A recent article in the Boston Globe features Dr. Dorothy Boorse, a biology professor at a Christian evangelical school, Gordon College, in Wenham, Massachusetts. Dr. Boorse helps to break the stereotype that the evangelical community is anti-science and skeptical of climate change. In fact, she helped to produce “Loving the Least of These” with the National Association of Evangelicals, a study guide designed to help evangelicals learn more about climate change, its theological dimensions, and how they can join in climate solutions. She is seeing firsthand the coming of a new generation of evangelicals for whom climate change is a serious concern.
What Would Jesus Do (About Climate Change)?
Jennifer Weeks, Contributor to the Boston Globe
At first glance, Dorothy Boorse’s office could belong to any science professor. The desk is strewn with papers. Office hours are posted on the door, alongside photos of Boorse and her students sloshing through Essex County marshes with nets. Shelves are crammed with textbooks, including one that Boorse co-wrote. But they also hold titles like The Genesis Enigma and Flesh-and-Blood Jesus as well as back issues of Christian Scholar’s Review.
Boorse teaches courses in biology and environmental science at Gordon College, the Christian school in Wenham that was recently in the news when its president spoke out against an expected executive order banning hiring discrimination based on sexual orientation when federal dollars are involved. But Boorse, an evangelical Christian, is involved in a different political debate — the one over how to respond to changes in the earth’s climate. A full-time professor with a doctorate in oceanography and limnology (the study of freshwater systems) and a specialty in wetlands ecology, Boorse is also a leader in a national effort to frame environmental problems in Christian terms and to figure out what to do about them.
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