the climate of suspicion among American evangelicals
Time arrived with this cover copy a while back: How to Win the War on Global Warming. Shall we confront a brutal fact in evangelical perspective? The thoughtful person on the outside of American Christianity looking in at its dominant form (evangelicalism) has every right to think:Evangelicals have been among the most dismissive of the effort to address global warming. If I am considering the Christian message, I should take this into account. If I support efforts to address climate change now for the sake of the vulnerable poor and future generations, I will be viewed as one of those environmental whackos by evangelicals. Life is stressful enough. I think I’ll get my spirituality on the golf course instead. Some of my dear friends think I’m on a hobby horse with this environmental thing. I don’t blame them. It could easily appear that way. A pastor gets a hold of something and lets the gift of enthusiasm run amok. I’ve rolled my eyes at many a pastor in this mode in a “there they go again” sort of way. Pastors can be annoying. I get that. I could quote chapter and verse of my own life regarding various enthusiasms. But what my friends might miss, I’m now trying to put into words. It’s not the environmental cause part of me that’s been exercised by this issue. It’s the evangelical heart part of me, which I treasure because it came to me as a gift and a work of the Holy Spirit after reading “On the Religious Affections” several years ago, but that’s another post for another day.Reasonable people disagree about how to evaluate the scientific consensus on climate change, whether it’s a case of mass hysteria or not. I would argue that it’s not and that there is plenty of ballast in the system to prevent such mass hysteria–powerful financial, governmental and media interests, not to mention (which of course I now proceed to do) the disinclination to accept data that suggests the need for a big change that could affect personal lifestyles somewhere down the road. Nevertheless intelligent, thoughtful people can and do make the case that the effort to reduce greenhouse gases is a fool’s errand inspired by a kind of cultural pendulum swing in a particular direction. Some people I know, love, admire and respect see it that way.But….how is it that the evangelical church as a whole, compared to the rest of society leans in the direction it does? So that a thoughtful person on the outside of faith looking in concludes that Christianity tends to make people less supportive of efforts to address climate change? How can that be explained, that lean?I’ve met more evangelical pastors who doubt the scientific consensus regarding climate change–that it is a real problem likely caused by human activity–than any other occupational group. It’s changing fast as evangelicals get back in touch with their biblical commitment to environmental concerns. But there are still plenty of my fellow pastors who think climate change is a lot of hooey. If I were sitting on an airplane overhearing someone grouse about the chicken littles who think the earth is warming because of human activity, I’d expect them to be evangelicals. And I wouldn’t be at all surprised to meet a fellow pastor.I know lots of engineers for the American auto companies, and they are not, as a group, as suspicious of global warming as the evangelical pastors I know. Even though the swing toward vehicles with better gas mileage hurts the American companies.If to be evangelical means we are eager to share good news with those who are on the outside of faith looking in, why is this so? What it is about our faith that makes it so? Why have we set the burden of proof as we have on this issue? Where have we gotten our special scientific insight that assures us that the vast majority of climate scientist are incorrect? That they haven’t consider natural cycles or solar flares in their calculations? Especially since many who are on the outside of faith looking in are deeply concerned about the environment and this concern offers a potential common ground with a biblical perspective (stewardship of creation)?To repeat: for any given individual to be skeptical about climate change is neither here nor there from a biblical faith perspective. We trust or distrust varying authorities for varying reasons. Few of us can claim the kind of scientific knowledge that allows us to review the evidence and make an independent assessment of it’s credibility. The National Academy of Sciences might be wrong and the guy on Fox News might be right. But why does skepticism on climate change seem to be so pervasive, almost an article of faith, a kind of default setting among so many of my fellow evangelicals? Why this preponderance of skepticism on this particular issue? Why did we skimp on skepticism when it came to Y2K only to lay it on thick when climate change hit the radar? What is about the possibility of a fallen species negatively impacting the climate in a way that makes life hard for many on the planet…what is it about this scenario that meets with such default suspicion among those with, of all things, a biblical worldview?It’s stupefying to me that such would be the case from either a biblical or a scientific point of view. But it’s understandable from a cultural perspective. Environmental concern has been viewed as a liberal rather than a conservative concern, politically and culturally. Even though conservatism, if words mean anything, might lean toward conserving resources rather than burning through them liberally (like money) so to speak. But we know that environmental concerns are widely viewed as liberal concerns rather than conservative concerns in the current political-cultural climate. So it’s understandable from a political-cultural perspective. But should the political-cultural perspective be so determinative among those who consider themselves to be in but not of this world? Is it not possible that the American evangelical tendency toward more-than-ordinary suspicion about climate change science is a symptom not of extraordinarily acute biblical or scientific perspective but of an unrecognized and therefore more powerful culture-bound perspective?Any way you shake it adds up to an irony: to be evangelical–which means being eager not to place unnecessary political or cultural concerns ahead of one’s concern to spread the gospel to every nook and cranny of creation–to be evangelical in America now means that you have to be willing to offend some of the sensibilities of the evangelical sub-culture.Now I turn to my fellow pastors who know that many in their church are highly skeptical about climate change: perhaps you have no biblical or scientific grounds for skepticism about climate change; in principle you admit that there is no particular biblical reason to be skeptical about the consensus view regarding climate change; in principle you admit there’s no need to be guarded about teaching your flock the biblical value of stewardship as it applies to God’s creation. Except, that if you do, you might have to say something about climate change in biblical perspective. (Unless you wish to teach about environmental stewardship and avoid mentioning the biggest environmental concern of our day.) And that means you might have to say that there’s nothing in the Bible to suggest that we of all people should be especially skeptical about climate change. You might have to suggest that a.m. talk radio may not be the most reliable source for science news. That would be going out on a limb.Fellow pastor, which is more important to you? To be evangelical or to be in perfect step with the cultural milieu of modern day American evangelicalism? Is it worth annoying some of your fellow evangelicals in order to remove an obstacle to faith affecting those on the outside of faith looking in? If not,
what does the word evangelical mean to you?Can I get a witness?
