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As our family sits together, eyes closed, we say grace. Today it's Timothy's turn. "God, thank you so much for all we have," he begins in what turns into a typically prolix nine-year-old's prayer. Eventually he is done—"in Jesus' name, Amen"—and I turn the key. We have just filled up our car with gasoline.
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There is just one reason we are saying grace at the gas station: a few months ago I read J. Matthew Sleeth's book Serve God, Save the Planet, which very sensibly suggests that if Christians bless God for food, we also ought to bless him for fossil fuels. Those of us who say grace at restaurants know the discomfort one feels bringing a visible expression of religious gratitude into a public place. I can testify that it's stranger still in a gas station, where one becomes aware just how unprayerful the act of pumping gas normally is. Unlike a well-prepared meal, gasoline does not prompt gratitude unbidden. The stuff is smelly, dangerous, and not at all self-evidently good in itself. It is a means to my ends, juice for a momentary sense of power and control. It is surprisingly hard to remember to stop and say thanks before I pull out, a little too quickly, into traffic.
Yet, of course, thanks is due, if not overdue. I can reasonably expect that the food I eat today will be replaced by a fresh crop next season. But the gallon of gas I burn today is gone for good (though it does leave behind 19 pounds of carbon dioxide for the biosphere to absorb). In this fleeting historical moment that will be remembered as the petroleum era, saying grace seems like the least we can do.
Each of these three authors has done a great deal more. Tri Robinson, founding pastor of a megachurch in Boise, Idaho, has shepherded a conservative congregation in the reddest of states toward environmental awareness and responsibility. At the entrance to the church are large recycling bins, part of the church's "Tithe Your Trash" program. Church members shop with reusable shopping bags imprinted with the environmental ministry's logo. After Hurricane Katrina, the church raised most of the money necessary to send wave after wave of volunteers to New Orleans by collecting old cell phones from their neighbors. Robinson's book, Saving God's Green Earth, is a textbook case of evangelical activism at its best: one part biblically informed reflection on a neglected theme, one part memorable and practical steps for church leaders, and two parts inspiring anecdotes from Robinson's own experience.
It is not hard to see that Robinson is a natural leader. When he felt called to raise environmental stewardship as an issue for his congregation, he did not do what I would have done: draft a stem-winding "prophetic" sermon and preach it at the first opportunity. Instead he quietly gathered a task force from his congregation to identify local opportunities where church members could make a difference; talked with business leaders and representatives of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; and prepared a four-week course about the environment. Only six months later did he preach a sermon—half afraid that he would be "thrown out on my ear." Instead he got a standing ovation. Would-be "change agents" should take note of the care with which Robinson shepherded his congregation rather than hectoring them.
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