Evangelicals want to fight climate change
Every once in a while, people make some small action that really encourages me. I’m really a very optimistic person; I believe in the intrinsic goodness of most people, given appropriate education and guidance. There are many, many times where it seems that either this is not the case, or that the entrenched systems currently in effect are likely to frustrate those tendencies indefinitely (e.g. how I felt Nov. 3rd, 2004).
But overall the latter doesn’t have to be the case, and probably isn’t even in those darkest times. When I was studying the history of the United States, one of the things that was most interesting to me was the traditional position that religious groups had in promoting progressive social causes. Abolition in the late nineteenth century, the Settlement House and the Social Gospel movements of the late 1800s and early 1900s, and progressive Christian and Jewish involvement in the Civil Rights expansion pushes of of the ’50s and ’60s all are great examples of the power of religion to mobilize people and society to good causes.
It’s unfortunate that over the last 25 or 30 years, a concerted effort to wrest control of the public face of Christianity by reactionary ideologues has largely succeeded in aligning (at least at a superficial level) the activist, evangelical Christian majority in this country with the political right.
Abortion has long been the wedge issue that conservative Christian leaders have most effectively used to persuade their followers on a whole host of other positions. So it’s encouraging to me to see this development:
Evangelical Leaders Join Global Warming Initiative: “Despite opposition from some colleagues, 86 evangelical Christian leaders are backing a major initiative to fight global warming.”
(Via NYT > Science.)
And this despite Dr. James Dobson’s remarks that Christians focusing on global warming invited distraction from the issue of abortion.
I’m not Christian myself, mind you. But I know that our country is built on the idea that we can all come together to make our lives and our situations better through this Great American Experiment. “E Pluribus Unum” is truly an expression in words of the soul of the United States.
Perhaps the tide is turning, ever so slightly. The time has come, perhaps, for the “caretaker steward” Christians to finally put up. Out of this, and perhaps by working more closely with the established environmental progressives, a greater understanding for progressive and liberal issues can be re-established among the Christian population in this country.
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religion, science, global warming, environment, politics, abortion
