Rolling Stone Magazine features Anna Jane Joyner in its most recent issue, calling the 29-year-old Black Mountain resident “the millennial face of a growing national movement that seeks to convince America’s 80 million evangelicals that biblical tenets are compatible with environmentalism.”
Joyner previously worked for the WNC Alliance and is currently working as a climate campaign consultant for the national We Are Here Now organization.
Joyner gained national attention last year for being featured in the “Years of Living Dangerously” Showtime documentary series that explored the challenges of climate change.
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2 thoughts on “Rolling Stone: Black Mountain’s Anna Joyner is the ‘millennial face’ of biblical-based environmentalism”
Grant Millin
Congratulations, Anna Jayne.
Big Al
I do not know if it was Ms. Joyner (probably not) or another author who I spoke to at the WNC Lit Fest two years ago, but this author had written about engaging churches of several different denominations in environmental activism. Problem is, the churches she visited were all very small and on the fringes of mainstream Christianity.
I brought to her attention the mainstream (mostly Southern Baptist but a few other mainline denominations) concept of “Creation Care”, which recognizes the need for Christians to address environmental issues such as pollution and hazardous waste disposal, but does NOT go so far as to affirm “man-made global warming” or adopt socialistic redistribution methods such as corporate taxation and “carbon credits”. When I asked this author if she would be willing to join with these Christians on their shared values while leaving the unshared ones alone, she responded “They just need to be educated to the rightness of OUR cause.” In other word, NO, it is OUR way or NO way.
This inability to compromise will always be the biggest barrier to making progress on the environment, not the “denial” so often touted by the most radical environmentalists. There is much that the mainstream public IS willing to do to improve the environment, but not if the immediate goal of the activists is “winner take all ” as if this is just some political game.
Congratulations, Anna Jayne.
I do not know if it was Ms. Joyner (probably not) or another author who I spoke to at the WNC Lit Fest two years ago, but this author had written about engaging churches of several different denominations in environmental activism. Problem is, the churches she visited were all very small and on the fringes of mainstream Christianity.
I brought to her attention the mainstream (mostly Southern Baptist but a few other mainline denominations) concept of “Creation Care”, which recognizes the need for Christians to address environmental issues such as pollution and hazardous waste disposal, but does NOT go so far as to affirm “man-made global warming” or adopt socialistic redistribution methods such as corporate taxation and “carbon credits”. When I asked this author if she would be willing to join with these Christians on their shared values while leaving the unshared ones alone, she responded “They just need to be educated to the rightness of OUR cause.” In other word, NO, it is OUR way or NO way.
This inability to compromise will always be the biggest barrier to making progress on the environment, not the “denial” so often touted by the most radical environmentalists. There is much that the mainstream public IS willing to do to improve the environment, but not if the immediate goal of the activists is “winner take all ” as if this is just some political game.