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
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