Professor Chris Doran is a Religion & Philosophy Division professor at Pepperdine University, where he created the Sustainability Minor in 2016 and the Sustainability Major in 2021. With a PhD in Systematic & Philosophical Theology and an MDiv from Pepperdine, Doran integrates science and theology in his work. His book, Hope in the Age of Climate Change, explores the role of Christian theology in addressing climate challenges. Doran also leads study abroad programs in New Zealand and advocates for LGBTQ+ students, contributing to discussions on LGBTQ+ issues within Christian contexts. He is also an avid runner and scuba diver.
Doran talks about Pepperdine University’s sustainability program, focusing on creation care and Christian responsibility for environmental stewardship. Doran, a professor since 2007, combines his biology and theology backgrounds to address climate change and sustainability across disciplines. They discuss integrating faith with environmental concerns, especially the pushback Doran encounters from Christian communities. Doran emphasizes the importance of intergenerational dialogue and humility in engaging younger generations who prioritize climate issues and advocate for collaborative efforts with secular communities.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Today, we are here with Dr. Christopher Doran to discuss Pepperdine University’s program focused on sustainability and its orientation around creation care, or Christian responsibility for stewardship, based on values of compassion and justice. There is much to unpack here, especially with the many theological concepts involved. Let’s start by focusing on the pragmatics. What is the program? Why was it founded? And why at Pepperdine?
Professor Christopher Doran: I’ve been a full-time professor here since 2007, but it’s also my alma mater. I attended school here in the mid-90s and earned a biology degree. So, my scientific mindset is always engaged. I then earned a graduate degree in theology, and I’ve been trying to integrate these two disciplines—science and faith—throughout my adult life. I’ve been exploring how they have worked together seamlessly in many parts of Christian history. However, in more recent Christian history, particularly within American Protestantism, we often drive a wedge between the two, whereas in earlier periods of Christian history, there wasn’t such a divide.
Regarding my work in sustainability at Pepperdine, when I was at Berkeley doing my graduate studies, interdisciplinary work was the norm. When I returned to Pepperdine to start teaching, our disciplines were somewhat siloed. We had science in one area, economics in another, and political science in another. However, as I began thinking about creating this program, responding to students’ needs, and addressing global challenges, I realized that we needed to think across multiple disciplines simultaneously to meet the complexities of climate change and sustainability. So, several colleagues and I developed this program to address as many interdisciplinary concerns as we could identify related to issues like climate change, water, biodiversity, population growth, and more.
Jacobsen: Was the book Hope in the Age of Climate Change: Creation Care, This Side of the Resurrection tied into this program regarding its release and writing?
Doran: Yes. When I was hired in 2007, the dean, who has since retired, encouraged me to write my textbook if I couldn’t find one that suited the course. It took me a while to reach the point in my career where I felt comfortable writing a book, but eventually, I did just that. I surveyed the landscape and noticed that within my tradition, the Churches of Christ, not many people were thinking or writing about this topic. I wanted to address the issue from a couple of angles. One was to think about the concept of the resurrection, which is deeply meaningful to my faith and tradition but has yet to be discussed regularly. The other was creation care, which is important to many Christians but often needs to be explicitly addressed. In my life, I saw an intersection between these two themes and aimed to explore that intersection in the book.
In the sustainability program at Pepperdine—both the major and minor—the book and other theological materials serve as a theological linchpin for how Christians might approach these issues differently than non-Christians or secular individuals. It offers a way to leverage our beliefs into new ways of thinking about problems and engaging in the global marketplace with ideas that may differ from those of secular individuals or other faiths. This allows Christians to contribute to the public conversation in a way that brings new perspectives that might not otherwise emerge.
Jacobsen: How do you find the reception of these ideas in the global marketplace of thought? Are the orientations similar, or are they different? Of course, it won’t be entirely distinct—there’s probably some overlap, like mutually overlapping bell curves.
Doran: Yes, there’s much overlap. Many faith traditions, in particular, talk about caring for the environment or caring for creation in different ways, using their particular religious language or traditions. Here in Malibu, there are many secular traditions, city government officials, and others who don’t necessarily operate with their faith at the forefront because of their context. However, we share many of the same commitments—keeping the beaches and water clean and worrying about landslides and wildfires here in California, for example. I find the space where that overlap exists to be energizing because we are working on shared commitments, even though we may have different religious backgrounds.
