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In February 2006, 86 evangelical leaders added their names to the statement "Climate Change: An Evangelical Call to Action," released by the Evangelical Climate Initiative. The document claims that a climate change resulting from global warming is real and will hit the poor the hardest, and that Christians are morally obligated to act now. Among the signatories are the presidents of Christian relief organizations, universities, and associations, and nationally known pastors like Rick Warren and Jack Hayford.

Twelve years earlier, in 1994, the Evangelical Environmental Network garnered 500 signatories with its "An Evangelical Declaration on the Care of Creation."

Even so, says Hsu, with so many American Christians living in the "land of plenty," it's difficult to keep the environment at the forefront of one's mind. "Suburbia is a consumer culture," he says. "If we need something, we buy it and use it, instead of finding alternatives. One of the problems in suburbia is that it's a place of abundance where we don't see the scarcity and limitation of resources."

Richard Cizik, vice president of government relations for the National Association of Evangelicals, was converted to the cause of creation care in 2002 by a Christian scientist speaking on climate change in Oxford, England. Since that time, he has been an outspoken advocate for stewardship—not for the earth in and of itself, but for its impact on the people it sustains. His unique position as a major evangelical leader who has "gone green" has caught the attention of national media like Newsweek and ABC News.

"This is about people," says Cizik. "People are eternal."

And people are suffering. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), diarrhoeal disease is responsible for the deaths of 1.8 million people each year. It's estimated that 88 percent of that is attributable to unsafe water supply, sanitation, and hygiene, and is mostly concentrated on children in developing countries. WHO also estimates that 3 million people are killed worldwide annually by outdoor air pollution from vehicles and industrial emissions, 1.6 million indoors through using solid fuel. Again, most of these deaths happen in poor countries. Many argue that climate change is also responsible for the devastating hurricanes and tsunamis in recent years.

"We Christians have no problem taking mercy and medical aid to suffering nations, so why not focus on improving the environmental conditions that are causing this suffering in the first place?" says Robinson. "We're marrying environmental mission with missions ministry at our church, including well-digging, reforestation, conservation in the third world, training young people. This is not a social gospel; it's a holistic gospel."

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