Evangelicals for climate action.

One in four American adults identify themselves as “evangelicals.” Because self-described evangelicals, particularly white evangelicals, have become the most reliable supporters of Republican presidential candidates, the evangelical brand has effectively taken on two divergent meanings in the United States, one political and the other theological. Globally, there is widespread support for climate action among evangelicals. But in the United States, evangelicals are much less likely than other Americans to agree that the planet is warming because of human activities and that this merits government action. Nevertheless, evangelical support for climate action appears to be growing within the National Association of Evangelicals, which represents more than 45,000 churches. Also, the demographics of American evangelicals are shifting toward a younger, more nonwhite community that is less skeptical about climate change. Groups such as Young Evangelicals for Climate Action have mounted faith-based campaigns – emphasizing biblical teachings to be good stewards of God’s creation and to care for those who are less fortunate – to press church leaders and conservative politicians to take action on climate.

David Wituszynski grew up in a beautiful wooded area of New Hampshire where he enjoyed spending time outside. “I really felt like I encountered God there,” he recalls in a video recorded by Young Evangelicals for Climate Action, a group that sends “climate testimonies” to pastors, denomination heads, and other senior evangelical leaders and urges them to take action on climate change. At the time the video was made, Wituszynski was a graduate student in ecological engineering at The Ohio State University.

Among evangelicals, a “testimony” is a personal story about how God has changed one’s life. Wituszynski was raised in the Assemblies of God, the world’s largest Pentecostal denomination. Like other types of evangelical Protestants, Pentecostals take the Bible seriously, believe in Jesus Christ as their savior, and support activism to spread the gospel (“evangelical” comes from the Greek wordeuangelion, meaning “good news”).

In his four-and-a-half-minute testimony video, Wituszynski is seated at a table, wearing a tan button-down shirt with a window-pane pattern, wire-frame glasses, and a trim beard. He smiles at the camera, his clasped hands resting on the tabletop. “I know that climate change is a very political issue, and I think it doesn’t have to be,” he says. “It’s my hope that you would engage well with the science, with what people have come up with through careful, repeated observation. It would excite me to see people taking a greater interest in the climate and how it is changing – and asking how we can love those affected by it” (Young Evangelicals for Climate Action (YECA) 2014Young Evangelicals for Climate Action (YECA). 2014. “David Wituszynski’s Climate Testimony.” YouTube video, December 8.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwOYGPGHI_4 [Google Scholar]).

One of the people who saw Wituszynski’s testimony was a leader in the Assemblies of God and a member of the executive committee of the National Association of Evangelicals, an organization that represents more than 45,000 churches from 40 different denominations – and the millions of Americans who attend those churches. The committee member had been the main roadblock to the association’s adoption of “creation care” principles outlined in the Lausanne Cape Town Commitment and embraced by other evangelicals around the world, says Kyle Meyaard-Schaap, national organizer and spokesperson for Young Evangelicals for Climate Action, which in 2015 petitioned the national association to sign on to the Commitment. Among other things, it calls on Christians “to persuade governments to put moral imperatives above political expediency on issues of environmental destruction and potential climate change” and “to lessen the impacts of climate change” on poor and vulnerable people (Lausanne Movement 2011Lausanne Movement. 2011.

“The Cape Town Commitment.”http://www.lausanne.org/content/ctc/ctcommitment [Google Scholar]). The committee member was moved by Wituszynski’s video, says Meyaard-Schaap, and then abstained from voting against a resolution to adopt the Cape Town Commitment. It passed in October 2015.

Climate testimony is just one of the ways that some young evangelicals are trying to mobilize conservative Christians to take action on global warming. Unlike environmental groups, evangelical activists focus on religious reasons for climate action, rather than political or scientific ones. They believe the Bible commands them to be good stewards of creation and to love and care for other human beings, especially the least fortunate.

Evangelicals are a huge group in the United States, and they played a key role in electing President Trump and other political conservatives in recent elections. “Evangelical” has become a political identity for many Americans, even though evangelical leaders say they do not want their faith to be identified with the president and his policies (National Association of Evangelicals 2018aNational Association of Evangelicals. 2018a. “Evangelical Leaders Don’t Want Partisan Political Identity.” January.https://www.nae.net/evangelicals-leaders-dont-want-partisan-political-identity/ [Google Scholar]). However, a generation gap has opened within the Republican Party on climate issues, and all signs point to a similar gap among evangelicals. Young conservatives are far more likely than their elders to understand that the Earth is warming mostly because of human activity, and young evangelicals like David Wituszynski are pushing churches and conservative politicians to do something about it.

