One study showing that religiosity leads to harmony between science and religion comes from Baylor University, where researcher Aaron Franzen finds that increased frequency of Bible reading is tied to, among other things, improved attitudes toward science. “Respondents were 22 percent less likely to view religion and science as incompatible at each step toward more frequent Bible reading,” according to David Briggs, who reported the Baylor study for Association of Religion Data Archives. (Interestingly, higher rates of Bible reading were also correlated with greater support for social and economic justice, simple lifestyles, humane treatment of criminals, and with lower support for abortion, same-sex unions, the death penalty, and the expansion of the war on terrorism.)

Interesting this week that the Obama administration was derided for giving in to “anti-science” pressure when it blocked over-the-counter access to the “morning after” pill for minors. Those pundits are willfully ignorant about what is science and what is morality, thinking that measurements of a drug’s effectiveness ought somehow to determine whether a minor should be able to access it without adult guidance or parental input. The same goes for claims that opposition to fetal stem cell research is somehow anti-scientific. One can certainly accept that experimenting on human embryos may lead to advances in scientific knowledge, while at the same time affirming that it is entirely immoral to conduct such research.

Read for yourself.

It also doesn’t sound very interesting.  The main common features of interfaith gathering are that they are usually very poorly attended, and sometimes pretty dull. Those features are related. There just aren’t that many people out there looking for interfaith events to attend. And running our deeply help beliefs through a filter of what everyone has in common tends to screen out the things that give us a real identity. Interfaith events tend to attract the people who are at the edges of their religious traditions, escaping from the core, who are finding freedom in cosmopolitanism and universalism. But they wind up talking in vague platitudes about actual faith, or grossly misrepresenting their traditions.

All of the interesting things about religions are particular things. What makes me a Christian, rather than a Jew, or a Muslim, or anything else, is that I subscribe to a certain number of particular claims about events that I believe actually occurred in human history. I also believe a lot of particular things about God’s revelation to us. I have in some ways a lot more in common with Muslims who are glad to be Muslim, and who know why they are Muslim, than with Christians who are watering down their faith to find the least common denominators.

The abstract things that I believe in common with some other religions are not what makes me a Christian. But they are the things that make me human.

Our commonalities, if they exist, are found in ancient history, not in where we’re going but in where we’ve been–as a Christian I would say we share the image of God, and we are called as image-bearers to tend and keep what is good in human culture and in the rest of creation. There’s a lot of room to care for the common good. The Bible-believers (like me) point out that our charge to steward creation comes long before the special revelation to Abraham and his descendants. Genesis 1:26-28 points to a common humanity and common responsibility we share with all people, not just our co-religionists. I find it useful to point out that the religions are not climbing the same mountain, only to be surprised to meet each other at the top. Where we can get along and work together is down at the foot of our mountains, not at the summits.

Working for the common good can therefore be more than what Francis Schaeffer called “co-belligerency.” Co-belligerency happens when people who would otherwise despise each other agree to hold their noses and work together on an issue (as when feminists and conservatives work together to fight pornography). They may agree on a particular policy, but got there for very different reasons. Common good issues call us back to the most ancient fundamentals of responsibility to something bigger than ourselves, and in the process reminding ourselves of what it is to be human. Even Christians

True believers in other religions are happy when we acknowledge that there are real differences between us. True believers in a squishy interfaithism are less happy to hear that we don’t think we’re climbing the same mountain to God. Perhaps we should have separate meetings for those who believe in the truth of their traditions and those who don’t.

My ground rules for interfaith events:

(1) I’ll be speaking and interacting as a Christian, though I’ll be nice about it.

(2) I don’t do interfaith worship or prayer services. The more something looks like a worship service, the more it should be particular and not general. I’m happy to visit someone else’s church, temple, or mosque, but I don’t want them to blend it with my tradition.

(3) I won’t try to tell people from other religions what their religions say (or should say). I think it is at best meaningless, and at worst unfuriatingly patronizing, for Christians to tell Muslims that Islam is a religion of peace. It means rather more for a faithful Muslim to say it. I don’t want Unitarians telling me what I should believe about the Eucharist and organic food, or eschatology and environmental action. I’ll look to Christian thinkers to help me with that.

NOTE: There are environmental organizations in many states that go by the name “Interfaith Power and Light”. They do good work, helping houses of worship become more energy efficient. They also organize religious people to advocate for policies that fight global warming. They’re obviously pretty wedded to the name at this point, but the name helps to explain why evangelicals have not flocked to their programs. Oh, and the fact that they believe in that whole global warming thing…

I often hear the claim that environmentalism is a kind of new religion, usually from folks who are trying to disparage the movement.

