A Climate for Debate

I'll refer to it as an example - but to do so, I have to spell out the importance of the issue: Climate Change. It's high time we in the churches got serious about science, not so that we simply accept whatever scientists say or do (because there are issues which call for ethical guidance as well as theological frameworks), but certainly so that we at least appreciate the seriousness with which science is undertaken. For it seems that many 'religionists' treat science as though it is 'mere propaganda', a distorted mindset, whereas its strict method and due sense of openness to ongoing discovery mean that it ought to be better described as the exposure of propaganda. The scientific method requires evidence, tested and tested - so when well over 90% of relevant scientists tell us that it is virtually certain that warmer climates are going to suffer more famines, more insect outbreaks, more deaths due to a 2 degree rise in temperature, certainly exacerbated by human activity, then we should listen - and although Britain itself can possibly afford to delay, we should be far more concerned about those who cannot afford to do so. Poorer people will suffer more. What this requires is a "climate of debate", i) with Christian communities daring to give more time to the big issues facing humanity than to the details of church preservation, ii) with us supporting each other to discover ways of tackling the issues in our daily lives - to help us live sustainably, how we might address our own consumerism and wastefulness, and iii) with us learning how to converse with other disciplines and other communities ... but instead, we preoccupy ourselves with churchiness and talk to ourselves, hiding fearfully behind our walls, or no better, behind doctrinal assertions. I suspect God is no respecter of such walls or assertions, when a climate of debate and conversation demands lives which dare to imagine a different future.