In the areas where there are differences, I’ve sometimes noticed that Christian audiences give me the most pushback on certain kinds of sustainability or climate change discussions, possibly because I’m seen as aligning too much with secular folks or placing other concerns ahead of, for example, saving souls or using more overt Jesus-centered language. I see much overlap in these areas, but interestingly, I can have more productive policy discussions at a Malibu City Council meeting than when I speak about these issues in a church setting. At church, the conversation often doesn’t get to policy, as people are more focused on whether I’m going theologically in the right direction. So, you find yourself navigating a tricky middle ground in a way.
Jacobsen: What theological value do you think is most crucial as a linchpin for conveying this message—whether in Malibu’s policy discussions or back at the church?
Doran: I wonder if there’s a single linchpin. However, one of the big ideas I often talk about is that religious values or your spiritual identity—however you want to frame it—shape many of your daily decisions. So, for example, if you think of yourself as a good person or a good Christian, you likely have a set of values operating in your mind that influence your actions as you navigate life in the 21st century. When someone like me comes along and says, “Climate change is doing this,” or “We face sustainability challenges in that area,” it can sometimes affect your sense of identity.
You might think, “I thought I was a good person—I didn’t intend to harm someone halfway around the world because of that vacation I took or the carbon gases I’m emitting as I drive to work.” One approach, from a Christian point of view, is to ask how we can reconcile this with our identity. How do we think through concepts of sin, confession, or repentance? As we work through these ideas, we can maintain our Christian identity while acknowledging that we aren’t perfect. We’ll have to make certain trade-offs, but as we do, we must consider whether we’re harming the poor and dispossessed—the “least of these,” as Jesus often referred to them in Matthew’s Gospel.
Do I want to harm those who can’t protect or advocate for themselves globally? That’s a big question for me. It’s about challenging our sense of identity. How do I remain a Christian if I engage in practices that might pollute? On the other hand, there’s also an identity challenge because many secular and non-Christian voices are pro-environment, pro-working on climate change, and so forth. This can create an “identity kerfuffle” for some people, who struggle to see how they can work with people outside their faith tradition on common issues, even when the goals overlap.
Jacobsen: Well, it’s hard. It may be easy in the academic world. Still, it’s hard in the journalistic world, especially with social media and the increasing polarization—I’m excluding even the political polarization in that comment, just broad-based polarization.
So, it’s harder for individuals who commit offences as the “fence” has narrowed. It becomes a tougher balancing act, and you receive more criticism from either side. When talking about care for creation, we can introduce theological concepts, particularly Christian ones, such as the Fall, living in a fallen world, personal responsibility, and the language of dominion—not dominion in the sense of an autocratic human rule over the earth but in terms of actual sustainability and care.
With these concepts and realities for many Christians, how do you bring this message to a church audience and convey that the ethic of sustainability, and what you’re working toward in terms of environmental stewardship, is legitimate, relevant, and important in the current age, especially with climate change and climatic disruption like what we’ve seen in North Carolina, for example? How do you not sell it but frame it appropriately and with the necessary sensitivity for a church audience so you don’t alienate yourself too much?
Doran: Yes, it’s a tough line to walk, particularly with all the polarization you mentioned at the beginning of your comment. One of the things I try to do with churches is to ask questions like, “What do you think you’re doing now in terms of stewardship? How is your church being an environmental steward?”
I often find more silence and awkward glances than answers when I ask that question. What happens a lot is that churches love to believe they are good environmental stewards, but when you ask what they’re doing on a day-to-day basis, there’s not always a clear response. Once we move past the silence and awkwardness, someone might say, “Well, we recycle,” or “We did an energy audit to ensure our air conditioning system is more efficient.”
After that, we can dive into more detailed discussions, connecting the dots between their theology and behaviour. I might point out, “You say that God created the earth, and you’re supposed to care for it, but perhaps your spending or actions in other areas don’t reflect that.” The goal is to bring those two aspects—their beliefs and their actions—closer together.
That’s the most sensitive way to engage with churches on this issue. Most, if not all, churches want to believe that their beliefs align with their actions. My job is to ask probing questions and help them see how they can bring their actions and beliefs into greater alignment. Ideally, when people outside the church community observe what the church is doing, they can say, “Yes, this church is environmentally conscious and serious about these issues.”
One thing Christians in this age tend to resist is the idea of outsiders criticizing them. There’s this mindset: “You don’t understand; you’re an outsider.” But when it comes to environmental issues, sometimes those outsiders may have a better perspective on what we’re doing and how we’re positioning ourselves than we’re willing to admit. That can be hard to accept because many churches don’t want to receive critique from the outside, and I understand that.
