The Associated Press

FLORENCE, Ala. — It was that “aha” moment Betty McGee said she was hoping to get from members of First Presbyterian Church of Florence.

“It came when we put recycling into context,” she said of the Sunday morning experiment of separating trash from the pulpit into piles of what is garbage and what can be reused.

McGee said a recycling program has been in place at the church, the Shoals’ oldest organized congregation, since the 1980s, but this year, the decision was made to ratchet up the members’ commitment to the environmental cause.

Until the past few years, organized religion, Christianity in particular, has left environmental protection to activists, concerned scientists and political figures. Likewise, environmentalists have either ignored religion or complained that churches have been lukewarm about environmental causes.

Dr. Matthew Sleeth, emergency room doctor turned environmental author, said it’s an image that Christians, by and large, don’t deserve.

“Churches throughout history have addressed this, but we got away from it when we got away from our direct connection to the land,” he said. “But if you look at the first page of the Bible and the picture of paradise, there’s a tree smack in the middle with a river running by it. That’s no accident.”

Sleeth felt so strongly about Christians joining the cause of the environment that he wrote a book, “Serve God, Save the Planet: A Christian Call to Action.” He often visits churches to help members understand how they can adopt more ecological practices.

“When I started going to churches five or six years ago, it was a pretty hard sell,” he said. “Now, for whatever reason, I can no longer get to all the churches who want me to come and talk about this.”

Sleeth said he’s been to an array of churches, from Methodist to Southern Baptist to Episcopal.

Carl Gebhardt, minister at First Christian Church in Florence, said environmental issues became politicized in recent years.

“Christians in general, in the United States, have a serious and unfortunate habit of identifying political issues as either religiously conservative or religiously liberal,” he said. “So, with churches, you would think that conserving the environment would be a conservative agenda, but they have been against this. The battle rages from both sides; neither is innocent.”

When he entered the ministry more than 30 years ago, Gebhardt said the environment was a priority for the denomination. “Churches have always considered environmental issues to be a matter of the faithful,” he said, but more often than not, “we do it quietly, doing our best to recycle and replacing incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescent, little things like that.”

At First Presbyterian, the push toward environmentalism took on a new life this year when McGee decided it was time to get members more involved. Paper plates replaced the church’s china for potluck suppers, a mug tree sprang up to rid the facility of Styrofoam cups, and old windows have been replaced with more energy-efficient ones.

“There was a little bit of a protest about using the glass dishes,” she said. “And, years ago, we had a mug tree, so it’s like we regressed on that. But overall, the members seem to be accepting it well.”

Stewardship of the earth is a component of a number of Christian denominations. In the Episcopal faith, global relief agencies fund and promote causes including the environment, according to the Rev. Andy Keyse, the rector at Trinity Episcopal Church in Florence.

“As Earth Day became a much bigger deal nationally, you’re seeing the church tap into this,” he said.

But this has not always been the case.

“Christianity way back was consumed more with just promoting the cause of the gospel and not worrying about the resources that had to be used to do that; it was a sort of win-at-all-costs attitude,” Keyse said. “As the years progressed, we realized we were more dependent on those resources, so, as we’ve come through the centuries, we know we’re the ones to take care of those resources.”

Compared to other faiths, however, Christianity does seem to be late in assuming an environmental stance.

In Judaism, the Torah states that the land belongs to God and that humanity was given use of the land, said Stanley Goldstein, a member of the Temple B’nai Israel in Florence.

The renewed interest among Christians in the environment is turning back to their roots, he said.

“It’s come full circle,” Goldstein said. “Christians are rediscovering this past, especially among Protestant religions.”

Is this mission among churches sustainable? Gebhardt believes it is because it’s good economics in addition to being good ecology.