Earlier this month, a prominent group of conservative religious
leaders, lead by Focus on the Family’s James Dobson, unsuccessfully
urged the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) to rein in its
Washington, D.C. spokesman, who’s become a Global Warming true
believer.
NAE has no formal position on climate change and its causes. But
Richard Cizik of NAE’s Washington office has made Global Warming a
personal crusade. Media attention went to the Dobson critique. But
several NAE board members organized their own letter to their
colleagues, pointing out that Cizik is making Global Warming the
preeminent issue for NAE, in terms of popular perceptions. These
board members cited a survey of media mentions, showing that by
far, Cizik is quoted on climate issues more than any other,
including the family and sanctity of life issues for which NAE does
have official positions.
The NAE board reaffirmed its confidence in Cizik while, once
again, not taking any specific position on Global Warming. So Cizik
will pursue his own agenda, but in the name of the NAE. Meanwhile,
the NAE, still reeling from the sexual scandals of its last
president, deposed Colorado mega-church pastor Ted Haggard, will
continue to drift. Once a robust forum for America’s evangelicals
— Ronald Reagan gave his “Evil Empire” speech before the NAE —
the association has lacked strong leadership for over a decade.
NAE’s decline is ironic. Evangelicals are now America’s largest
religious and political demographic. But the vast majority of
evangelicals do not look to centralized institutions for guidance.
There is no evangelical curia. Even at its height, NAE never had
the size or power among evangelicals that the National Council of
Churches once had among mainline Protestants.
Curiously, NAE is now following the historical path that led to
the NCC’s demise. Rather than attempting to represent the consensus
opinions of its constituency, the NAE, like the NCC for many
decades, is speaking “prophetically” to its people. Rank and file
evangelicals remain overwhelmingly conservative on almost every
issue. But some evangelical elites, always embarrassed by their
association in the public imagination with the Religious Right, are
psychologically preoccupied with adopting liberal stances, if only
to show their independence.
So unsurprisingly, the NAE board, while unwilling to challenge
Cizik, also signed off on a resolution about “torture,” by the U.S.
military and intelligence agencies. The statement could just as
easily have come from the National Council of Churches, and was
crafted by a special committee dominated by activists and academics
from the evangelical left.
But look for Global Warming to remain the main obsession of the
evangelical left and of NAE leadership. It is, after all the
perfect issue for left-leaning evangelicals to show their concern,
while also relying upon the habits of their own sub-culture. Global
Warming, as a metaphysical movement, warns of a cataclysmic
judgment for “bad” behavior. Evangelicals are accustomed to that
kind of preaching. Meanwhile, the liberal evangelicals want more
government, higher taxes, and increased regulation of the private
economy. They feel guilty about capitalism, and want other
evangelicals to share in their guilt. Liberal evangelicals prefer
not to talk about sexual sins. Carbon sins are a welcome
substitute.
A nice example of the evangelical left perspective on Global
Warming comes from Brian McLaren, a leader of the “emerging church”
movement and a colleague of Sojourners leader Jim Wallis. Writing
earlier this month for Wallis’s website, McLaren likened the alarm
on climate change to Old Testament heroes Noah and Joseph, who
warned of flood and famine.
The Hebrew patriarch Joseph, as premier under the Egyptian
Pharaoh, had “issued a warning — with no real scientific evidence
— of a coming drought,” McLaren recounted. The Pharaoh heeded his
warning, and Egypt stockpiled food in preparation for the
famine.
“I wonder what it might look like for our nation and the nations
of the world to take joint ameliorative action regarding greenhouse
gases, and to take precautionary action regarding water and food,”
McLaren wrote. “I wonder what it might be like for people of faith,
like Joseph, to take a catalytic role in these efforts.”
McLaren noted that “rapid climate change” is likely to
“skyrocket” widespread species extinction. “What would it be like
for people of faith to follow Noah’s example in preserving species
wherever possible — by preserving natural habitat, and in other
cases, creating ‘arks’ to preserve species whose natural habitats
are destroyed by flood or drought or melting ice or rising sea
levels.”
To his credit, McLaren acknowledged that Joseph had no
scientific basis for his warning of drought. Like Noah before him,
he had had a word from the Lord. In Joseph’s case, the people
listened. In Noah’s case, nobody but his own family did. Will the
evangelical left be able to persuade their co-religionists to
believe that climate change alarmism is today’s “word from the
Lord”?
For centuries, evangelicals in America have endured charlatan
preachers, apocalyptic warnings, and dubious social reformers. One
hundred years ago, William Jennings Bryan was telling evangelicals
that Jesus definitely favored nationalizing the railroads. Today,
with similar urgency, his successors want evangelicals to hearken
to their expansive Global Warming agenda, including its hostility
to economic growth and enthusiasm for an enlarged regulatory
state.
Somehow, no doubt with divine forbearance, American evangelicals
have survived the hysteria of passing causes, by remaining focused
on the true Word. They hopefully will do so again.