However, that critique could sometimes help build bridges with others in the community, leading to collaborative projects. Suppose churches were more open to accepting support, advice, and critique. In that case, they could have broader, more in-depth conversations about shared goals, such as wanting clean air, clean water, and nutritionally dense food for their children. How can we work on those goals together?
Jacobsen: Different churches operate differently, textually speaking. For example, some churches may see part of masculinity as driving a Hummer. I’ve seen jokes where men who drive Teslas are seen as not quite gay but somewhere along a line of femininity. Yet, electric cars have a lower carbon footprint, which is part of sustainability.
Many peripheral issues are related to sustainability, environmental care, and stewardship ethics. How do you navigate those discussions when they arise? I’m unsure how often these topics arise in your church, as I’m not there.
Doran: Yes, probably less so in my church here in California than in other churches. However, when I’ve worked with groups in Texas or the Upper Midwest, for example, particularly farming communities, farmers can get a bad rap for not always using the most sensitive language about climate change. But they want their farms to continue for future generations. They want to hand down their farms to them if they have kids.
As hard as it can be, my goal is to use language that doesn’t shame or eco-shame people. Instead, I ask, “What are you doing in your life that has a generational impact?” Family farming is significant for many males, particularly in the U.S., where most farmers are still men. Unfortunately, family farms are becoming a smaller demographic, but those who still run them know what’s happening on their land. They know the weather patterns are changing, they understand erosion, and they’re aware of biodiversity loss. They may not know these concepts from a scientific, lab-based perspective like we might teach at Pepperdine, but they know them from firsthand experience.
It’s important for those of us who live in urban environments to acknowledge that everyone is experiencing climate change. Still, people experience it differently depending on where they are in the country or the world. Those who drive pickup trucks and work on farms may have much more to say about it than we do in the cities, but we’re often not speaking the same language.
We must ask ourselves, “Do we want to pull the rope in the same direction?” How does resurrection provide hope regarding this ethic of care for the environment, sustainability, and stewardship?
Jacobsen: Yes, I’m curious about that connection.
Doran: The first book I wrote is Hope in the Age of Climate Change. A pastor of mine, a million years ago, said that when we preach, we often preach to ourselves more than to the audience, and you get these autobiographical lessons.
At some level, this book was personal for me. I grew up in an abusive, divorced family, and I was working through a lot of theological ideas throughout my life, especially about what constituted child abuse and how to find hope as a skeptical and cynical child and young adult. My Christian faith, specifically the belief in the resurrection, gave me a sense of hope in a radical way that Christians are supposed to believe. I bring that perspective to the table, especially with many of my Gen Z students, who often live in despair due to social media, climate change, or various global events.
I offer not a pie-in-the-sky hope but rather an active one encouraging behaviour change and collaboration. There is no passivity to the hope Christians talk about. You’re not sitting around waiting for God to swoop in like Superman and save the day.
Jacobsen: From the clouds, yes.
Doran: There’s work to be done, and there’s hope to be found in doing that work. Research outside of theology shows that the more we work with others on environmental issues, the more hopeful we become. As social creatures, as humans, we find meaning and purpose in working together. So, part of what I do in this program and my work with churches is to connect people who feel like environmental concerns have placed them outside their social groups. I help them find others working on the same issues and ask, “What can you do together?” Doing things together sends a far more hopeful message than going it alone.
Jacobsen: In large part, Gen Z, Millennials, and others today live in a much more comfortable society than even 100 years ago—whether in terms of lifestyle, quality of life, lifespan, healthspan, or access to education. So, I understand this notion of despair when we project some environmental models forward. Yet, there are solutions, and there are lots of options for those solutions. I don’t understand despair in the sense of doing nothing, which ensures the worst outcome. It’s a completely nonsensical position.
Even though we live in relative comfort, we have these disparate opinions, and we often fail to recognize how fortunate we are to be born at this time. Additionally, through things like rage farming and social media, we’ve created a culture of despair or fault-finding, amplifying negativity on a large scale. It’s all digitized and recorded forever, creating a misleading image of reality. I blame journalists, too, for how reality is sometimes represented, focusing too narrowly on problems rather than widening the lens to see the bigger picture outside the Carping Culture.
You want to avoid looking at these problems with a telescope or a microscope. You want to widen the lens. In my opinion, science is a hammer—a tool for acquiring knowledge about the world. But how do we take that scientific knowledge, especially about the environment and sustainability, and turn it into an ethical imperative for care? How do we give it a moral compass?
Doran: That’s a great question. When I was in grad school, we worked on that topic all the time—not necessarily environmental ethics specifically, but broader ethical questions about living in a better world. How do we leverage science in that way? Let me back up a bit to explain.
