled meeting at GA, we are convinced these witnesses would have been out there for another hour or more.
We did learn some lessons that will help us prepare the logistics for times, places, transportation and such when GA meets next year in Richmond. Plan on joining us. In the meantime, you may want to practice by planning your own witness opportunities in your community.
A Facebook page called “PCA Fools for Christ” has been opened as a place to encourage us, keep us abreast of local opportunities between GAs and to equip and encourage one another in this ministry.  It also has pictures of the event.  Check it out and plan on joining us next year for 2nd Annual GA Evangelistic Outreach.
Jim Shaw is Pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian (PCA), in Brunswick, GA.
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