Who are evangelicals?

“Actually, that’s a question I’d like to ask somebody, too,” said the well-known evangelist and Southern Baptist preacher Billy Graham in a 1987 interview with religion reporter Terry Mattingly. “You go all the way from the extreme fundamentalists to the extreme liberals and, somewhere in between, there are the evangelicals” (Mattingly 2012Mattingly, T. 2012. “Define Evangelical. Give Three Examples.” Patheos, GetReligion blog,October 3.https://www.patheos.com/blogs/getreligion/2012/10/define-evangelical-give-three-examples/ [Google Scholar]).

An estimated one in four American adults identify as evangelical Protestants (Pew Research Center2015Pew Research Center. 2015. “America’s Changing Religious Landscape.” 

May 12.http://www.pewforum.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2015/05/RLS-08-26-full-report.pdf [Google Scholar]). They form a loosely knit group of believers that includes people from Pentecostal, Anabaptist, Charismatic, and other traditions. They are defined more by their beliefs than by their denominations. Scholars often describe evangelicals as people who believe in: conversion or transformation through a “born again” experience; missionary efforts to win others to belief; the Bible as the ultimate authority; and the crucifixion of Jesus Christ as the redemption of humanity (National Association of Evangelicals undatedNational Association of Evangelicals.Undated. “What Is an Evangelical?”https://www.nae.net/what-is-an-evangelical/ [Google Scholar]).

Although evangelicals span the spectrum of American religious and political views, from Jerry Falwell to Jimmy Carter, the majority today are not as “in between” as Graham described them in 1987. US evangelicals are more likely to reside in the most politically conservative parts of the country, such as the South and Midwest, and to vote accordingly.

Self-described white evangelicals have become “the most reliable bloc of Republican voters,” writes Seth Dowland, an associate professor of religion at Pacific Lutheran University. “Other religious groups voted for Trump as well, but none did so at the 81 percent level that white evangelicals did” (Dowland 2018Dowland, S. 2018. “American Evangelicalism and the Politics of Whiteness.” The Christian Century, June 19.https://www.christiancentury.org/article/critical-essay/american-evangelicalism-and-politics-whiteness [Google Scholar]). This despite Trump’s spotty church attendance, his past support for the right to partial-birth abortion, his multiple marriages and infidelities, his coarse language, and his scarcity of references to God during campaign rallies (Nussbaum 2017Nussbaum, M. 2017.

“Has Trump Found Religion in the Oval Office?” Politico, April 16.https://www.politico.com/story/2017/04/has-trump-found-religion-in-the-oval-office-237239 [Google Scholar]; Gerson 2018Gerson, M. 2018. “The Last Temptation.” The Atlantic, April.https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/04/the-last-temptation/554066/ [Google Scholar]).

As with racial identity, “evangelical” is a self-identification that defies definition and verification; it means different things to different people. For example, some people who identify themselves in polls as “born again or evangelical,” especially Southerners, are actually affiliated with mainline Protestant or Catholic churches (Silk 2018Silk, M. 2018. “A Lot of White Evangelical Voters Aren’t Evangelical.” Religion News Service, November 13.https://religionnews.com/2018/11/13/a-lot-of-white-evangelical-voters-arent-evangelicals/ [Google Scholar]). Many Trump voters who call themselves evangelicals do not attend a church at all. In polls and public discourse, the “evangelical” label has become so associated with conservative political views that it is often used (or misused) as shorthand for white Christian Republican (Merritt 2015Merritt, J. 2015. “Defining ‘Evangelical’.” The Atlantic, December 7. [Google Scholar]). It has effectively taken on two divergent meanings, one based in politics and the other in theology.