I think it’s partly right. The human bent toward legalism, finger-pointing, self-righteousness and meddling finds its expression in various forms of fundamentalism, whether in churches, mosques, or environmental circles. Part of our sin nature is a desire to find some weapon to wield over others whom we deem less worthy than ourselves.

If you don’t believe there are environmental fundamentalists, try throwing way an aluminum can at a Sierra Club event. Or talking about the joys of Southern barbecue, or the happiness that comes with having three kids (or two, or more than none) in certain environmental circles. There can be a little venom in those green fangs. It can feel like a religion, with all its rules and finger-pointing.

But if our “critique” of environmentalism stops with its own finger-pointing and doesn’t provide a springboard for salty encounters with the world, we are missing a huge opportunity. It’s not enough to claim that environmentalism seems like a religion. We have to provide some answers for what to do about that.

After all, Jesus didn’t come to offer a new religion, or a new set of standards, or a new ethic. He came to offer himself–to us, and for us. Through his death on the cross, he offers us a restored relationship, first with our Creator, but also with our fellow man, and with the rest of Creation.

Thoughtful environmentalists are often racked by guilt, but so are non-environmentalists, who realize that in almost every dimension of life they don’t live up to their own standards, much less the standards of a holy and righteous God. Christians should be bold in proclaiming that the answers to today’s crises, whether political, social, moral, or environmental, are not found in Law but in Grace.

It’s no surprise that folks outside the church who perceive a crisis would want to find religious answers to it. The shame is that most Christians don’t even have a vocabulary for talking about the environment in Christian terms. Letting a Biblical worldview infuse our consciousness would allow us to cultivate conversations about how God’s grace operates in every sphere of life.

(1) God’s common grace operates to reveal his awesome power and divine nature through the created order (Romans 1:20; Psalm 19). Why do we fail to use this gracious revelation in our communications with environmentalists? I think part of the reason is that we Christans have failed to allow ourselves to encounter the incredible witness of Creation–we’re committed indoorsmen. Environmentalists may know more of the awesome nature of God than Christians do in this regard. If we aren’t humble enough to admit this, we won’t be very good at pointing people to Jesus.

(2) God’s common grace provides for our needs through the operation of the earth’s ecosystems. We may mouth the words about the rain falling on the just and the unjust, and the sun rising on the evil and the good (Matthew 5:45), but we too often leave rigorous learning about the operation and management of the planet to secular scientists and secular environmentalists. Because so few churches teach about this, we find ourselves unable to provide answers to secularists who understand something of how the world works, and want to offer thanks to someone or some thing. This is a travesty.

(3) God’s common grace restrains evil in the world, often through the hand of civil governments (Romans 13). Yet it is environmentalists who often have a better diagnosis of evil in the world, of how misuse and mistreatment of creation affects innocent people through pollution or wasteful resource use. They don’t usually find support in the church, especially in the evangelical church. Rather, they too often find Christians denying the very possibility of environmental problems through unsound prooftexting. And they find an anti-government, anti-regulatory streak that verges on rejecting the role of civil governments in the restraint of evil.

(4) Finally, and most to the point, God’s common grace operates through the human conscience, convicting the world of sin. Paul writes, “they [the Gentiles] show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness, and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them” (Romans 2:14-15; NASB). Isn’t this guilty conscience what Asma and Mohler are writing about?

It’s one thing for a Buddhist to complain about the operation of the conscience, but it is quite another for one of America’s best living theologians to seem to lament the operation of the conscience in non-Christians.

If people are convicted about their waste, their poor stewardship, their ignorance of the side-effects of their actions, shouldn’t we praise God for his grace by which this occurs, and point people to the answer offered by Jesus’ life and death on the cross? Awareness of sin is something we can share with the rest of the world; the disorder wreaked on the world by human ignorance is perceptible even to those outside the faith, and we can use this as common ground to communicate the gospel and to work for the common good.

God’s special grace, redeeming, sanctifying, and glorifying those who put their trust in Jesus, is the ultimate answer to today’s environmental crises. But we do a disservice to God, and to those he died to save, if we don’t use people’s awareness of creation and the disorder they find in it and in their own lives, to communicate the whole gospel story.

Courage is a virtue...

