Thought for the Week: Am I an evangelical?
Ian K Watson reflects on opinion, fact and evangelism
Over ten years ago I was convinced that carbon dioxide was the prime cause of global warming. Later I learnt that nitrogen oxides were as bad, if not worse, and then I read that jet engines were effective at converting atmospheric nitrogen into nitrogen oxides, and moreover generating it at a height of ten kilometres, where very little of it and the carbon dioxide will be absorbed by water. As a chemical engineer I was quite able to believe that this was true, so I pledged not to fly except in the case of an emergency. I moved house so as to have a lifestyle that is not dependent on having a car, and installed solar panels for hot water and electricity. Some people think I am some sort of geek, and this includes some of my Quaker friends.
Recently a Quaker friend said that my evangelicalism made him suspicious, and perhaps off-putting. Is ‘evangelical’ the right word? I can imagine one would use that word to describe someone promoting a political party, or a particular brand of religion. And then I wondered: would doctors be considered evangelical for campaigning against smoking? When I go every year for a medical check-up I am asked if I smoke or if I ever have smoked. Is this being evangelical? I don’t think that it is. Maybe smokers do.
Further, as reported in the journal Scientific American (March 2014), US scientists say ‘the evidence linking rising levels of greenhouse gases and global warming is as strong as the link between smoking and lung cancer’. Climate change is not a matter of opinion, as some people, like Donald Trump and former chancellor of the exchequer Nigel Lawson, would have us believe, but is firmly established scientific fact. What’s more, it seems very likely that climate change will kill many more people in the future than will be killed by smoking tobacco. I don’t want to be complicit in the deaths of people in future generations.
Last year I read an interview with the writer Salman Rushdie. He is convinced about the huge dangers of climate change. He told of an argument he’d had with a well-educated person in Florida, who denied that climate change was a problem. Salman Rushdie told the person: ‘Saying that the earth is flat doesn’t make it flat; my saying that it is round doesn’t make it round; what matters is the evidence.’
The next day I read, in the Friend, an article by Jamie Wrench, from Southern Marches Area Meeting. It was entitled ‘The “elephant” at YMG’. He was referring to the 2017 Yearly Meeting Gathering (YMG) he had attended at the University of Warwick in Coventry. He was writing about climate change, among other concerns, and shared his thoughts on the subject as a Friend who has put his faith into action on this subject. In the article he said: ‘The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed and apathy.’
So, am I wrong to be evangelical, if that’s what I am?
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