NEW ORLEANS (RNS) The social service arm of the local Catholic Church said Tuesday (Aug. 3) it’s nearly out of relief money for people damaged by the BP oil spill because the oil company has not approved a replenishment the church requested in June. Jim Kelly, co-president of Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New […] Read More
I heard my friend Larry Schweiger, president of the National Wildlife Federation, speak recently at a conference in Nashville about the connection between the Gulf spill and our need to address global warming. I’ve known Larry since 1994 and have been privileged to hear him speak on numerous occasions over the years – and this […] Read More
Recently, my mom sent me a news clipping containing yet another searing image of a raging petroleum fire. The bright yellow inferno at the burn site is belching an ugly, black plume of smoke into the sky. Only this picture was not one of the many shocking photos to come out of the Gulf oil […] Read More
Bad religion reverses the biblical imperative to protect the powerless in favor of guarding the powerful. Rather than following Jesus’ manifesto of bringing good news to the poor, some conservative Christians are delivering good news to BP. They are shielding BP from criticism by blaming every conceivable source – God, nature itself, cosmic randomness, environmentalists. […] Read More
The BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico already surpasses the Exxon Valdez disaster that unloaded 11 million gallons of oil into the Prince William Sound off the coast of Alaska in 1989. Watching the Gulf gusher spew oil makes your stomach churn. An oil slick has developed over the Gulf of Mexico more than […] Read More
Most of the nation recognizes by now that the risks associated with offshore oil exploration are more real than the oil industry, lawmakers and government regulators have ever admitted. U.S. and state lawmakers and regulators either failed to understand or consciously chose to place blind and unjustifiable trust in oil industry claims about the safety […] Read More
The Southern Baptist Convention’s leader on public policy issues claimed that environmentalists and President Obama are mostly to blame for oil devastation in the Gulf of Mexico. Richard Land, head of the SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, argued during the June 5 broadcast of “Richard Land Live!” that oil giant BP is only partially […] Read More
Six weeks after oil began gushing into the Gulf, the United States faces what appears to be its worst man-made ecological disaster with estimates as high as 19,000 barrels of oil per day destroying the environment and a way of life for countless Americans. Yet too few Americans have framed the issue in moral terms. […] Read More