Wendell Berry said in The Unsettling of America that “the environmental crisis is a crisis of character” (thanks Aaron James, for the reference). That idea reminded me of a lecture I heard given by N.T. Wright, talking about the nature of virtues (at last year’s Intervarsity “Following Christ” Conference, audio files available) . As a prelude to talking about the Christian notion of virtue, he talked about the classical notion. It’s an important idea for the tasks of environmental stewardship, decisionmaking, and action, because we so often drift into following rules, or “getting in touch with our hearts”–weak and unreliable methods for getting to right actions. Wright began by talking about the virtue of courage:

Take one of the classical virtues, namely, courage. What does courage consist of? Some might imagine that courage, if you’re going in to battle, say, consists in taking a very large swig of a very strong drink and then charging off into battle waving your sword around you, yelling some awful war cry and hoping for the best. That’s not courage in any kind of classical virtue sense.

Courage as a virtue, is what happens when you take a thousand small decisions over a period of time, consciously to place the safety and security of someone else ahead of your own safety and security, so that on the thousand-and-first occasion, when suddently a real crisis or danger appears you act in that way as though by instinct.

It isn’t instinct–we humans are self-preserving animals–but if you train yourself by conscious mental and moral effort to practice in the little things the virtue you know you ought to be developing it can become second nature–second instinct, if you like. Virtue is a matter of acquiring habits the way you acquire tastes, by sustained practice.

Seen like this, the moral life is not a matter simply of learning and remembering rules. Rules can help while you’re on the way, they may well point in the right direction, we are foolish to ignore them, but we need to practice the virtues which will enable us to keep them by transcending them.

Nor is it a matter of being true to whatever impulses you find within yourself–it’s more like learning a language, practicing it so that eventually you can go to the country and speak it like a native. It takes time, there is vocabulary to learn, there are irregular verbs to master, there are nuances and metaphors and emphases that make a living language the lovely but difficult thing it is. You’ll often get it wrong, but it is worth persevering for the goal-the telos–of what lies ahead.

Or you might think of it like learning a musical instrument: you have to master the basic technique, the angle of the bow on the cello, the position of the shoulders for the brass player. You have to practice scales and arpeggios not so that you can go on stage and play scales and arpeggios, but so that when you are suddenly faced with a complex sheet of music, you will know, as though instinctively, but in fact by second nature, by force of habit, what to do. It will seem to happen automatically, but that automatic behavior will be the result of practicing things which certainly didn’t feel automatic at the time. Now that’s how virtue ethics works.

Knowing that, the thing that we can’t do is simply experience a “conversion” to the project of creation care–an awakening to the need to exercise environmental stewardship–and expect that we are equipped to respond to the “environmental crisis”. That’s true for the Christian church as much as it is true for any individual. We don’t automatically have the skills, the virtue, to act courageously or prudently or justly when faced with environmental issues. Neither do we, as a Christian community, possess the automatic ability to distinguish between sound and unsound environmental claims. Those virtues and abilities, like a foreign language or musicianship, must be cultivated. And that takes time.

Having ignored environmental issues for so long, we may wish we could simply look up some Bible texts, or trust our hearts,  to determine what to do–how to steward the earth well. We can’t. We wind up aping the ideologies and practices of the left and the right, without much to contribute ourselves, being either uncritically accepting or unreasonably dismissive of claims of environmental crisis. The way to learn a virtuous approach to creation care, is to begin with small, repeated, steps of faithfulness, knowing that we will make mistakes, but concerned more to develop a virtuous character than to “follow rules” or “follow our hearts”.

In the end, we will find that sometimes it will be right to act swiftly, sometimes to wait and learn more, sometimes to make peace. But we can’t discern that by being thrown in the deep end of a cultural debate we’ve ignored until now, simply “choosing sides” without training in interpreting both special and general revelation (more on that in another post).

The classic virtues are prudence, justice, courage, and temperance. The “theological” virtues are faith, hope, and love. I’ll be covering some of these ideas in more depth in the future. But for now, which virtues do you think will help us be better stewards? How can we cultivate them?

That's a time out for you, young man

By now you’re bound to have heard of the great “Climategate” scandal of late 2009. Hackers broke into the computer archives of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia and stole data and email archives dating back 10 years. Then, somehow (who can say?) these files found their way into the hands of climate uber-skeptics. It was discovered that–shock, horror–climate scientists were saying rude and very unscientific things about their most relentless critics. (A good synopsis and discussion, written by someone outside the conflict, is the one by Peter Kelemen at Columbia University.)

