I would also add that the CEO of Duke Energy
called for a carbon tax a few days ago and criticized Bush for not doing enough
about climate change. Couple this with the call by folks e.g. Frank Gaffney and
Bud McFarlane to consider energy dependence a paramount security issue (though
this may resulting plumping for more coal and nuclear use domestically, so not
necessarily a positive development on the climate change front) and we do
indeed have a potential sea change of public opinion on this matter ahead. Whether
it will attain sufficient issue saliency to influence politicos remains to be
seen. Jim Ball is still on the fringes of the evangelical movement for me, but
if folks like the National
Association of Evangelicals really devote some political capital to this, wow! wil
From:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Paul Steinberg
Sent: Wednesday, April 13, 2005 1:28 PM
To:
GEP-ed@listserve1.allegheny.edu
Subject: Public opinion and
climate change
In a related vein, there has been an unexpected development in U.S. environmental politics that could
potentially have a significant impact on American public opinion and U.S. policy
regarding the global environment.
The country's major Christian evangelical organizations are launching a
campaign to force the Republican Party to pay more attention to environmental issues
such as global warming. These organizations, whose membership counts in
the millions, are a major source of support for the party and have extensive
grassroots mobilization capabilities. I have copied a Washington Post
article below.
Paul
The Greening of Evangelicals
Christian Right Turns, Sometimes Warily, to Environmentalism
By Blaine Harden
Washington
Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 6, 2005; Page A01
SEATTLE --
Thanks to the Rev. Leroy Hedman, the parishioners at Georgetown Gospel Chapel
take their baptismal waters cold. The preacher has unplugged the
electricity-guzzling heater in the immersion baptism tank behind his pulpit. He
has also installed energy-saving fluorescent light bulbs throughout the church
and has placed water barrels beneath its gutter pipes -- using runoff to
irrigate the congregation's all-organic gardens.
Such "creation care" should be at the heart of evangelical life,
Hedman says, along with condemning abortion, protecting family and loving
Jesus. He uses the term "creation care" because, he says, it does not
annoy conservative Christians for whom the word "environmentalism"
connotes liberals, secularists and Democrats.
Richard Cizik, left, and the Rev. Jim Ball march at last month's antiabortion
rally in Washington.
They handed out papers that cited federal government studies showing that 1 in
6 babies is born with harmful levels of mercury.
"It's amazing to me that evangelicals haven't gone quicker for the
green," Hedman said. "But as creation care spreads, evangelicals will
demand different behavior from politicians. The Republicans should not take us
for granted."
There is growing evidence -- in polling and in public statements of church
leaders -- that evangelicals are beginning to go for the green. Despite
wariness toward mainstream environmental groups, a growing number of
evangelicals view stewardship of the environment as a responsibility mandated
by God in the Bible.
"The environment is a values issue," said the Rev. Ted Haggard,
president of the 30 million-member National Association of Evangelicals.
"There are significant and compelling theological reasons why it should be
a banner issue for the Christian right."
In October, the association's leaders adopted an "Evangelical Call to
Civic Responsibility" that, for the first time, emphasized every
Christian's duty to care for the planet and the role of government in
safeguarding a sustainable environment.
"We affirm that God-given dominion is a sacred responsibility to steward
the earth and not a license to abuse the creation of which we are a part,"
said the statement, which has been distributed to 50,000 member churches.
"Because clean air, pure water, and adequate resources are crucial to
public health and civic order, government has an obligation to protect its
citizens from the effects of environmental degradation."
Signatories included highly visible, opinion-swaying evangelical leaders such
as Haggard, James Dobson of Focus on the Family and Chuck Colson of Prison
Fellowship Ministries. Some of the signatories are to meet in March in Washington to develop a
position on global warming, which could place them at odds with the policies of
the Bush administration, according to Richard Cizik, the association's vice
president for governmental affairs.
Also last fall, Christianity Today, an influential evangelical magazine,
weighed in for the first time on global warming. It said that "Christians
should make it clear to governments and businesses that we are willing to adapt
our lifestyles and support steps towards changes that protect our
environment."
The magazine came out in favor of a global warming bill -- sponsored by Sens.
John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) -- that the Bush
administration opposed and the Republican-controlled Senate defeated.
Polling has found a strengthening consensus among evangelicals for strict
environmental rules, even if they cost jobs and higher prices, said John C.
Green, director of the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron. In 2000, about 45 percent of
evangelicals supported strict environmental regulations, according to Green's
polling. That jumped to 52 percent last year.
"It has changed slowly, but it has changed," Green said. "There
is now a lot of ferment out there."
Such ferment matters because evangelicals are politically active. Nearly four
out of five white evangelical Christians voted last year for President Bush,
constituting more than a third of all votes cast for him, according to the Pew Research
Center. The analysis
found that the political clout of evangelicals has increased as their
cohesiveness in backing the Republican Party has grown. Republicans outnumber
Democrats within the group by more than 2 to 1.
There is little to suggest in recent elections that environmental concerns
influenced the evangelical vote -- indeed, many members of Congress who receive
100 percent approval ratings from Christian advocacy groups get failing grades
from environmental groups. But the latest statements and polls have caught the
eye of established environmental organizations.
