The Bible’s opening in Book of Genesis includes a simple line: “God said, let there be light.” We don’t believe light was used as a metaphor. It wasn’t symbolic.
Light was the remarkable provision that not only made life possible but has sustained it across millennia. And so, we believe those words were not just a command but a prophecy of a bright and hope-filled future for life on Earth.
Only recently have we begun to fully understand how to use this gift more directly: capturing energy from the sun through solar cells and from the wind through turbines. Whether one approaches this through theology or science, the conclusion is the same: One of the most straightforward ways we can produce energy today is the same way it was first given — by the sun.
Solar power doesn’t require importing fuel from hostile nations. It doesn’t rely on fragile supply chains or compromises with despots. It isn’t about greed or pillaging the planet. And it doesn’t ask Americans to change who they are or what they believe. It simply takes something the sun already provides every day and puts it to work.
That’s not a radical idea. For most of American history, protecting our land, water and natural resources wasn’t political; it was common sense, especially in rural America. For farmers, solar can be just another cash crop, providing steady, reliable income alongside the land they already steward.
People who live close to the land understand something policymakers sometimes forget: You cannot survive without respecting what sustains you. If our soil fails, farms fail. If our water is polluted, families pay the price. If energy is unreliable or unaffordable, rural communities feel it first — and eventually, so does the entire country. This is not ideology; it is reality.
Dirty energy, and the neglect of Biblical principles, has also become a major public health issue. Urban or rural, we all breathe the same air. But asthma, heart disease and respiratory illnesses hit harder where health care access is limited. Clean energy means cleaner air, safer water and fewer worries about what our children are breathing. Many Americans feel called to restore the integrity of creation — and rightly so. Scripture makes that responsibility clear.
The Bible offers a profound body of teaching on caring for creation. Taken as a whole, it reads as an ecological guide to living rightly on Earth. Centered on God as creator and sustainer, it calls us to honor what is God’s. After all, creation is repeatedly called “good.”
The Book of Genesis calls us to conserve and keep the earth. It condemns destruction, calls for restoration and points toward renewal.
Today, the technology, affordability and benefits of clean energy make those biblical exhortations actionable. The sun rises every day, reliable, abundant and free. How can we ignore it? Energy independence has long been a bipartisan value. The more we rely on foreign energy or concentrated corporate control, the less control Americans have over prices, reliability and their own well-being.
Rural communities understand this deeply. When power fails or disasters strike, help is slow. When costs rise, the impact is immediate. And when pollution increases, it is our children who bear the risk.
That is why clean energy matters, not just for the environment, but for our health, our economy and our freedom. Solar fits squarely within that American tradition.
Using the sun’s light to power our homes, protect our health and strengthen rural America — and, in turn, the nation — advances independence and stewardship alike. It is not political. It is practical, responsible and moral.
Calvin B. DeWitt is an environmental scientist in the Nelson Institute, University of Wisconsin-Madison and president of the Academy of Evangelical Scientists and Ethicists. Helen Rose is an educator and nonprofit leader who worked as the director of grassroots programs of the Climate Change Solutions Campaign and is the faith outreach coordinator for the Earth Day Network.  
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