Now, to put things in context, you should know something about my two boys, ages 7 and 9. Although they get on fine most of the time, and even like each other, there is some sibling rivalry.

Ewan, the youngest, is a professional little brother. He takes his job very seriously. He needs to mess with his older brother’s stuff, to do everything that his older brother does, and he needs to irritate him whenever he can get away with it. He knows he might get walloped, but he specialized in walking on thin ice.

Angus, the elder, though he enjoys life, is still a little perturbed that his comfortable sinecure as only child was abolished seven years ago. Moreover, he knows he is accorded little of the respect due him in his firstborn status. While largely resigned to the new status quo, he maintains his dignity by adopting a patronizing air, issuing innumerable slights and disparagements, and claiming dubious rights over territory and property. Occasionally his temper gets the best of him. Ewan pushes too far, and Angus wallops him.

My wife or I enter the crime scene, declare that guilt is shared, and they both get a time out.

In a few days, it is the same thing all over again. We recognize this situation.

Back to the climate debate. I think I recognize some of the same dynamics. Climate scientists have the upper hand right now–their knowledge base is growing ever broader, their understanding of the climate system ever better established, and their certainty about the reality and impact of global warming is increasing. Policies are beginning to be shaped based on their understanding, though they believe it is at least ten years too late. Global elites believe climate science to be increasingly trustworthy (though the general public vacillates in its opinion of global warming science).

Yet, climate scientists are relentlessly irritated by the same tired objections, the same discredited critiques, put forward by what seems like the same twelve people. So they adopt an air of patronizing disdain for their critics, calling them deniers (as in “Holocaust deniers”; although in truth that monicker is used far more by environmentalists than by scientists). This quite rightly infuriates the skeptics, who continue to claim that they’re being oppressed.

Then out come purloined personal emails between climate scientists which seem to say exactly that. Surprise, surprise! Climate scientists are, behind the scenes, real people, with real foibles, who are really, really fed up with attempts to portray their careful life work as a political hoax, or to portray scientists as dim-witted groupthinkers. Their frustration with industry-sponsored smear campaigns spills over into their attitudes toward fellow scientists who adopt the role of gadfly, even though the whole enterprise needs more gadflies.

A little–no, a lot–more respect on both sides would seem to be warranted. If I were in charge, I’d give both the mainstream scientists in question, and their prominent skeptics, a great big time out. Then I’d make them apologize, shake hands, and spend the next hour shoveling Legos from off their bedroom floor.

As a Christian, it is easy to see that the whole arena needs to be more infused with grace. Climate scientists shouldn’t have to feel attacked for trying to build the best understanding they can of how the climate system operates. Those scientists who are skeptical about the mainstream science should be recognized–even lauded–for their important role in asking hard questions. Political operatives who pretend to be more certain than scientists about whether people are or aren’t contributing to climate change need to stop fomenting antagonism.

Moreover, as others have noted, these behind-the-scenes emails reveal that much more transparency is needed in terms of access to original data and the process by which scientific ideas are reviewed and promulgated. Doubtless, to some scientists, turning over their original data to those with little respect for science feels like asking for trouble, like giving your house keys to known vandals. In this contentious environment, however it is worth the risk that some will misuse the data. Similarly, the stolen emails reveal some contempt for editors that let skeptical papers through the peer review process.

But bad papers, with unreplicable results or with fatal flaws, will inevitably slip through the peer review process, which is not a “truth machine” (and some journals will always be more cautious than others). The final arbiter of the quality of a paper is whether it survives AFTER peer review–are other scientists able to replicate and use the results? Does it lead to better questions, and better research? The truth is, skeptical papers do get published, when they consist of good science, but because the current science was built piece-by-piece over a long period of time, it won’t be easily overturned by just a few skeptical papers.

In the meantime, we have to ask whether any harm was actually done, not to the reputation of climate scientists or to their relationships, but to the underlying science itself. Was there anything in any of the emails to cast doubt on the science that says people are, in part, causing the climate to warm? (In fact, as the science journal Nature showed in its commentary, the bluster between scientists about suppressing certain controversial papers didn’t result in any suppression; both papers in question were included and discussed in the IPCC assessment.)

As an exercise for the attentive reader, review the six-step explanation for why CO2 is a problem (from RealClimate–motto: “climate science from climate scientists”), and try to guess which step is undermined by the testy language in the hacked emails.