Political evangelicals: Made in the USA

Americans as a whole are increasingly aware that climate change is real and that it is driven by the burning of fossil fuels and other human activities. A national survey conducted in late 2018 reported that 73 percent of Americans think that global warming is happening (an increase of 10 percentage points since March 2015), and 62 percent understand it is mostly human-caused. The number of people who say global warming is personally important to them rose by 16 percentage points over the same period, to 72 percent (Leiserowitz et al. 2018Leiserowitz, A., E. Maibach, S. Rosenthal, J.Kotcher, M. Ballew, M. Goldberg, and A.Gustafson. 2018. Climate Change in the American Mind: 2018. Yale University and George Mason University. New Haven, CT:Yale Program on Climate Change Communications.http://climatecommunication.yale.edu/publications/climate-change-american-mind-march-2018/ [Google Scholar]). In another survey last year, two-thirds of Americans said the government is doing too little to reduce the impacts of climate change (Pew Research Center 2018Pew Research Center. 2018. “Majorities See Government Efforts to Protect the Environment as Insufficient.” May 14.http://www.pewresearch.org/science/2018/05/14/majorities-see-government-efforts-to-protect-the-environment-as-insufficient/ [Google Scholar]).

There are wide political divides on the climate issue, though. Surveys have found that conservative Republicans are far more skeptical than other Americans that the planet is warming because of human activities and that this merits government action (Pew Research Center 2018Pew Research Center. 2018. “Majorities See Government Efforts to Protect the Environment as Insufficient.” May 14.http://www.pewresearch.org/science/2018/05/14/majorities-see-government-efforts-to-protect-the-environment-as-insufficient/ [Google Scholar]). Evangelicals, especially white evangelicals, are also much more likely than other Americans – including other Christians – to be climate skeptics. A 2014 survey found that only 27 percent of white evangelical Protestants accept that the Earth is getting warmer and that these changes are primarily the result of human activity. White evangelicals are much more likely to attribute the severity of natural disasters to biblical “end times” than to climate change (Jones, Cox, and Navarro-Rivera 2014Jones, R. P., D. Cox, and J. Navarro-Rivera.2014. “Believers, Sympathizers, and Skeptics: Why Americans are Conflicted about Climate Change, Environmental Policy, and Science.”Findings from the PRRI/AAR Religion, Values, and Climate Change Survey.https://www.prri.org/research/believers-sympathizers-skeptics-americans-conflicted-climate-change-environmental-policy-science/ [Google Scholar]).

Katharine Hayhoe of Texas Tech University, who is a prominent climate scientist as well as an evangelical and a pastor’s wife, says that climate skepticism among evangelicals is the result of US politics rather than faith. “First of all, you only see these statistics in the United States,” she says. Most of the world’s evangelicals live outside the United States and support climate action. International groups including the World Evangelical Alliance, Lausanne Creation Care Action Network, Tearfund, and A Rocha praised the Paris Agreement and promised to help implement it (World Evangelical Alliance 2015World Evangelical Alliance. 2015. “Global Evangelical Leaders Welcome Paris Climate Agreement as Historic Accomplishment.” Press release, December 18.https://worldea.org/news/4630/global-evangelical-leaders-welcome-paris-climate-agreement-as-historical-accomplishment [Google Scholar]).

Another indication that evangelical opposition to climate action in the United States is not faith-based lies in a comparison of US evangelicals and Catholics. In both groups, Hispanic adherents are significantly more concerned about climate than their white counterparts. For example, a 2014 survey found that 73 percent of Hispanic Catholics agree that climate change is a crisis or a major problem, compared with only 53 percent of white Catholics (Jones, Cox, and Navarro-Rivera 2014Jones, R. P., D. Cox, and J. Navarro-Rivera.2014. “Believers, Sympathizers, and Skeptics: Why Americans are Conflicted about Climate Change, Environmental Policy, and Science.”Findings from the PRRI/AAR Religion, Values, and Climate Change Survey.https://www.prri.org/research/believers-sympathizers-skeptics-americans-conflicted-climate-change-environmental-policy-science/ [Google Scholar]). Because all Catholics are led by Pope Francis, who is a strong advocate for climate action, that difference cannot be explained by religion. Evangelicals do not follow a single leader, but as with Catholics, Hispanic evangelicals are more concerned about climate than white evangelicals. “That’s a clue that it isn’t actually our belief, our statement of faith, that is causing this schism,” Hayhoe says.

