On the Road With What Would Jesus Drive: Answers Across America

Last November, the Evangelical Environmental Network posed a simple question that sparked discussions from water coolers to Sunday school classes across the country: "What Would Jesus Drive?" Released in a television commercial and advertisement in Christianity Today and announced by 90 prominent evangelical leaders, the campaign asked consumers and Detroit to make the connection between the cars they drive and build and the commandment to protect God?s creation. Reverend Jim Ball, executive director of the Evangelical Environmental Network, joined leaders from across the religious spectrum in Detroit to meet with automakers, including Bill Ford, and urged them to make more fuel-efficient cars.

The "What Would Jesus Drive?" campaign helped reframe the national debate over gas-guzzling cars as a moral choice and galvanized people of faith.

On the Road with the What Would Jesus Drive Tour

As American families go on summer road trips, Reverend Ball and his wife Kara went on a road trip of their own.

The Balls drove their hybrid, fuel-efficient car through the south starting in Austin, Texas and ending in Washington DC. They appeared on local Christian radio stations, spoke to congregations and met with religious leaders about the relationship between the cars we drive, loving our neighbors, and protecting God's creation. They also listened to answers to the now famous question: what would Jesus drive?

Stops on the "What Would Jesus Drive?" road tour were planned for Austin, Houston, and Dallas, TX; Little Rock, AR; Chattanooga, TN; Birmingham, AL; Atlanta, GA; Columbia, SC; Charlotte and Raleigh, NC; Lynchburg, VA; Shepherdstown, WV and Creation Fest, the largest Christian rock festival in the US.

The tour ended in Washington DC, where the Reverend and other religious leaders met with the White House, Congressional leaders and Democratic presidential candidates on the emerging religious consensus that fuel economy and pollution from vehicles are serious moral issues.