Matt and Amy Clark bought a house in the city rather than in the suburbs so another piece of land wouldn't have to be cleared for their home.

They grow vegetables in the backyard and in a plot at Lancaster County Central Park.

They dress their three young children in "recycled" clothes and pass outgrown clothes to other families.

The Clarks' choices are guided by their evangelical Christian faith. They don't want to waste God-given resources.

Matt Clark, an artist, and Amy Clark, a chemist, are part of a nationwide trend that's beginning to be felt in Lancaster County: the greening of the evangelical church.

Slowly, evangelical Christians are embracing an ethic of "creation care" at a time when environmental issues are dominating public debate.

While mainline churches have been in the vanguard of environmental activism for years, the evangelical church has been reluctant to join in, in part because of the political debate around climate change.

The Rev. Rich Cizik, a vice president of the National Association of Evangelicals, has been the most visible face of the greening phenomenon.

"Evangelicals need to understand [that] it's not a blue state/red state, or even a green issue," Cizik said. "It's a moral and spiritual issue, primarily."

By grounding environmentalism in the Bible, advocates like Cizik are helping to convince evangelicals to embrace "creation care," or what the church used to call stewardship.

Most convinced are younger evangelicals. Older ones, in general, are still somewhat reluctant to be identified with issues like global warming.

Still, evangelical leaders see a change in the weather on creation care.

"I sense it's only a matter of time," said Dr. Dennis Hollinger, president and professor of Christian ethics at Evangelical Theological Seminary in Myerstown, "till it really will come down more into the life of the church."

Youth lead the way
Rich Cizik tells this story to illustrate how evangelical attitudes are changing: Several months ago, he was invited to speak at a chapel service at Lancaster Bible College.

His hosts told him that a few years ago, asking Cizik, who raises some hackles because of his climate activism, would have been too controversial.

But now, Cizik said, LBC students are amazed to learn that earlier this year, two dozen evangelical leaders, including Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family, wanted the NAE to dump Cizik over the global warming issue.

"I think an awakening is occurring," Cizik said.

"In the midst of rapidly descending cultural morals and values, significant change taking place in the evangelical church, the rapidly growing Islamic influence, increased threats of terrorism, natural disasters and the escalating cost of energy," LBC President Dr. Peter Teague said, "it is only prudent for thinking Christians to be concerned with environmental issues."

Teague and Hollinger both see growing environmental interest in their student bodies.

"I have found the students I work with on a daily basis are transparent to a fault and want to make their lives count for something bigger than themselves," Teague said. "Because God created our beautiful world, it only makes sense that they want to be increasingly good stewards of his creation."

Evangelical Theological Seminary is instituting more "green" programs, such as broad recycling, in response to student interest in the environment. Hollinger was among evangelical leaders who signed a statement two years ago affirming creation care.

British historian David Bebbington defines "evangelical" as someone who believes that people's lives need to be changed, that the gospel should be expressed in effort, that the Bible is inerrant and that the sacrifice of Christ on the cross is central to faith.

Cizik cites the way Christian campuses are making creation care a priority as one of five reasons to believe that the evangelical church is warming to environmentalism.

His other evidence: polling data, more evangelical churches taking action on the environment, more national leaders willing to speak out on climate change and the way non-Christian environmental groups are looking to evangelicals for leadership.

Younger evangelicals "have not partaken of the view held by some in the movement that this is a liberal, green issue," Cizik said, and that only Democrats and elitists believe it.

"They're looking at it with fresh eyes."

A hot potato
The challenge is to help older evangelicals and conservative churches take a fresh look at the environment.

Cizik has encouraged that by focusing not on politics but on the Bible.

"Creation care is a biblical and theological understanding of God's creation," he said. While climate change generally means global warming and its impacts, "creation care is everything."

It is also a less politically loaded term than "global warming."

Most "green" evangelicals locate the source of creation care in the opening chapters of Genesis, where God commands Adam and Eve to care for the earth.

Three Christian doctrines affirm the worth of the material world, Hollinger said: God's declaring his creation "very good" in Genesis; the incarnation, or the sending of Jesus Christ in human flesh; and the understanding that at the end of history, Christians will have renewed bodies — not just spirits.

But over the years, environmental politics has been a stumbling block, including "the more radical ideological commitments of some within the green movement," Hollinger noted — "the assumption that to be green is to worship the environment, to make the natural world equivalent to human beings."

"The irony is that God may sometimes use very secular, non-Christian movements to awaken us to biblical truth," he said.

Christians also disagree on whether climate change is happening, or, if it is, whether changes are caused by people.

For some churches, eschatology, the "end times," can be a factor. Matt Clark, a member of Wheatland Presbyterian Church in Lancaster, said he was raised in a Southern Baptist church that had a premillennial dispensationalist theology. For such churches, making the environment a priority is akin to "polishing the brass on a sinking ship."

For all those reasons, creation care is still a touchy topic in the evangelical church. Some of the larger churches in Lancaster County did not return calls and e-mails for comment on the issue.

"The current climate of discussion ... really has a very heavy political element to it," said Dr. Brad Mullen, executive pastor at Calvary Church in Manheim Township.

"We don't get involved in that, and we haven't been involved on either side, and we would discourage involvement. That's not the purview of our main goal and mission."

Mullen said most evangelicals are concerned with stewardship of the earth, and Calvary members may practice those concerns in private life.

"The goal of Calvary Church is to help people know Christ, to grow in Christ," he said. "That will include the stewardship of creation as well, but probably in terms of focus, it's not right at the top of the list."

The Rev. Doug Winne, senior pastor of Lancaster Evangelical Free Church in Warwick Township, said the church doesn't have policies on the environment.

"We would state, I think pretty much to a person, that we do believe God has placed us as stewards over the earth (Genesis 1) and that God expects us to 'work it and take care of it' (Genesis 2:15)," he said. "We do not confuse the Creator and the creation. We do not worship the earth. But we do believe that we are 'of' the earth."

Hollinger said the church has "lagged behind" on issues like creation care. But he said more pastors he knows are becoming involved.

Thursday, NAE co-hosted a Global Leaders Forum in Washington, D.C., at which United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon spoke on the U.N.'s Millennium Development Goals, including the relationship between hunger and climate change. It was the first time, Cizik said, that a secretary-general has addressed the NAE.

"Evangelicals are in a unique political position to be able to influence Republican lawmakers," he said. "That puts us in the catbird's seat."

Walking the walk
Matt and Amy Clark, who both are 31 and live near McCaskey High School, were influenced by a seminar at Wheatland Presbyterian a couple of years ago on how Christians should relate to the environment.

The Clarks grow their own produce, buy from local farmers and practice composting to live counter to a culture of materialism and consumption, as well as to care for the earth.

"We're not out to change the world or anything like that," Matt Clark said: with 6 billion people on Earth, "one person counts for about zero."

Still, the Clarks — who have a 5-year-old daughter and sons ages 4 and 15 months — want to live their faith.

"God gives Adam and Eve this garden and tells them to tend it," Matt Clark said. "I suppose that mandate's never been rescinded. We're not allowed to go out and chew it up and spit it out and move on to the next."

People like the Clarks may be reaching critical mass in the evangelical church.

"I think God gives us resources to use, and I think we definitely can waste them," Matt Clark said.

"I don't want to be accused of doing that."

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Helen Colwell Adams is a Sunday News staff writer. E-mail her at hcolwell@lnpnews.com, or phone 291-4962.