Evangelical Cizik Among Time's 100 Most Influential People

By Michelle A. Vu - Christian Post
Monday, May 05, 2008 - Web Link
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May 4, 2008

The Rev. Richard Cizik, the face of the green evangelical movement, was named among Time magazine’s top 100 most influential people in the world for 2008.

Cizik, an ordained Evangelical Presbyterian minister and head of the Office of Government Affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), was honored alongside environmental partner Dr. Eric Chivian, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.

“The bringing together of the scientists and the Evangelical Christians is a rather unusual event, since these two groups have really been at odds for a very long time,” Chivian said. “Recognition by TIME Magazine was an indication of how important it is to bring all groups together to capitalize on areas they agree on.”

The two met in 2005 and have since worked together to forge a partnership between the scientific and evangelical communities to care for creation.

“Science without religion loses its ethical guide, and religion without science lacks the means and resources to understand the world. Science enables us to better understand what creation is telling us about itself and its Maker,” Cizik said in a statement Friday. “This is an approach to the environment that draws on our mutual strengths.”

Cizik believes creation care is a more holistic understanding of the evangelical pro-life stance. He points to medical studies that show one out of six children born in America are afflicted with permanent disabilities because of air pollution caused by coal burning plants.

“If you are for the sanctity of life and ignore the health impact of the environment on the unborn, I think that is a limited understanding of how everything is connected in life,” Cizik had said to The Christian Post last fall.