Going green, together

For churches to be effective in the environmental movement, they must bridge a "tragic divide" between evangelical Christians and mainline denominations, a recent conference in Toronto heard.

"There's kind of a caricature, which is not entirely inaccurate, that the evangelicals are concerned with getting 'right' with God, and the mainline churches are concerned with taking care of the world, and [addressing] social and environmental issues," said Loren Wilkinson, a philosophy professor at Regent College, an evangelical institution in Vancouver, B.C.

Both stereotypes narrow the Christian gospel, he said.