CREEDE HINSHAW: Can the church address complexity?

It’s easier for the church to address some issues than others: theft, greed, sexual immorality, idolatry, divorce, murder, etc., have been traditional subjects. Whether a baker should be required to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple’s wedding is an issue fairly simple to understand, even though opinion is sharply divided.

But complex issues, unaddressed specifically in the Bible, are equally important to the larger community. Freedom of speech and thought, the elimination of war, workers’ rights, deforestation, global warming, the political process, censorship and community decency — these are moral issues, too.

Can the church intelligently and theologically address issues of national and international significance or dare we simply leave these issues to politicians, scientists, bureaucrats and the military?

Let’s think about the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for a few minutes. This federal agency is in the news almost daily. No telling how many times they have been sued for their efforts to protect and preserve our environment. They seem to be a favorite target of Georgia’s Attorney General Sam Olens who is currently suing this agency on two fronts. In a different arena, the U.S. Senate earlier this week defeated efforts to gut the EPA’s protection of an additional 2 million miles of streams and 20 million acres of wetland that supply nearly one-third of Americans their drinking water.

EPA opponents – including Olens — claim that their rules will cost millions of dollars, destroy jobs and make little difference in air and water quality, adding the familiar cry that this is government overreach. Those supporting the EPA reason that we must do all things possible to protect our air, soil and water for farmers, sportsmen, businesses, our children and grandchildren and as wildlife habitat. Georgia, for instance, has one of the highest rates of children’s asthma in the nation. Clean air is highly important.

I’ve been reading about coal ash lately, which may sound boring topic but is a crucial environmental issue with local implications. Georgia Power’s Plant Scherer north of Macon, a coal-burning power-generating plant judged to be the biggest atmospheric polluter in the entire United States, discharges its toxic coal ash waste into a 750 acre unlined pond near the Ocmulgee River.

Plant officials claim that their unlined pond meets all federal, state and local guidelines. That’s true because there are no guidelines. The mercury, arsenic, lead and chromium in that unlined pond are at the least liable to leach into the surrounding soil and water. A coal ash dam that broke in Tennessee in 2008 caused $3 billion in economic damage and cost $1 billion to clean up.

I doubt that the church – even the more progressive wing of the church – will spend time addressing coal ash. The complexities are overwhelming and the issues seemingly remote. But by opting out of the fray, the faith community leaves a vacuum filled quickly by big business and big government where power and money do the talking. That’s a Biblical issue most of us can understand.

Creede Hinshaw is a retired Methodist minister. He can be emailed at [email protected].