Faithful Ecological Science, with Ben Lowe

Conservationist and environmental advocate Ben Lowe discusses our ecological crisis, the role of Christian faith and spirituality, and how churches can respond with hope, action, and theological depth.

He joins Mark Labberton for a grounded conversation on the intersection of faith, climate change, and the church’s role in ecological justice. As executive director of A Rocha USA, Lowe brings over two decades of experience in environmental biology, ethics, and faith-based conservation to explore how Christians can engage meaningfully with environmental crises. They move from scientific clarity about climate urgency to the theological blind spots that have hindered the Christian response.

Together, they explore how churches across the US and beyond are reclaiming creation care—not as a political issue, but as a form of discipleship and worship. With stories ranging from urban stream cleanups to coral reef restoration, Lowe emphasizes small, local, relational efforts that respond to God’s ongoing work in the world. At the heart of the conversation lies a call to moral will, theological clarity, and faithfulness in the face of ecological grief.

Episode Highlights

“The world is good—but it’s groaning.”

“Small does not mean insignificant. … We have the solutions. The problem is not our technical ability—it’s our moral and political will.”

Learn More about A Rocha

Visit arocha.us for more information.

About Ben Lowe

Ben Lowe is executive director of A Rocha USA, a Christian conservation organization engaged in ecological discipleship, community-based restoration, and climate advocacy across the US and globally. He holds a PhD in interdisciplinary ecology from the University of Florida and a BS in environmental biology from Wheaton College (IL). Ben has spent over two decades working at the intersection of faith, science, and environmental justice, and is passionate about equipping churches to participate in God’s restoration of creation.

Since his first encounter with A Rocha as a Wheaton student in 2003, Ben has served on A Rocha staff teams and boards, nationally and internationally, most recently as deputy executive director of A Rocha International. Ben’s training as a scientist and a minister inform his leadership and development of A Rocha USA’s national strategy and team.

Originally from Singapore, Ben was the founding national organizer of Young Evangelicals for Climate Action and has served on the boards of A Rocha USA, A Rocha International, the Au Sable Institute, and Christians for Social Action. He is the author of multiple books, and his work has been featured in media outlets including Audubon Magazine, Christianity Today, and the New York Times. He has a bachelor of science in environmental biology from Wheaton and a PhD from the University of Florida focussed on the human, religious, and ethical dimensions of environmental change and conservation. Ben is based in the warm and watery state of Florida, where he can often be found kayaking on the Indian River Lagoon.

Show Notes

• Earth Day began in 1970, a pivotal moment for environmental awareness—“That means that I was a junior in high school when the world embraced this name as a way of trying to bring attention to the whole world about environmental issues.”
• Mark Labberton opens with concern for “the political moment that we’re in … in the United States and in other places around the world.”
• Ben Lowe introduces the biblical framing: “This world is good, but it’s also groaning.”

Why Climate Action Still Matters

• “We don’t know where we would be, were it not for Earth Day fifty years ago.”
• “The question is not whether we know what to do, but whether we’re doing the right thing and we’re doing enough of it.”
• “It’s never too late to take action and to get engaged.”

Scientific Consensus and Urgency

• “The science has gotten a lot more sophisticated and a lot clearer.”
• “We’re not talking about hypothetical issues anymore. We’re talking about issues that many, if not all of us, are tangibly experiencing now.”
• “Things are moving faster, further, and at a greater scale and magnitude than we were hoping to be experiencing right now.”

Oceans, Heat, and the Limits of Natural Buffers

• “The oceans are a huge gift to human society, and they have been buffering and absorbing a lot of the heat and the carbon that we’ve been emitting.”
• “The oceans are not limitless. … We are seeing signs that the oceans are warming more than they can sustain.”
• “Every year now we have these hurricanes that are huge in terms of their scale and the amount of water that they can suck up from these overheated oceans.”

Practical Impact of Climate Change

• “My homeowner’s insurance rates more than doubled in the last few years.”
• “We’re just getting all these signs coming from all of our systems that are warning us that we are on a completely unsustainable path.”
• “The silver lining to us being the driver of so many of these problems is that we can also choose to be part of the solution.”

