Religious Right and global warming

The Religious Right is a loose, informal group of Christians and Jews who base political conservatism in religious doctrine. Americans classified as members of the Religious Right have split in their responses to reports of anthropogenic climate change, with some emphasizing the divine command to tend the earth and others, while acknowledging their duty as caretakers, emphasizing the dominion God granted humans over other creatures.

Background

Jews and Christians recognize Genesis as the first book of Scripture. It contains, according to many scholars, two consecutive accounts of Creation. In the older, a verse gives the prelapsarian intent of God for human beings: “And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.” The other account of Creation provides for many readers a different picture of the place of men and women in what God has made, as the following verse indicates:

And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

Difficulty in Classifying Religious Americans

Classifying religious Americans according to whether they are members of the Religious Right is hard in some instances. American Catholics, for example, vary in their political beliefs and the importance they place on particular issues. Catholic opponents of abortion noted that, upon meeting Pope Benedict XVI on February 18, 2009, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a liberal Catholic, praised the Vatican’s campaign against global warming but did not mention abortion, while the Vatican stresses that dignified human life begins at conception. In 2022, Pelosi met with Pope Francis, taking communion despite her stance on abortion.

Southern Baptists, for their part, have disagreed about not only primarily theological issues but also superficially secular issues with religious implications, such as climate disruption. In response to prevailing Southern Baptist positions, the Nobel Laureate and climate activist Al Gore ended his long membership in the Southern Baptist Convention. Furthermore, among evangelicals in general there has been disagreement about public topics, with some evangelicals, such as Ron Sider, being far from right-wing and others, such as Joel Hunter, registering as Republicans but working closely with Democrats. With respect to global warming, at least one prominent, politically conservative evangelical, Pat Robertson, has shifted from skepticism to cautious support of Gore.

Various evangelical Christians believe that God will intervene to stop climate change, or that scientists and environmentalists are anti-Christian, or that climate change threatens the idea of God being omnipotent (all-powerful) and infallible (unerring). A May 2017 study by sociologists Philip Schwadel and Erik Johnson found that biblical literalism and premillennial dispensationalism were linked with lower concern about the environment.

The Pew Research Center has found that factors such as political party affiliation, race, and ethnicity influence environmental attitudes more than faith does, however. In a 2015 study, 77 percent of Hispanic Catholics, 64 percent of unaffiliated Americans, and 56 percent of Black Protestants believed human activity was causing climate change; by contrast, 41 percent of White mainline Protestants and 28 percent of White evangelicals held that view. However, a follow-up study in 2022 showed that, on average, people who were less religious were more concerned with global warming and climate change than those who were more religious. The study showed that 70 percent of atheists, agnostics, and those who referred to their religious beliefs as "nothing in particular" were extremely or very concerned about climate change, while only 52 percent of religiously affiliated Americans said the same.

Emphasis on Caretaking

Seeing human beings as caretakers of the earth even after humanity’s first sin, the National Religious Partnership for the Environment, founded in 1993, comprises the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, the National Council of Churches USA, and the Evangelical Environmental Network. Among the founders of the Jewish group in 1992 was Sheldon Rudoff, the president of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America. Among the members of the National Council of Churches, besides such left-leaning denominations as the United Church of Christ, are various Orthodox communions.

As for the Evangelical Environmental Network, in 1994 it issued its Evangelical Declaration on the Care of Creation, the signers of which included David Neff, the editor of Christianity Today, usually thought of as a conservative magazine. Led by Jim Ball, the network explicitly opposes nature worship but applauded the Evangelical Climate Initiative, which became public with a statement released in February 2006 and signed by many prominent evangelicals, including Joel Hunter and Rick Warren. Ironically, Richard Cizik, who was instrumental in obtaining signatures, had to withdraw his own because he worked for the National Association of Evangelicals, which declined to support the initiative. The statement spoke of the great harm that global warming would bring, especially to the poor, and advocated laws to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide (CO₂). In 2015, Pope Francis wrote the encyclical Laudato Si', On Care for Our Common Home in the same vein, entreating the faithful to care for the earth and to address climate change. He followed this Laudate Deum (Praise God) in 2023 in which he warned his followers of having the appearance of being concerned about climate change but not taking action to combat it. He urged Catholics to put pressure on leaders to make stopping the progression of global warming and climate change a top priority.

