Rev. Jim Wallis challenges James Dobson to a debate on Global Warming

Dr. Dobson, Let's Have a Real Debate

James Dobson's letter attacking Rich Cizik of the National Association of Evangelicals has caused a firestorm, and maybe the beginning of a really good dialogue. Brian McLaren's post yesterday pointed out that the letter from Dobson and friends actually acknowledged that there is a real debate among evangelicals about the seriousness of climate change and the reasons for it.
So instead of calling for Cizik's resignation for saying global warming should be a moral issue for evangelical Christians, why don't Dobson and his friends accept a real debate on whether climate change is, indeed, one of the great moral issues of our time? A major evangelical Christian university should host just such a debate.

But I want to focus on the following very clear statement from Dobson's letter:

More importantly, we have observed that Cizik and others are using the global warming controversy to shift the emphasis away from the great moral issues of our time, notably the sanctity of human life, the integrity of marriage and the teaching of sexual abstinence and morality to our children.


That is indeed the key criticism, and the foundation for the real debate. Is the fact that 30,000 children will die globally today, and everyday, from needless hunger and disease a great moral issue for evangelical Christians? How about the reality of 3 billion of God's children living on less than $2 per day? And isn't the still-widespread and needless poverty in our own country, the richest nation in the world, a moral scandal? What about pandemics like HIV/AIDS that wipe out whole generations and countries, or the sex trafficking of massive numbers of women and children? Should genocide in Darfur be a moral issue for Christians? And what about disastrous wars like Iraq? And then there is, of course, the issue that got Dobson and his allies so agitated. If the scientific consensus is right - climate change is real, is caused substantially by human activity, and could result in hundreds of thousands of deaths - then isn't that also a great moral issue? Could global warming actually be alarming evidence of human tinkering with God's creation?

Or, are the only really "great moral issues" those concerning abortion, gay marriage, and the teaching of sexual abstinence? I happen to believe that the sanctity of life, the health of marriages, and teaching sexual morality to our children are, indeed, among the great moral issues of our time. But I believe they are not the only great moral issues, and Dobson says they are.

So Jim, let's have that debate - the big debate. What are the great moral issues of our time for evangelical Christians? You're right, a new generation is embracing a wider and deeper agenda than you want them too. I think that is a very good thing. You think it is a bad thing, and want to get people fired for raising broader issues than those connected to sexual morality. So, today, I am inviting you to have that debate about what the great moral issues of our time really are. Again, let's ask a leading evangelical university to invite us both and host a public debate, and perhaps ask a major evangelical publication to co-sponsor it. Let's have that debate, Jim, and see what America's evangelicals think the great moral issues of our time really are. How about it?

More:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-wallis/dr-dobson-lets-have-a-_b_42756.html

Jim Wallis - Raised in a traditional evangelical (Plymouth Brethren) family,<2> as a young man Wallis became active in the civil rights movement. He graduated from Michigan State University, where he was President of Students for a Democratic Society and then went on to attend Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Illinois where he joined with other young seminarians in establishing the community that eventually became Sojourners. - From Wikipedia

James Dobson - Dobson earned a doctorate in child development from the University of Southern California in 1967. He was an Associate Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Southern California School of Medicine for fourteen years. He spent seventeen years on the staff of the Children's Hospital of Los Angeles in the Division of Child Development and Medical Genetics.

Dobson is a licensed psychologist in California, and is listed in Who's Who in Medicine and Healthcare (which you have to pay for to be listed in). - From Wikipedia

Do I want a trained psychologist (who has built himself quite an empire) or a trained seminarian guiding the evangelical movement. It is past time for the evangelicals to absolute break from the fundamentalists.

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when it sends requests for answers to the Administration. IOW there will be no reply.

The only real debate about global warming already takes place. It happens in the peer-reviewed climate journals, and at physics conferences, and other locales by climate scientists. Since neither one of these guys contribute to the real peer-reviewed discussions on climate, neither has the qualifications to tout themselves as climate change experts.

It's not about global climate change, it's about the great "moral" issues of the day. Dobson has asserted that there are three and only three: the sanctity of life; the integrity of marriage; and the teaching of sexual abstinence and morality to our children. Wallis is saying that there are other "moral" issues that challenge people of faith in these times, many having to do with environmental, economic and social justice.

Dobson will run from this proposal like a chickenhawk Republican runs away from an enlistment form.

There is a profound opportunity to move a generation of CHurchgoers through this debate.

The shorthand version is an unprecedent venue and and attentive audience to become ecologically savvy starting with getting rid of styrofoam coffee cups on Sunday mornings and moving to a debate about ecological stewardship and SUVs to community service projects from the Green Church.


The longhand is a schismbetween fundy dominionists and eco-friendly evangelicals. What you have to realise is that the CHurch has the possibility to move left on the environment and still hold to cornerstone creedal and moral issues.

Falwell and Dobson are worried about this issue because it drives a wedge into what they have cultivated as a political-moral alliance. The more the splintering the better.