As someone who studied biology, and with some of my mentors now being my colleagues, I often joke that they speak “lab language.” They don’t speak direct English or citizen language—in other words, they don’t speak English. They speak “lab-ese,” as I often call it. And this has yet to start in the last 20 or 30 years. It probably dates back to the 1940s and ’50s, when scientists started becoming segregated from average citizens, especially through government contracts.
This has major ramifications, including the decline in trust in the scientific process and scientists across the Western and English-speaking world. So, much trust needs to be rebuilt, and it’s up to scientists to reach out to average citizens and explain—in regular, clear English—what they are doing.
I often discuss this with my science colleagues. From the church or broader community perspective, the challenge is this: We use science to get on a plane and fly to see our grandmother or to get in a car and drive to work. However, we often raise our hackles when scientists argue that we must change our behaviour due to climate or environmental concerns.
That’s when scientists step over from their purely scientific domain into an ethical domain, which can get complicated for average citizens. We use science every day, but when we’re told to change our behaviour, we suddenly start questioning why these scientists are telling us what to do.
But the broader question is moral: do we want clean air? Do we want clean water? Do we want good, nutritionally dense food? These are the three main things I often use in my classes. If we can answer “yes” to those questions, science becomes a tool to help us achieve those goals.
From there, we need to start thinking about the economic, political, and other trade-offs to consider if we want cleaner air, cleaner water, and better food. That’s the order I follow. As a theologian, I view many problems as moral or theological. However, society must decide whether we want clean air, clean water, or good food. Once we decide “yes” to those questions, science can help us get there, and then we’ll need economists, politicians, and others to guide us through the rest because those issues have massive ripple effects beyond science.
Jacobsen: Those are fabulous points. A lot of these scientific or engineering findings have obvious ethical implications. To make the point clearer, let’s use an example of clean air and nutritious food. This is a scientific question—an empirical question. Do seatbelts, airbags, and crumple zones in car architecture, which are designed to absorb most of the impact, save more lives and reduce injury rates more effectively than no seatbelts, no airbags, and cars made of hard steel, where the passengers and drivers are the softest parts? Well, I’m pretty sure the findings over the last few decades have shown that making those changes—adding airbags, seatbelts, and crumple zones—saves more lives, reduces injuries, and lessens the severity of injuries.
That seems straightforward. You’d want to implement seatbelts and airbags to save lives and reduce injury rates. And for the most part, we’ve done that. The same applies to air quality, food, and sustainability. These environmental issues may seem more distant because they’re less immediately impactful—using that term deliberately—than a car crash or the deaths that result from one.
I had a friend who was a passenger in a car when I was a kid. They were drunk, driving too fast in my hometown, and they died in a car crash. That’s a direct consequence. Accidents happen, but you can reduce the probability of such outcomes. So, who do you get more pushback from—policy people or religious communities?
Doran: That’s a good question. I assume you mean when I’m talking about environmental or climate issues—who do I get more pushback from?
Jacobsen: Yes.
Doran: It depends. It varies depending on where I am. In California, I get more pushback from religious communities than from politicians. In other parts of the country, it’s the opposite—I might get more resistance from politicians than from religious groups.
This is a local and regional issue because while federal funding may be available for certain environmental initiatives, implementation happens at the regional or local level. So, reactions and pushback differ by area.
The most common pushback I get from the Christian community is the concern that the environmental issues I’m discussing distract from other Christian commitments, like saving souls or keeping Jesus at the center of one’s life. People ask, “Are you distracting from our primary mission?”
This concern is sincere but often reflects a false dichotomy—the idea that saving souls is the only thing Jesus was about. However, as far as we can tell, Jesus had a healing ministry. He was concerned with people’s well-being.
Jacobsen: Yes, he healed lepers.
Doran: Jesus helped lepers reintegrate into their communities, enabling them to be part of society again. This aspect of Jesus’ ministry has been de-emphasized or even forgotten, particularly in American Protestantism, where the focus often becomes solely on the “pie-in-the-sky” mission of saving souls. And to the detriment of that part of Jesus’ healing ministry—reconnecting people to their communities. At some level, environmental issues are about whether we can live whole, healthy, fully communal lives in our only home.
Jacobsen: Now, regarding pushback, from the 2000s to the 2010s, there was this rah-rah New Atheist orientation or a more private atheist stance of “destroy all religion, religion has nothing good to offer,” etc. How do you integrate with secular communities that are not like that—those who are willing to listen to what you’re saying and recognize that we have a common cause? We may not share the same philosophical foundation, but we share the same concerns.