Emphasis on Ruling

An environmental document differing notably from the 2006 statement of the Evangelical Climate Initiative was the Cornwall Declaration on Environmental Stewardship, issued in 2000, which eventually included as signatories Jacob Neusner, an eminent scholar of Judaism; Richard John Neuhaus, the Catholic priest who edited First Things; and the famous evangelicals R. C. Sproul, D. James Kennedy, James Dobson, and Charles Colson. The declaration recognizes the moral obligations that humans have to care for their natural environment, but it claims that they serve as environmental stewards and producers (as well as polluters and consumers), that untouched nature does not mean paradise, and that some environmental matters receive so much concern in rich countries that serious environmental problems in poor countries receive little concern.

In the same vein, the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance was formed in late 2005 and included among its members not only Dobson and Colson but also the global warming skeptic E. Calvin Beisner of Knox Theological Seminary and Richard Land of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. In “A Call to Truth, Prudence, and Protection of the Poor: An Evangelical Response to Global Warming,” the Alliance advocated efforts to lessen poverty and help all peoples adjust to whatever climates may come instead of efforts to try to stop global warming at the cost of big increases in energy prices. The Cornwall Alliance, the successor in 2007 to the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance, continued the previous program to respect individual productivity and freedom while following God’s law for Creation.

Context

Despite differences, all members of the vaguely defined Religious Right believe that God owns the earth, whether they consider humans as gardeners or viceroys. Neither group rejects the idea of caretaking, however much they disagree about how that care is to be taken. Furthermore, neither group totally rejects the idea of human dominion, because to be ruled by nonhuman creatures and never to harm any of them at all is to die. A charitable examination of each side should reveal good intentions, whether or not they are misdirected. The examination should also reveal that those persons who reject extensive governmental intervention to reduce global warming are, in that respect, to the political right of those who otherwise may be members in good standing of the Religious Right.

Key Concepts

• biblical literalism: a belief in the Bible as the literal word of God
• eschatological: pertaining to the end of this world
• evangelical: pertaining to proselytizing Protestants who emphasize individual salvation through faith and place what they consider scriptural authority above church tradition
• King James Bible: an English translation of the Bible authorized by King James I of England and originally published in 1611
• prelapsarian: occurring before the fall of humanity into sin through the eating of the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden
• premillennial dispensationalism: a belief in a period of testing, suffering, and persecution before the Second Coming of Jesus Christ

Bibliography

Alber, Becka A. "How Religion Impacts Americans' Views on the Environment." Pew Research Center, 17 Nov. 2022, www.pewresearch.org/religion/2022/11/17/how-religion-intersects-with-americans-views-on-the-environment/. Accessed 19 Dec. 2024.

Funk, Cary, and Becka A. Alper. "How Religion Impacts Americans' Views on Climate Change and Energy Issues." Pew Research Center, 22 Oct. 2015, www.pewinternet.org/2015/10/22/religion-and-views-on-climate-and-energy-issues. Accessed 19 Dec. 2024.

Glatz, Carol. "Pope, in Document on Climate Crisis, Criticizes Science 'Deniers'." US Conference on Catholic Bishops, 4 Oct. 2024, www.usccb.org/news/2023/pope-document-climate-crisis-criticizes-science-deniers. Accessed 19 Dec. 2024.

Gustafson, David I. Reaping the Real Whirlwind: A Biblical Response to the Theory of Man-Made Global Warming. Sisters, Oreg.: VMI, 2008.

Murray, Iain. The Really Inconvenient Truths: Seven Environmental Catastrophes Liberals Don’t Want You to Know About—Because They Helped Cause Them. Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 2008.

Schwadel, Philip, and Erik Johnson. "The Religious and Political Origins of Evangelical Protestants’ Opposition to Environmental Spending." Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, vol. 56, no. 1, 2017, pp. 179–98. Wiley, doi:10.1111/jssr.12322. Accessed 16 Oct. 2018.

White, Lynn, Jr. “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis.” Science 155 (1967): 1203-1207. Reprinted in Earth Ethics: Introductory Readings on Animal Rights and Environmental Ethics, edited by James P. Sterba. 2d ed. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 2000.