The Greening of Evangelicals
Several are attempting to make alliances with the Christian right on specific
issues, such as global warming and the presence of mercury and other dangerous
toxins in the blood of newborn children.
After the election last fall, leaders of the country's major environmental
groups spent an entire day at a meeting in Washington trying to figure out how to talk
to evangelicals, according to Larry Schweiger, president of the National
Wildlife Federation. For decades, he said, environmentalists have failed to
make that connection.
Richard Cizik, left, and the Rev. Jim Ball march at last month's antiabortion
rally in Washington.
They handed out papers that cited federal government studies showing that 1 in
6 babies is born with harmful levels of mercury.
"There is a lot of suspicion," said Schweiger, who describes himself
as a conservationist and a person of faith. "There are a lot of questions
about what are our real intentions."
Green said the evangelicals' deep suspicion about environmentalists has
theological roots.
"While evangelicals are open to being good stewards of God's creation,
they believe people should only worship God, not creation," Green said.
"This may sound like splitting hairs. But evangelicals don't see it that
way. Their stereotype of environmentalists would be Druids who worship
trees."
Another reason that evangelicals are suspicious of environmental groups is
cultural and has its origins in how conservative Christians view themselves in
American society, according to the Rev. Jim Ball, executive director of the
Evangelical Environmental Network. The group made its name with the "What
Would Jesus Drive?" campaign against gas-guzzling cars but recently
shifted its focus to reducing global warming.
"Evangelicals feel besieged by the culture at large," Ball said.
"They don't know many environmentalists, but they have the idea they are
pretty weird -- with strange liberal, pantheist views."
Ball said that the way to bring large numbers of evangelicals on board as
political players in environmental issues is to make persuasive arguments that,
for instance, tie problems of global warming and mercury pollution to family
health and the health of unborn children. He adds that evangelicals themselves
-- not such groups as the Sierra Club or Friends of the Earth, with their
liberal Democratic baggage -- are the only ones who can do the persuading.
"Environmental groups are always going to be viewed in a wary
fashion," Ball said. "They just don't have a good enough feel for the
evangelical community. There are landmines from the past, and they will hit
them without knowing it."
Even for green activists within the evangelical movement, there are landmines.
One faction in the movement, called dispensationalism, argues that the return
of Jesus and the end of the world are near, so it is pointless to fret about
environmental degradation.
James G. Watt, President Ronald Reagan's first interior secretary, famously
made this argument before Congress in 1981, saying: "God gave us these
things to use. After the last tree is felled, Christ will come back." The
enduring appeal of End Time musings among evangelicals is reflected in the phenomenal
success of the Left Behind series of apocalyptic potboilers, which have sold
more than 60 million copies and are the best-selling novels in the country.
Haggard, the leader of the National Association of Evangelicals, concedes that
this thinking "is a problem that I do have to address regularly in talking
to the common man on the street. I tell them to live your life as if Jesus is
coming back tomorrow, but plan your life as if he is not coming back in your
lifetime. I also tell them that the authors of the Left Behind books have life
insurance policies."
This argument is apparently resonating. Green said the notion that an imminent
Judgment Day absolves people of environmental responsibility is now a
"fringe" belief.
Unusual weather phenomena, such as the four hurricanes that battered Florida last year and
the melting of the glaciers around the world, have captured the attention of
evangelicals and made many more willing to listen to scientific warnings about
the dangers of global warming, Haggard said.
At the same time, activists such as Ball from the Evangelical Environmental
Network are trying to show how the most important hot-button issue of the
Christian right -- abortion and the survival of the unborn -- has a green
dimension.
"Stop Mercury Poisoning of the Unborn," said a banner that Ball
carried in last month's antiabortion march in Washington. Holding up the other end of the
banner was Cizik, the National Association of Evangelicals' chief lobbyist.
They handed out carefully footnoted papers that cited federal government
studies showing that 1 in 6 babies is born with harmful levels of mercury. The
fliers urged Christians not to support the "Clear Skies" act, a Bush
administration proposal to regulate coal-burning power plants that are a primary
source of mercury pollution.
Although Cizik carried the banner and handed out literature that implicitly
criticized Bush's policy on regulating mercury, he conceded that many
evangelicals find it difficult to criticize the president.
"It is hard to oppose him when he has the moral authority of the office of
the president and a record of standing with us on moral issues like
abortion," Cizik said.
In Seattle,
Hedman says that evangelicals should worry less about the moral authority of
the president and more about their biblical obligation to care for Earth.
"The Earth is God's body," Hedman said in a recent sermon. "God
wants us to look after it."
Correction to This Article: A Feb. 6 story incorrectly quoted James G.
Watt, interior secretary under President Ronald Reagan, as telling Congress in
1981: After the last tree is felled, Christ will come back. Although
that statement has been widely attributed to Watt, there is no historical
record that he made it.
--
Paul F. Steinberg
Assistant Professor of Political Science
and Environmental Policy
Department of Humanities and Social Sciences
Harvey Mudd College
301 E. 12th Street, Claremont, CA 91711
tel. 909-607-3840 fax 909-607-7600
http://www.humsoc.hmc.edu/paulweb/index.html