“Creation care”

Although most rank-and-file American evangelicals remain opposed to climate action, senior evangelical leaders are more divided on the issue. In the past few years, the National Association of Evangelicals has become increasingly willing to support climate action. Perhaps not coincidentally, over the same period, arguments in favor of evangelical environmentalism have increasingly emphasized the human impacts of climate change, which hits the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people hardest.

Environmentalism was not a hot button for evangelicals five decades ago. In 1970, the National Association of Evangelicals passed a resolution that called on Christians to be good stewards of “all God’s earthly creation and resources” and opened with a sentence that sounds as if it could have been written yesterday: “Scientists are alarmed. Many assert that runaway technology, pollution and consumption, if left uncontrolled, could spell the extinction of the human race” (National Association of Evangelicals 1970National Association of Evangelicals. 1970. “Ecology.”https://www.nae.net/ecology/ [Google Scholar]). By the 1990s, though, as climate change became an increasingly prominent issue, cracks had begun to appear. Some evangelicals pushed more aggressively for environmental action, while others retreated in the opposite direction.

In the early days of the evangelical environmental movement, the focus was on “creation care.” That proved problematic in some circles, with critics accusing environmental evangelicals of worshipping Mother Earth instead of God the Father. That message resonated with many evangelicals, Hayhoe says, “because in the Bible it talks about people who worship idols, and it says they worship the created rather than the Creator.”

The creation-care movement struggled to get its message out to pastors who had more pressing concerns, like growing (or at least retaining) the congregations that pay their salaries. Climate change sometimes came across as an “abstract and atmospheric” issue, rather than an experiential and spiritual concern, says Peter Illyn, who served nine years as a pastor at Foursquare churches (an evangelical Pentecostal denomination) and in 2001 founded the nonprofit organization Restoring Eden, which partnered with the Evangelical Environmental Network on an Evangelical Climate Initiative. Meanwhile, traditional environmental groups were focused on political deliverables, Illyn says, “and that didn’t line up with the conversation the church wanted to have.”

In 2006, as part of the Evangelical Climate Initiative, 86 senior evangelical leaders issued an “Evangelical Call to Action” affirming that human-induced climate change is real, and its consequences will be significant and will hit the poor hardest; Christians have an obligation to respond to the problem; and the need to act now is urgent (Evangelical Climate Initiative 2006Evangelical Climate Initiative. 2006. “Climate Change: An Evangelical Call to Action.”http://www.christiansandclimate.org/statement/ [Google Scholar]). The statement has since been signed by several hundred leaders, including nationally recognized pastors such as Rick Warren, the heads of some major evangelical organizations and denominations, and the presidents of some seminaries.

Not everyone was happy with the 2006 Call to Action. A group then called the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance, led by the American Christian theologian E. Calvin Beisner, wrote an open letter to the National Association of Evangelicals, urging the association not to endorse the initiative. The letter was signed by 22 politically powerful evangelical leaders, and the association declined to take a position on climate change (Zaleha and Szasz 2015Zaleha, B. D., and A. Szasz. 2015. “Why Conservative Christians Don’t Believe in Climate Change.” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 71 (5): 19–30. doi:10.1177/0096340215599789.[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]), instead issuing a statement “recognizing the ongoing debate” and “the lack of consensus among the evangelical community on the issue” (O’Connor 2017O’Connor, B. 2017. “How Fossil Fuel Money Made Climate Change Denial the Word of God.” Splinter, August 8.https://splinternews.com/how-fossil-fuel-money-made-climate-denial-the-word-of-g-1797466298 [Google Scholar]).

Three years later, Beisner’s group – now called the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation – issued its own “Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming.” It asserted: “Recent warming was neither abnormally large nor abnormally rapid. There is no convincing scientific evidence that human contribution to greenhouse gases is causing dangerous global warming.” The declaration also denied that renewable fuels can replace fossil fuels, that carbon dioxide is a pollutant, and that policies to stem climate change “comply with the Biblical requirement of protecting the poor from harm and oppression” (Cornwall Alliance 2009Cornwall Alliance. 2009. “Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming.”https://cornwallalliance.org/landmark-documents/evangelical-declaration-on-global-warming-2/ [Google Scholar]).

