"Similar to" reflects the ridiculous fundamentalist notion, that all authority rests in the pages of the Bible; such fringe Christians really much more closely resemble Muslims than orthodox Christians, in their attitude toward the Holy Book.  In fact, it is impossible to read the Bible aright, without also acknowledging the prior, equivalent authority of science and the humanities.

Nevertheless, these statements show that movement is being made, which ought to be appreciated and applauded.

One wonders if the signatories are prepared to disavow the anti-evolutionists.  A bridge too far, I think.

One wonders if they are prepared to confess that their neglect of environmentalist issues -- oops, "creation care" issues -- before now had to do with their disgraceful embrace of the Republican Party.

Notice how "pro-life" is used: still with exclusive reference to human embryos and fetuses.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

I hope I'll be welcome on this site,

Audrey Enough

On the other, no claim to special insight into any environmental matter, from a religious perspective, should go unchallenged.  But in this place, if the claim is not too outrageous, it is much more likely to be passed over (and apparently ignored -- but who knows who is reading in silence?) rather than attacked.

As a heterodox Catholic Christian, an animal-loving biocentrist humanist, with fairly left-wing politics, I find that the term "Christianity" is too often associated with right-wing politics, an adherence to Republican-party values, and an anthropocentrist, pro-big-business approach to environmentalism.  The challenge for people who think as I do is to establish a better sense of "Christianity," over against the word's common, evangelical, Karl-Rove-ist, unorthodox, Bible-thumping and relatively new-fangled connotation.  No one at Grist, in my experience, wishes to obstruct that project.

On the other hand, it strikes me as confusing, or futile, to try to identify "Christians" as a like-minded political bloc.  Surely, all the people who call themselves Christians are all over the place, with regard to what interests them, and they cherish all kinds of different agendas.

And sometimes those different agendas can clash, with little immediate hope of reconciliation.  E.g., I consider the "pro-life ethics" embraced by many Christians to be a falsehood and an hypocrisy, because those ethics do not put environmental concerns and animal-rights ethics in positions of great importance.  How in the world can we allow it to happen, that "life" be defined as narrowly as "the viability of a human embryo"?  How is that not ridiculous, and cruel?

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.