Are Evangelical Critics of Global Warming Driven by Politics?
By E. Calvin Beisner, Ph.D.
By Dr. E. Calvin Beisner, National Spokesperson for The Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation.
Katharine Hayhoe, Director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University, believes firmly in dangerous, manmade global warming. She’s also an evangelical.
That puts her in a minority several times over. Out of the American population as a whole she’s in a minority; over 60 percent think human activity has nothing to do with global warming. Out of evangelicals, she’s in a minority; rejection of human causation among evangelicals is even higher than for the general population. And if, like her husband (who co-authored a book on global warming with her), she were an evangelical pastor, she’d be in a minority there, too; 68 percent of them disagree that global warming is manmade.
But Hayhoe isn’t worried. She has a ready response: “Climate change is associated with Al Gore, the liberal agenda, the U.N., tree-huggers. Essentially, people who don't seem to share [Christians’] values,” she told International Business Times. “As a Christian community, we're currently allowing politics to inform our faith, rather than allowing our faith to inform our politics.”
Is that so? Could’ve fooled me.
The Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation has published frequently its belief that recent and foreseeable global warming is largely natural, that human activity has probably contributed to it but only slightly, and that it hasn’t been and isn’t likely to become dangerous. Our publications have been credited by the media with heavily influencing evangelicals’ thinking. And indeed polls have shown evangelical opinion trending strongly in our direction and away from Hayhoe’s.
If Hayhoe is right, there should be plenty of political and no theological arguments in our documents.
But the facts are otherwise. ... [Read the rest.]