“The least of these”

Although the National Association of Evangelicals did not endorse either of these diametrically opposed statements on climate, two years later it published a “conversation piece” (it was explicitly not an official policy statement) for study by all concerned evangelicals. “God calls us to care for those who are poor, vulnerable, and oppressed. It is the Christian thing to do,” wrote Leith Anderson, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, in its opening pages. “While others debate the science and politics of climate change, my thoughts go to the poor people who are neither scientists nor politicians. They will never study carbon dioxide in the air or acidification of the ocean. But they will suffer from dry wells in the Sahel of Africa and floods along the coasts of Bangladesh. Their crops will fail while our supermarkets are full.

They will suffer while we study” (Boorse 2011Boorse, D. 2011. Loving the Least of These: Addressing a Changing Environment. National Association of Evangelicals. [Google Scholar]).

The 2011 paper blended both strains of evangelical environmentalism – stewardship of nature and care for other human beings – but its title emphasized the latter: “Loving the Least of These.” It refers specifically to scripture in which Jesus tells his disciples that they will ultimately be judged by how they treated strangers and other people who were hungry, thirsty, naked, sick, or in prison. “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me,” says Jesus. And then this: “Whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me” (Matthew 25:36–46, New International Version).

More recently, the National Association of Evangelicals has taken a stronger stand on the need for government action to combat climate change. In 2018, the organization issued an updated “call to civic responsibility” that urges evangelicals “of all political persuasions and backgrounds” to get involved in policy making and public engagement on a broad range of issues, including climate change (National Association of Evangelicals 2018bNational Association of Evangelicals. 2018b. “For the Health of the Nation: An Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility.”https://www.nae.net/nae-releases-updated-for-the-health-of-the-nation/ [Google Scholar]).

The updated statement calls climate change a “threat multiplier” that “especially impacts the poorest of God’s children in the world.” In the United States, the statement says, climate change “increases disease spread and asthma attacks, causes sea level rise and flooding, melts permafrost, lowers air quality, increases drought and fires, and adds severe weather threats” (National Association of Evangelicals 2018bNational Association of Evangelicals. 2018b. “For the Health of the Nation: An Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility.”https://www.nae.net/nae-releases-updated-for-the-health-of-the-nation/ [Google Scholar]).

The statement also recommends some solutions: “We urge governments to support energy efficiency standards, decrease our carbon footprint, reduce pollution, provide safe drinking water, encourage sustainable use of natural resources and ensure proper care of wildlife and their natural habitats. Both government and the private sector should also increase investment in adaptation to the effects of climate change, particularly as it impacts the most vulnerable people in our country and around the world” (National Association of Evangelicals 2018bNational Association of Evangelicals. 2018b. “For the Health of the Nation: An Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility.”https://www.nae.net/nae-releases-updated-for-the-health-of-the-nation/ [Google Scholar]).

 

Solution aversion

“I have never met a single human, in thousands of conversations I’ve had, who truly had a problem with the idea that we are to be good stewards of God’s creation, and to care for those less fortunate than us,” Hayhoe says. “Almost every person I’ve met who had objections to climate change, had an objection to what they perceived to be the solutions.”

This phenomenon is what conservatives such as former South Carolina Congressman Bob Inglis have dubbed “solution aversion” (Stover 2017Stover, D. 2017. “Bob Inglis: A Conservative for Climate Action.” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 73 (6): 364–367. doi:10.1080/00963402.2017.1388661.[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]). Many evangelicals are convinced that climate action will be painful, expensive, anti-American, and a threat to their way of life. Among the fears people have expressed to Hayhoe: “It means we have to turn off our electricity and stop driving our car and shower once a week.” “The government is going to tell me how to set my thermostat.” “The EPA won’t let me burn wood in my stove.” “The United Nations is going to take over the world!”

