(An ad in Christianity Today magazine shows a plaintive Jesus next to a clogged superhighway.)
ADVERTISING
A Group Links Fuel Economy to Religion
By DANNY HAKIM
DETROIT, Nov. 18 A broad coalition of religious groups is preparing a grass-roots campaign linking fuel efficiency to morality, with some ads going so far as to ask: “What Would Jesus Drive?”
Leaders of the effort are coming to Detroit on Wednesday to meet with William Clay Ford Jr., the chairman and chief executive of the Ford Motor Company. They will also meet with executives at General Motors.
“We are under a commandment to be faithful stewards of God’s creation,” said Paul Gorman, executive director of the National Religious Partnership for the Environment, an umbrella organization of Christian and Jewish groups. “This is a crisis in God’s creation at the hands of God’s children.”
Leaders of many groups within the partnership have signed a letter to the Big Three’s
chief executives asking for improvements in fuel economy. They say they
have a biblical mandate to be good stewards of God’s creation and a responsibility
to the poor who are especially harmed by pollution. And they decry supporting
“autocratic, corrupt and violent” governments that produce oil.
“We write
now to ask you in the automobile industry a more explicit question,” the
letter said, “what specific pledges in volume, timing and commitments
to marketing will you make to produce automobiles, S.U.V.’s and pickup
trucks with substantially greater fuel economy?”
The letter
was signed by an array of denominations, including American leaders of
the Serbian Orthodox and Swedenborgian churches; Frank T. Griswold, the
presiding bishop of the Episcopal church; David A. Harris, executive director
of the American Jewish Committee; and the Rev. Mark S. Hanson, presiding
bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
The letter
says the groups will send study materials to 100,000 congregations of varying
faiths and “train hundreds of clergy and lay people as spokespeople for
energy conservation and fuel economy.” Mr. Gorman said he hoped the meetings
on Wednesday could begin a civil dialogue with Detroit.
A spokesman
for Ford, Jon Harmon, said: “We know that environmental issues are important
to a lot of people for a lot of different reasons. Our first thing is that
we want to make sure they have an understanding of the good things we have
done,” including Ford’s pledge to improve the fuel economy of its sport
utility vehicles by 25 percent by 2005.
The campaign
could create complications for G.M.’s Chevrolet brand, which makes S.U.V.’s
like the TrailBlazer and has been courting religious conservatives by sponsoring
a Christian concert series. Mr. Gorman took a dim view of the relationship,
saying “Chevrolet is encouraging people to buy automobiles which are poisoning
God’s creation.”
One of
the smaller groups in the religious partnership, the Evangelical Environmental
Network, is behind the “What Would Jesus Drive?” campaign. But much of
its effort will be done pulpit-to-pulpit by disseminating bumper stickers,
pamphlets and magazines on the topic of Christianity and fuel economy.
An ad in Christianity Today magazine will show a plaintive Jesus next to
a clogged superhighway. TV spots will be shown in four states Indiana,
Iowa, Missouri and North Carolina but distribution will be limited with
an initial shoestring budget of $65,000.
“When
we look at the impact on human health, it’s significant, and when we look
at global warming, the projected impacts are going to be hardest on the
poor,” said the Rev. Jim Ball, the head of the evangelical group, who drives
a Toyota Prius hybrid. “How can I love my neighbor as myself if I’m filling
their lungs with pollution?”
Such
views are not typical of religious conservative leaders. An article on
the home page of the Christian Coalition questioned the wisdom of Mr. Ball’s
advertising campaign and echoed Detroit’s claims that toughening long-stagnant
fuel economy rules would lead to safety risks with only minimal environmental
gains.
Some
postings on Mr. Ball’s Web site, http://www.whatwouldjesusdrive.org, were more
pointed.
“Jesus
would drive a Hummer” read one message, referring to G.M.’s
gas-guzzling S.U.V., while another said, “This is a Web site with a liberal
agenda and this has nothing to do with the Bible!”
Rabbi
David Saperstein, the Washington representative of the Union of American
Hebrew Congregations, the central body of Reform Judaism, said, “The letter
raises the issue of urging the automobile companies to engage with the
ethics and human impact of what it is they are producing and to think about
the values beyond the profit line.”
Not all
members of the National Religious Partnership have signed onto the effort.
The Catholic Conference of Bishops, which last year drafted a lengthy statement
asking for more action on global warming, is not taking an active role.
“We share
some of the goals and welcome the dialogue,” said John Carr, the director
of social development for the conference.
“We would
be less likely to talk about what would Jesus drive,” Mr. Carr said, “and
more likely to talk about how to advance the common good of workers, consumers
and the poor, who pay the greatest price for environmental degradation.”
Arthur Magazine 