Hint: it might be that the science is more robust than scientific decorum.

Rusty Pritchard thinks climate change is happening and that people are causing part of it, but his views are his own and not those of his parent organization, Flourish. Flourish believes every Christian should be caring for creation, no matter where they come down on the climate issue. A version of this article appeared in the ESA ePistle this week.

When I was a kid, my mother—queen of catalog shopping—bought a hand-held, squeeze-trigger device with a dial on top. It being the early seventies and I being a TV-addicted adolescent boy, my recognition of the contraption was instant: Star Trek Phaser!

Instant, but wrong.

It was, alas, a label maker—one of those things with which you squeezed out letter by raised letter on thin plastic tape such useful identifiers as “wedding photos,” “washers,” and “underwear.” And though useless against such menaces as the dreaded Salt Vampire of planet M-113, it was for a while fun. Soon every box, drawer and cabinet in our house had a label stuck on it. Now, the theory went, everything had a place. Everything could be stowed properly, found easily and used efficiently. Life under control.

Or not.

It turned out that wedding photos also contained grandparents, aunts and uncles. Should they be filed under “relatives” instead? Washers come in several kinds: flat, lock, and rubber to name a few. Could one box hold them all? (At least we got the underwear right.) Labels, it turns out, are tricky business.

Especially when slapped on people. Take me, for example.

When I lived and worked in Washington, DC, I was often the “conservative” in the crowd. Why? Because I owned cowboy boots, read the Bible and voted Republican at times. Now back in small-town Texas, I’m regularly viewed as that “liberal” who wears Birkenstocks (for the arch support), works for “some kind of environmentalist group” and votes Democratic at times. (For the record, I still have the boots, read the Bible and vote Republican in some elections.)

In which drawer do I belong?

None, I hope. And that is the point. Labels are all too often an excuse to stick someone in a drawer. A means of dismissal. At A Rocha, a Christian conservation organization with community-based projects in 19 countries, we see it all the time. For many who care about the environment, “Christians” are the bad guys; for many who follow Jesus, “environmentalists” wear the black hats—if not little red horns.

But little by little, the glue on the back of those labels is failing. Christians—even so-called “conservative” ones—are starting to take seriously the biblical command to steward the Earth. For their part, environmentalists—seeing the need to have all hands on deck—are starting to welcome Christian involvement. (Witness E. O. Wilson’s appeal in his book Creation.) Consequently, and perhaps miraculously, the two camps are beginning to get along, at least well enough to cooperate occasionally.

We see this, too, all the time.

In Boise, Idaho, A Rocha is mobilizing churchgoers to help the local chapter of Trout Unlimited plant streamside trees to shade the water and improve fish habitat. In northwest Washington, we’re working with environmental groups and farmers alike on eco-friendly ways to protect the region’s blueberry crop from ravenous Starlings—an invasive exotic species that devours some 40 percent of the annual harvest. In Lebanon, we partner with the Society for the Protection of Nature to identify and protect endangered habitats critical to migrating birds. In Kenya, working with a range of interests, we crafted a program that both protects the last remaining stands of the Arabuko-Sokoke Forest and generates income with which families living in and around the forest can now send their children to school and help free the next generation from poverty’s grip.

Through these efforts and many others like them, common cause between Christians and environmentalists (and advocates for the poor, health care, farming and more) is forged, conversations begin, labels peel away and behind them persons—sometimes friends even—emerge. It’s a wonder what the sweat of shared work can do—not just for the goal, but also to the people pursuing it.

That doesn’t mean we will all agree on everything—whether the root cause of a problem or its ultimate solution. And certainly not on politics! But evidence is growing that we can, and do, agree on this: the Earth—however one thinks it came into being—is worth caring for. And that seems a pretty good place to start.

So, as Jesus himself might say, woe to the label makers that seek to dismiss, divide and put us all into drawers. Let’s turn them all into Phasers, go outside and together zap some Tribbles—those fuzzy pink but dastardly invasive exotics.

–

*Rowley is executive director of A Rocha USA, a nonprofit conservation organization mobilizing Christians to steward the Earth.
See previous commentaries by Tom Rowley at http://arocha-usablog.org

Air Date: Oct 1, 2009
Station: KPDQ-fm, 93.9

Downloadable mp3 file at http://content.streamaudio.com/podcast/1525/GRS_100109_THU.mp3

Interview with Michael Abbate starts at 38 minutes, 40 seconds into the program.