Some evangelicals cite religious reasons for avoiding climate solutions. They subscribe to the belief that “God will take care of everything” or even that climate change is a sign of their coming salvation after the “end times.” In a 2010 Pew Research Center survey, 58 percent of white evangelical Christians said Jesus Christ would return to earth by 2050, by far the highest percentage in any religious group  (Pew Research Center 2010Pew Research Center. 2010. “

Jesus Christ’s Return to Earth.” July 14.http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2010/07/14/jesus-christs-return-to-earth/ [Google Scholar]). Regardless of whether the Second Coming is associated with the destruction of the earthly world or its transformation into a paradise for the righteous (both of these beliefs have persisted within various strains of evangelical Christianity), there is no point in protecting a planet that is soon coming to an end (Zaleha and Szasz 2015Zaleha, B. D., and A. Szasz. 2015. “Why Conservative Christians Don’t Believe in Climate Change.” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 71 (5): 19–30. doi:10.1177/0096340215599789.[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]).11. In the 1980s, Jerry Falwell and other evangelicals made a similar argument to attack the nuclear freeze movement, linking the Second Coming with nuclear war (Herbers 1984Herbers, J. 1984. “Religious Leaders Tell of Worry on Armageddon View Ascribed to Reagan.” New York Times, October 21.https://www.nytimes.com/1984/10/21/us/religious-leaders-tell-of-worry-on-armageddon-view-ascribed-to-reagan.html [Google Scholar]).View all notes

Escapism theology, Hayhoe says, is “another smokescreen for the real issue: We don’t want to fix the problem.” It is not a new thing among Christians. The apostle Paul’s First Epistle to the Thessalonians, believed to have been written around 20 years after the death of Jesus Christ, is intended to reassure a community of proto-Christians that they should not worry about the time and date of the Lord’s arrival, which they expected would be imminent – but should instead keep working, helping the weak, being patient, and striving “to do what is good for each other and for everyone else” (1 Thessalonians 5:12–15, New International Version).

To environmental evangelicals, reducing greenhouse gas emissions is a way of doing good for everyone, especially the poor. It is the consensus of multiple international and domestic scientific bodies – for example, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the US National Climate Assessment – that the poorest people will be hurt most by climate impacts. Although most evangelicals would agree that the Bible commands them to care for the poor, prominent right-wing evangelists such as E. Calvin Beisner argue that fossil fuels are beneficial and essential to lifting people out of poverty, and that the proposed solutions to climate change are not only fruitless but harmful to the poor.

Beisner has even compared the resurrection of Jesus with the unearthing of fossil fuels (formed from decayed plants and animals) to provide humans with life-giving energy: “Innocent creatures die, are buried, are brought up out of the ground, and bring life to others. Haven’t you heard that story before? Of course you have. It is the basic summary of the gospel” (Beisner 2013Beisner, E. C. 2013. “Fossil Fuels, Enemy or Friend? Divine Design in the Carbon Cycle.”

Christian Post, October 28.https://www.christianpost.com/news/fossil-fuels-enemy-or-friend-divine-design-in-the-carbon-cycle.html?page=2 [Google Scholar]).

Beisner’s Cornwall Alliance has played an outsize role in stifling action on climate, both within church organizations and in Washington (O’Connor 2017O’Connor, B. 2017. “How Fossil Fuel Money Made Climate Change Denial the Word of God.” Splinter, August 8.https://splinternews.com/how-fossil-fuel-money-made-climate-denial-the-word-of-g-1797466298 [Google Scholar]). He is a policy advisor to the Heartland Institute, a conservative think tank known for its provocative climate-denial campaigns. Together with the leaders of Heartland and other politically conservative organizations such as the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the American Energy Alliance, he signed a May 2017 letter giving President Trump their “enthusiastic support of your campaign commitments to withdraw fully from the Paris Climate Treaty and to stop all taxpayer funding of UN global warming programs” (Ebell et al. 2017Ebell, M., T. J. Pyle, J. Bast, G. G. Norquist, C.Harbin, M. Needham, M. Costigan, et al.2017.

“Letter to the Honorable Donald J. Trump” May 8 J.Trump.” May 8. https://web.archive.org/web/20170512185946/https://cei.org/sites/default/files/20170508%20CEI%20Paris%20Treaty%20with%20logos%20-%2044%20Final.pdf [Google Scholar]).

Right-wing political strategists and funders made a calculated move to bring evangelicals into the free-market, small-government, anti-environmental movement, Illyn believes. “The right has made environmental issues political and hot-button,” he says. And that makes many pastors and conservative politicians afraid to speak out on climate. Young evangelicals, though, are becoming increasingly outspoken.

