Evangelical and Environmental by Niki2

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Evangelical and Environmental

POSTED BY: NIKI2
UPDATED: Saturday, April 6, 2024 16:12
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Monday, December 21, 2009 10:02 AM

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...

BBC News, Matt Frei:

If the green movement truly wants to convert America it needs to convert more evangelical Christians. Let me explain.

According to a BBC News/Harris Poll, the number of Americans who worry that carbon emissions are slowly heating our planet like a lobster pot has actually declined in the last eight years by 25%.

Despite Hurricane Katrina, which rang alarm bells about the connection between climate change and menacing weather, Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth and a photo album of environmental horrors from melting ice caps to rising sea levels to receding glaciers, fewer Americans are convinced today that the planet is in peril because of human behaviour.

Global warming has cooled off alarmingly on the list of priorities.

'Miserable hoax'

Climate Gate - the brouhaha over some scientists padding some of their evidence - has been seized on by the usual suspects like Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, who is prouder than ever to call global warming a miserable hoax.

But it is also fanning the embers of scepticism. Even the New York Times said it was a disaster at the very time when the Copenhagen summit should at least take the science for granted if not the politics.

In Europe, the environmental lobby has for long been part of the mainstream of course.

In Germany, the Green party has helped to further its agenda by making or breaking coalition governments.

Indeed, its agenda has been stolen by the more established political parties.

In Britain, the opposition Tories are now sounding greener than the governing Labour party.

In Europe, the colour green doesn't need to justify itself.

Alternative arguments

Not so here. As a result America has been adept at coming up with alternative arguments why limiting the amount of carbon we spew into the atmosphere is a good idea.

Despite Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth and a photo album of environmental horrors, fewer Americans are convinced today that the planet is in peril because of human behaviour

There is the economic argument of green jobs, touted - among others - by the Obama administration.

There is the national pride argument: "We can't let the Chinese invent, produce and sell something that we as the world's most powerful and innovative economy should call our own."

There is the national security argument. "Even if you hate tree-huggers, you do agree - don't you? - that America should wean itself off Middle East oil and thus become less beholden to the very dictators who are fuelling hatred of their most needy client.

There is the geopolitical argument: why depend on a commodity that makes the likes of Hugo Chavez, Vladimir Putin and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad more powerful?

They're all sound but clearly none of them have convinced the great American public in sufficient numbers.

The poison of partisan politics and the culture wars are largely to blame.

Bridging the divide

I interviewed a lumberjack from Wisconsin this week who virtually admitted to me that he would be in favour of carbon caps and preserving the forest he had spent a career cutting down if the climate change crowd weren't also in favour of gay marriage and abortion.

In America, the planet has fallen into the cracks created by a bitterly divided political landscape.

The candidate who is able to straddle the divide between social conservatism and environmental activism, who can recruit God in the service of the planet, is onto a winner

In recent years, He has become conflicted in America between driving a Prius and driving a gas guzzler.

The evangelical movement is split between those conservative Christians who suspect that climate change is an evil secular plot, concocted by the devil, Al Gore and "the global government crowd" - in the words of Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher - and those who passionately believe that good Christians need to be good custodians of the planet.

Two years ago I went to Liberty University in Virginia, the home of the late Jerry Falwell and asked a lecture room full of students if they believed in the threat of global warming. Not a single hand went up.

I travelled up the road to the Eastern Mennonite College at Harrisonburg and asked a similar number of Christian students the same question. Almost every hand shot up.

Green pastor

This week, I spoke to Pastor Tri Robinson from the Vineyard Church in Boise, Idaho, who described to me his journey from scepticism to conviction about the need to tackle climate change via the Bible.

This is a growing trend inside the evangelical movement.

Pastor Tri described himself as both a "tree-hugger and a social conservative".

He is against abortion and for caps on carbon emissions. And he prays that he won't have to choose between the two at the next election.

But that is exactly what awaits him because for now there is no prominent conservative politician on the horizon who is, to put it bluntly, both pro-life and pro-planet.

Remember how the last Republican convention was electrified by the call to "drill baby drill"?

Pastor Tri and his flock are looking for a political home.

The candidate who is able to give them one, who can straddle the divide between social conservatism and environmental activism, who can recruit God in the service of the planet, is onto a winner.

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Monday, December 21, 2009 11:50 AM

NIKI2

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...

Bumping to keep up with PN. ;o)

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Monday, December 21, 2009 2:03 PM

DREAMTROVE

Nik

not sure keeping up with PN is a goal.

But on the main point, in the US, environmentalism is really harmed by the degree the movement associates itself with the left and attacks the right. This gives corporate whores on the right the floor, I'm talking about Limbaugh and co. There are corporate whores on the left two but the right isn't attacking them for being corporate whores, and so they don't get found out until there's a major scandal. But this needs to be a non-partisan movement.

There's already a fairly strong christian conservationist movement, but it's easy to convince people that the group that's attacking you is also lying.

Bad science doesn't help either. There's very little in Al Gore's movie that's actually true, and yeah, I watched it. Al Gore isn't a scientist, and he hurts everyone by getting involved with science. I suspect event Richard Dawkins is hurting his own cause. As a general rule, don't oppose any group, or you're unlikely to win their sympathy.

Consider the case of Pirate News, for a moment. Let's say that he's right, for the sake of the argument, and that jewish leadership is behind the degeneration of the free world. I don't agree, but take it as a hypothetical...

Would the jewish leadership or its followers have any reason on earth to change their ways based on the posts of Pirate News, who more or less pegs them as satanic subhumanoids in need of cultural or physical extermination?

So, sure, the left and right demonize each other all the time, but what's currently holding the christian conservation movement back is the conservationists ties to the left, and the left's assault on religion in general.

The Nobel committee alas just discredits itself.

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Monday, December 21, 2009 2:42 PM

FREMDFIRMA

I dunno, Niki - my first response to being agreed with by Christians is "Get off my side!"...

And my second is usually this.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/YourApprovalFillsMeWithSham
e

But then, I'd be the first to admit I got "issues" with that whole belief system anyways.

-F

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Monday, December 21, 2009 2:48 PM

NIKI2

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...

DT: my comment about PN was satirical in nature, along with a grain of truth because I recently complained about him splattering his craziness all over the thread list, and figured if I was going to suggest others post things of more interest, it might be a good idea to start doing it myself. That's all.

Frem: Uh-yup. Gave me a giggle, too. And I chortled at your first response...while for me that doesn't include all Christians, when it comes to evangelicals...uh...yeah.

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Saturday, April 6, 2024 4:12 PM

JAYNEZTOWN

Stop looking for loopholes, UN warns, after Saudi hints end of fossil fuels ‘just one option’

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2024/feb/02/countries-m
ust-not-pick-loopholes-in-cop-deal-to-end-fossil-fuels-says-un

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