Doran: I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve spoken with more secular communities or worked on group projects where someone has said, “I wouldn’t have left my church if I had met a Christian like you.”
Jacobsen: Wow.
Doran: And I’m always trying to understand exactly what that means. At some level, I don’t think it means I’m super special, but it shows that talking about these concerns in the way I do has somehow alienated people from their previous faith communities or their understanding of what Christian churches and Christianity could be about. It likely wasn’t the only cause, but it was part of their decision to leave something they once considered an important part of their faith journey.
So, it’s crucial to be as authentic and sincere as possible. I went to graduate school, read many books, and dived into the subtleties and nuances of a faith journey. I think that approach resonates with those on the secular edge because they recognize that there’s a lot more nuance than some brash evangelical or other Protestant voices may present.
When I work with local groups, like the City of Malibu, it doesn’t matter what your religious commitment is while picking up trash, planting trees, or working on a community project. No one cares about your beliefs until afterward when you might go to lunch together and start talking or have dinner later and ask where people come from and why they do what they do. The common experience of doing something together is what builds relationships. After that, conversations about beliefs, identity, and background naturally follow.
For example, I’ve picked up trash on the beach or worked in a community garden in my neighbourhood. That’s the foundation of interfaith work—it starts at the individual level.
Jacobsen: Conferences and academic settings are useful but tend to be more about mutual presentations from something like the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Doran: Yes, you’re right.
Jacobsen: Have I missed anything?
Doran: No, I think we’ve covered everything.
Jacobsen: Cool.
Doran: Do you have any final questions?
Jacobsen: Do you have any messages for Christians skeptical of a sustainability orientation within theology? Do you have any olive branches for secularists who are determined never to collaborate with what they stereotype broadstroke as misogynistic, totalitarian, Christian nationalist movements?
Doran: Well, let me answer the last question first and then make sure I remember the first one.
Jacobsen: You like to reverse the order of answers!
Doran: Yes, I do.
Doran: There’s some recency bias.
Jacobsen: Yes.
Doran: So, for those in the secular community who have formed stereotypes about Christians—and Christians have done the same to the secular community—it might be good for all of us to get off our high horses and start asking more direct questions to individuals, rather than beginning with stereotypes and moving forward from there.
That’s a lesson for secular folks as much as it is for Christians. It’s fascinating to me when I interact with atheists and other secular people on environmental issues. I often get comments like, “I’ve never heard a Christian like you,” or “I wish I had heard this before.” There’s something we can all learn from that.
I try not to stereotype atheists or secular folks, either. If we could model a way of talking to individuals rather than stereotypes, that would be a healthy first step.
As for your first question—what could we think about for other Christians? One of the things I often mention when speaking to communities is that, as research from the Pew Research Center and others shows, environmental issues or a lack of understanding of science are often among the top ten reasons Gen Z and millennials leave the church. I’m not saying that Christian churches should address these science issues just because of that.
But I often tell church leaders to think hard about what they’re saying or not saying in front of their congregations because young people are picking up on whether you think they should be. If young people believe climate change is an issue—and I certainly do, even though I’m a Gen Xer, not a millennial or Gen Z—then I think churches should ask, “Do we take young people seriously?” And if we do, and we don’t stereotype their concerns, what might that do?
We need to model humility and consider what young people are thinking about and what they take seriously. I’m a big fan of intergenerational churches. I’m not a fan of churches that don’t have people of all ages—from 90-somethings to babies in the nursery. There’s much value in the humility that comes from different generations listening to each other. If older folks like me aren’t modelling that humility, I don’t know why I should expect younger folks to do it.
That would be one thing I’d offer:
- If people in your community say climate change or sustainability is a big issue for them, ask them why.
- Ask them why, and try not to stereotype them.
- Listen carefully to why they think it’s such a big deal before you say anything.
- Just ask, “Why?”
Jacobsen: Dr. Doran, Chris, thank you for your time today. I hope it was fun for you, too.
Doran: Cool. Thanks so much, man. I appreciate it.
Jacobsen: Absolutely, Chris. Nice working with you.
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Scott Douglas Jacobsen is the Founder of In-Sight Publishing and Editor-in-Chief of In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal (ISSN 2369–6885). He is a Freelance, Independent Journalist with the Canadian Association of Journalists in Good Standing, a Member of PEN Canada, and a Writer for The Good Men Project. Email: Scott.Douglas.Jacobsen@Gmail.Com.
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