Interview with Rusty Pritchard starts at 49 minutes, 30 seconds into the program.

Streaming audio available at:

http://asxarchive.moodyradio.org/PrimeTimeAmerica/2009-10-14_Prime_Time_America__part_02.asx

My friend Christine Gutleben, the woman responsible for faith outreach at the Humane Society of the US, is currently touring the country with the band The Myriad, stopping at Christian colleges and universities (and plenty of other more hip spots) to promote the cause of animal stewardship. The tour schedule sounds exciting, and will continue through the first week of November. I hope she is able to inspire Christian students to follow in the footsteps of William Wilberforce.

I find it increasingly odd that many environmentalists are wary of animal welfare advocates; I’m sure it is partly because of the excesses of some extreme animal rights groups like PETA. I myself was pretty wary of the issue before meeting Christine, who helped me see what a no-brainer it is for creation care advocates to care about actual animals (as opposed to the more abstract idea of endangered species, or ecosystems). At the same time I became aware of the work of Ben DeVries, who runs the very informative blog and website not one sparrow . Ben is a graduate of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and Moody Bible Institute, and is one of the best thinkers I’ve come across on how faith connects to animal welfare. He’s neither strident nor ideological, and he has helped me tremendously in thinking about the issue biblically. You can see his gracious style of communication clearly even on his Frequently Asked Questions page! Read it for yourself.

I’m not ready to become a vegetarian (and no, I don’t think Jesus was a vegetarian, but please don’t email me about it…!), or to disparage hunting and fishing. But my family is already eating less meat, partly for environmental reasons, partly for economic reasons. Concern for humane treatment of farm animals plays a much bigger role in our consumption decisions now (and choosing humanely-raised meat automatically reduces our consumption, because it is more expensive). Most of the worst farm animal abuse comes from large-scale concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), so eating more ethically often coincides with supporting small-scale agriculture. Health concerns play a role too—but for many centuries the human problem was probably too little rather than too much meat. That’s changed remarkably over the last century, and my own waistline and blood pressure are warning me to eat more carefully.

The Humane Society video Eating Mercifully explores some of the faith dimensions of animal stewardship. It shows both vegetarians and meat-eaters who have made decisions to act more humanely in what they eat. You can view the 26 minute video online, or watch a 7 minute trailer, or order the DVD for use at home or in your church. HSUS also has a web page devoted to faithful stewardship of animals .

Christians ought also to be concerned about animal fighting, whether they minister in the country or in the city. The Humane Society is doing great work with Michael Vick, whose own crisis led to a renewal of his faith, to educate young people about animal cruelty. Check out their short video about his new effective work raising awareness about dogfighting.

We need more than ever to be animated by the same Spirit that drove Wilberforce to fight for mercy for all God’s creatures.

More details about the Human Society/The Myriad tour from the HSUS press release:

The Humane Society of the United States’ “All Creatures” nationwide music tour featuring The Myriad kicks off Tuesday, Sept. 29 in Washington, D.C. The tour will proceed with more than 35 stops at clubs and Christian universities around the country.

Christine Gutleben, director of The HSUS faith outreach program, will accompany the tour and speak to audiences about the work of The HSUS.

“Traveling with The Myriad is an opportunity to inspire people across the country to join with The Humane Society of the United States in protecting animals from needless cruelty, suffering and abuse,” said Gutleben, “Music moves people, and combined with a cause, it has the power to transform hearts and minds and to spread the message of compassion and mercy for God’s creatures.”

The faith outreach program of The Humane Society of the United States seeks to engage people and institutions of faith with animal protection issue on the premise that religious values call upon us to act in a kind and merciful way towards all creatures.

The Myriad was MTV’s 2008 Breakout Artist of the Year. The shows will feature video produced by The HSUS and the musicians will encourage audience members to consider their responsibilities towards animals.

The tour will stop at Christian universities across the country during a time when younger evangelicals are exhibiting a renewed attention to social issues like poverty and the environment. With faith elements woven throughout The Myriad’s lyrics, the band resonates with Christian audiences across the country.

The Myraid will join Tyrone Wells, who has just delivered his second major label album, Remain, for part of the tour.

The Myriad guitarist Steven Tracy believes it’s important to build awareness among Christians about animal welfare. “It’s something that I’ve felt strongly about for a while, and I think it’s an important issue for this generation,” he said.

The tour ends in California the first week of November.

For the tour schedule, please click here.