Generation gap

The demographics of America’s evangelicals are changing. The number of white evangelicals is declining, while the number of Hispanic evangelicals is growing. Hispanic evangelicals tend to be younger than white evangelicals and more likely to identify themselves as Democrats or political independents (Bacon and Thomson-Deveaux 2018Bacon, P., Jr., and A. Thomson-Deveaux.2018.

“How Trump and Race are Splitting Evangelicals.” FiveThirtyEight, March 2.https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-trump-and-race-are-splitting-evangelicals/ [Google Scholar]).

A shift toward a younger, browner, and more politically liberal constituency is likely to mean increased support for climate action among evangelicals. Among Republicans, Millennials (people born between 1981 and 1996) are much more likely than older people to say that human activity is the primary driver of global warming, and that climate change is affecting their communities. Republican Millennials are also less likely than older people to support an increase in the consumption and extraction of fossil fuels (Pew Research Center 2018Pew Research Center. 2018.

“Majorities See Government Efforts to Protect the Environment as Insufficient.” May 14.http://www.pewresearch.org/science/2018/05/14/majorities-see-government-efforts-to-protect-the-environment-as-insufficient/ [Google Scholar]).

Kyle Meyaard-Schaap of Young Evangelicals for Climate Action, who is 29 years old and has a nine-month-old son, says he and his peers “feel climate change more deeply than older generations” because they will have to live with it longer. “The consequences aren’t abstract to us,” he says. “This is our future.”

Meyaard-Schaap, whose group targets evangelicals between the ages of 18 and 30, also says his generation has “recognized that in many ways the evangelical church in the United States has become a little too wedded to the Republican Party, and our faith has been weaponized for the culture wars … Particularly for those members of Congress who have historically relied upon conservative and evangelical votes for their seats, we’re hoping they listen when we say young evangelicals have different priorities, and one of those priorities is climate change.” The group works hard to root its actions in scripture, rather than partisan ideology, says Meyaard-Schaap.

Like many young evangelicals, Meyaard-Schaap grew up in a conservative Christian household in which climate change was never discussed except as a joke. He went to a Christian college, where one of his formative experiences was a trip to West Virginia to witness the impacts of mountaintop-removal coal mining. “That was the first time I really made the connection that Earth care equals people care,” he recalls.

The group he now works for was launched in 2012 by 18 young evangelicals who drafted a Call to Action that has since been signed by thousands of others. “We are young evangelicals striving to live out what Jesus said was most important: loving God fully and loving our neighbors as ourselves,” the statement begins. Signers are asked to commit themselves to “living faithfully as good stewards of creation, advocating on behalf of the poor and marginalized, supporting our faith and political leaders when they stand up for climate action, and mobilizing our generation to join in” (YECA 2012Young Evangelicals for Climate Action (YECA). 2012. “Call to Action.”https://www.yecaction.org/call_to_action [Google Scholar]).

In the early days, representatives of Young Evangelicals for Climate Change who visited Christian colleges and universities got a lot of pushback. “We had to work really hard to convince people that we were in fact Christians,” Meyaard-Schaap says. “Now the conversation always starts at, ‘So, what can we do?’ ”

Meyaard-Schaap says there has also been a lot of trust-building between evangelical and environmental groups. “I can say that our participation in the larger environmental movement feels really reciprocal. It feels really respectful,” he says.

Those are not the only changes he has noticed; he is also seeing signs of progress in Congress. “For most of YECA’s existence, our advocacy consisted of essentially saying, ‘Look, young evangelicals care about [climate], so come to the table and come up with some solutions.’ Now we actually have some solutions to talk about, which is exciting,” Meyaard-Schaap says. “I think the biggest progress in the next year or two is going to be on the policy side,” he says. “The Green New Deal is in the zeitgeist, and the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act – which is essentially a carbon fee and dividend proposal – has been introduced.” It’s the first bipartisan climate legislation proposed in a decade.

A record number of Americans are now persuaded that the government must do more to mitigate and adapt to climate change. “I really do think it’s getting harder and harder to ignore,” says Meyaard-Schaap, “including in the evangelical church.”

 

 

 

26 February 2019

Taylor & Francis Online