Green Revolution

Green Revolution: Coming Together to Care for Creation (InterVarsity Press, 2009) answers questions about why Christians should get involved in helping to care for the earth. Written by activist Ben Lowe, with a foreword by Shane Claiborne, the 206-page book goes beyond personal "what-you-can-do" perspectives to highlight the collective power of a generational movement in tackling the environmental problems of our day. The book does not overlook practical ideas and examples for action, though.

“We now have an opportunity to show the world what it looks like when Christians care for the planet God gave us,” writes Lowe, “so that future generations can live sustainably. This is our moment. This is our issue. Come join the green revolution.”

Lowe's views on creation care were shaped early in his life. Growing up as a missionary child in Singapore/Malaysia, he often encountered water shortages and bad air quality due to mismanagement and abuse of natural resources.

Lowe attended Wheaton College where he majored in environmental studies and helped organize its first national Climate Change Summit. During summers he worked as an environmental educator with the Mass. Audubon Society, and as a student researcher for fisheries projects in Corpus Christi, Texas, and on Lake Tanganyika, Tanzania.

Lowe calls Chicago home and works as the co-coordinator of Renewal, a grassroots network committed to equipping the current student generation in the compassionate stewardship of God's creation. He previously served as outreach director for A Rocha USA, an international Christian conservation organization, where he helped mobilize churches and campuses around creation-care issues.

Lowe’s call for everyone to work together is rooted in the “planet-sized challenges” being faced. “Climate change and environmental crises can be pretty immobilizing,” he writes, “and we can fall into the temptation of thinking that we can't make a difference.”

Lowe emphasizes that it’s not just about what “we can do on our own to make a difference.” He says it's about what we can do when we mobilize together as a movement and combine for community action.

Lowe calls the present generation to come together to care for the earth in a way that recent generations have not. He offers real-life stories of community organizing on college campuses across the nation. He stresses that little things can make a big difference when people work together.

Shane Claiborne, author of The Irresistible Revolution, Jesus for President and Becoming the Answer to Our Prayers writes that he is grateful for Green Revolution. It is an “invitation, not just to believe that another world is possible,” he writes in the foreword, “but to begin enacting it now."

Green Revolution, a paperback, is available at $12, 20% off the retail price. It can be ordered through InterVarsity Press, P.O. Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515, (630) 734-4000 or send e-mail to email@ivpress.com. Order code is 3624.