Role of the Church in Ecological Transformation

• “The church can really shine a light of hope, of love of the good news that God promises for this world in the midst of all that.”
• “Small does not mean insignificant.”
• “We have the solutions we need. … The problem is not our technical ability, it’s our moral and political will that has been lacking.”

Global Clean Energy Transition

• “We are in a great transition, but that transition is happening and it’s sort of unstoppable.”
• “The question is how quickly will it happen and will we be able to move it forward quickly enough?”
• “Christians have a particular contribution. … We can bring the moral will to help shape the decisions.”

A Rocha’s Global and Local Work

• “A Rocha is a network of Christian conservation organizations in about twenty-five countries around the world.”
• In Florida, “we’re helping to work with local partners, universities, high schools, churches, to conserve the lagoon.”
• “In Austin, Texas … we have a lot of Spanish-language programming … to help connect recent immigrants with the communities that they’re living in.”

Partnering with Churches for Creation Care

• “The cutting edge of what we’re moving into now though is our work with churches.”
• “Research … is showing that there is a shift happening with more and more Christians in churches becoming aware of the problems in God’s world.”
• “Now we have more and more people coming to us, so much that we’re growing, but we’re not growing fast enough and we have to turn some people away.”

Localized Action and Practical Partnerships

• “We launched a cohort of Vineyard USA churches … to support Vineyard congregations that want to get more involved.”
• “We walk them through a process of discerning … the ways that God might be inviting them to participate in what God’s already doing.”
• “We’re working with a church on Oahu in Hawaii that bought a defunct golf course … we’re working together to help restore the native habitat.”

Creation Care as Worship and Witness

• “We see this as being in God’s hands … and us as playing a faithful role in responding to what God is doing.”
• “What would a follower of Jesus do in this situation?”
• “Everything that we do to care for creation … the offering itself is one that we direct to God as the creator.”

Theological Reformation, Not Innovation

• “It’s not theological change so much as it’s theological reformation. This is orthodoxy.”
• “We don’t see this work as of our own initiative. What we see ourselves doing is responding to what God is already doing.”

End Times Theology and Ecological Responsibility

• “We don’t treat anything else in life that way. We don’t treat our bodies that way. We don’t treat our children that way.”
• “It has been biblically orthodox from the very beginning to care for God’s world.”
• “It’s not because we’re Christian, it’s because we’ve not been Christian enough.”

Political Identity vs. Christian Witness

• “We see these issues first and foremost through our political lenses instead of through our theological biblical Christian lenses.”
• “These issues transcend any particular political ideology or party.”
• “They’re moral issues, they’re faith issues, they’re spiritual issues, and for us, they’re an integral matter of our Christian discipleship and witness.”

How A Rocha Helps Churches Avoid Partisan Pitfalls

• “We try to say, all right, what does God call us to do as people, as his image bearers in the world today?”
• “Let’s do a stream cleanup together.”
• “You kind of learn as you go … and before you know it, you look back and you realize, oh gosh, how far I have come.”

Discipleship and Environmental Stewardship

• “The longer I’m in this work, the more I’m learning how to care for creation and help others do the same.”
• “The closer I grow to Christ too, and the more I find myself being conformed into what the Bible calls us to be.”
• “It’s not always an easy journey, but it’s a really good and life-giving and sanctifying journey.”

Mark’s Personal Reflection: Replanting His Garden

• “It has utterly changed the way that I now look out the kitchen window.”
• “Just that small change has given me a better sense of life, a better sense of creation … a better sense of the importance of having a world that you can meditate on.”

Ben Lowe’s Formative Experiences in Singapore and the Black Hills

• “We’d sort through the catch with them and they’d give us the things that they couldn’t sell.”
• “Being able to step out into a national forest and breathe the air … reminds me that … there is still so much good in this world worth protecting.”

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment magazine and Fuller Seminary.