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All the Stars we Never See
In our most glorious and technologically advanced places, no one can see the stars. Is our glory, namely our technology, mutually exclusive with the glory of God?
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An Ecological Critique of Liberalism
Like in nature, our relations are intimately interconnected; our whole depends on all its parts. Any ideology that advocates for radical individualism, like the liberal paradigm, thus threatens to untangle the interconnected and mutually beneficial web we are.
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Liberalism and the Folly of Reason
Because humans are sinful, an ideology based upon the sheer power of human reason alone to solve all ills is destined for failure. It is destined to beget a multitude of sins.
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The Parallels of Pollution and Sin: An Earth Month Reflection
This Saturday morning, bright and cool and crisp, my friends and I helped clean a portion of Rivers Avenue in North Charleston, one of a series of litter cleanups we are hosting this April in honor of Earth Month. Though we devoted a full morning to the cause, to my amazement we managed to clean…
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The Church and Integral Ecology
The modern environmental movement prides itself on the connection it has drawn between environmental health and social health, manifested in ubiquitous calls for “environmental justice.” At best, this movement amicably recognizes that the poor should not suffer an undue burden of pollution and heavy industry. At worst, it is seized upon by parties who see…
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On Freedom and Order
When I was younger, like many teenage boys I stylized myself as a libertarian. Dogged and fiercely independent, I thought that no one in the government had the right to regulate me or tell me what to do. When I surveyed the failures present around me, it seemed undeniable that everything the government touched fell…
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The Biblical Case for Conservation
From general revelation and the new creation to imagery in the Psalms, God has made clear the role humans are meant to play in the natural world both here and at Christ’s second coming: one of reflection, stewardship, and active participation in the “liturgy of the land.” “In the beginning God created the heavens and…
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Why I am a Conservationist, Part II
I am a conservationist, secondly, because I am a Christian. Upon the creation of man and woman, God declared that mankind shall “rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves over the ground” (Genesis 1:28). For all of recorded history, mankind has obliged…
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Why I am a Conservationist, Part I
I am a conservationist, foremostly, because I am a conservative. The two terms have in recent decades been viewed as antithetical, though one is clearly the root of the other. Conservatism, according to the loudest voices on both the left and right, is the philosophy of free trade, market economics, and global capitalism. While conservation,…
Thoughts of an Environmental Conservative 