While the environment has been a societal concern in recent decades, it has recently taken an unexpected new role in dividing the U.S. evangelical movement. Evangelicals are currently struggling with the issue (and, at times, each other) as they weigh competing claims regarding the extent of, causes for, and responses to predicted global warming. One side contends that “human-induced climate change is real,” that “millions of people could die in this century because of climate change,” and that Congress should “pass and implement national legislation requiring sufficient economy-wide reductions in carbon dioxide emissions.” The other side replies that “foreseeable global warming will have moderate and mixed” effects, “natural causes may account for a large part, perhaps the majority, of the global warming,” and “government-mandated carbon dioxide emissions reductions not only would not significantly curtail global warming or reduce its harmful effects but also would cause greater harm than good to humanity.”
| NAE Vice President for Governmental Affairs Rich Cizik gave a disparaging account of the motives of fellow evangelicals who disagreed with him on the climate change issue. (File photo) |
Perhaps the most prominent evangelical raising the alarm about climate change is the Rev. Richard Cizik, Vice President for Governmental Affairs of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE). (See “Evangelical Official Raises Global Warming Concerns,” Faith & Freedom, Summer 2006.) National Public Radio has dubbed Cizik “the Green Evangelist.” The NAE official spoke November 18 at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC, in an open forum conversation with the cathedral dean, the Rev. Dr. Samuel T. Lloyd III. Over the course of the conversation, Cizik expressed his frustrations with fellow evangelicals who disagree with him about global warming, as well as his confidence that his own perspective would soon be vindicated.
Cizik, whose work often places him in the position of an evangelical lobbyist, relayed an encounter with Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS). The senator, according to Cizik, questioned the efficacy of unilateral American measures to curb greenhouse gas emissions. The NAE official replied: “‘Well, Sam, God isn’t going to ask you whether China or India did their part. He’s going to ask you did you do your part, and he’s going to hold you to a higher standard than even me.’” Cizik continued, “And frankly, I would wish that the White House and even the President of the United States would get that picture, that he would be held accountable.” Cizik added an ominous warning, borrowing words from the letter to the Hebrews (10:31) about the damnation of those who forsake the faith: “It’s a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”
Cizik compared politicians who are not environmentally active to the Persian King Darius, portrayed as indecisive and malleable in the Old Testament book of Daniel. Just as Darius was forced to chose between abiding by the letter of his kingdom’s law and saving his friend Daniel’s life, the NAE official stated, “I would say, tragically, until we see some grudging admission here by our own leaders, that we have a lot of Dariuses in this town that want to save their friends.” Indulging in some accusatory speculation about the motives of these politicians, he asked, “And who are some of their friends? Some of their friends are in the big utility, oil, and gas industries … and in saving their friends they sacrifice not only the empire, but also the entire planet.” Cizik did not acknowledge that some politicians might have principled reasons for opposing severe government-mandated reductions in carbon dioxide emissions.
Cizik predicted that continued hesitation to impose such mandates would result in accelerated human-induced global warming, with dramatically rising sea levels and unprecedented natural disasters. He warned: “And so this is very serious business that if we in this country don’t get right and don’t get right quickly, … we are going to reach tipping points. But I’m more worried about the tipping points spiritually than I am tipping points climatically.”
The NAE lobbyist also referred to recent confrontations he has experienced with fellow evangelicals. In response to private complaints about his activism regarding global warming, the NAE Executive Committee in January 2006 instructed staff to “stand by and not exceed in any fashion our approved and adopted statements concerning the environment.” (The major statement, “For the Health of the Nation: An Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility,” says nothing about climate change.) When Cizik continued his global warming activism, a smaller group of leaders issued a public letter March 1, 2007, urging that he “be encouraged to resign his position with the NAE.” But the NAE Board of Directors took no action on the matter.
Not mentioning the earlier directive from his own executive committee, Cizik focused his resentment on the public letter from “25 evangelical leaders; many, if not most, from the religious right” who “called for me to be silenced or fired.” He recalled his feeling that the event was “almost like a hostile takeover of the NAE.” But the evangelical official expressed gratitude that the NAE board chose to “reaffirm the document [‘For the Health of the Nation’]” and allowed him to continue as a spokesman for a “broader agenda.” Cizik concluded, “And so, thus far, I’m still here and still speaking out, praise God.”
After telling of a separate conflict about the environment with one evangelical leader, Cizik remarked that “some people are so beholden to a worldview they won’t change, no matter what.” He recalled that when he was first “converted” to the fight against climate change, “I just hit myself in the forehead and said, my gosh, I just can’t believe how this has escaped me. And yet,” said Cizik, “I believe that is exactly what has happened to millions upon millions of American Christians and particularly those in my community and they’ve done that for a lot of reasons. But that’s changing.”
Responding to Christian leaders who focus their legislative advocacy on issues like upholding marriage and the sanctity of life, Cizik charged, “And if we don’t carry this out this broader agenda that includes everything from religious freedom to creation care, to passion for the poor, to human rights, yes, the sanctity of human life; if we don’t do all of these things, because everything is connected, then we will be failing our movement as leaders.”
Speaking before a mostly liberal Christian audience at the cathedral, Cizik gave a disparaging account of the motives of fellow evangelicals who disagreed with him on the climate change issue. He described evangelical resistance to steep government-mandated carbon emissions reductions as “a brew, a concoction of a lot of different ingredients.” But the NAE official stressed one hypothesis: that global warming skepticism was somehow linked to a lingering wariness towards the sciences, based in the evangelical reaction against 19th century Darwinism.
Cizik suggested that climate change was “sort of the victim of the origins debate.…” He elaborated on the image of evangelicals as anti-science: “‘Scientists believe in evolution,’ according to evangelicals. ‘I don’t believe in evolution, so I’m going to dismiss what the scientists are saying.’ And it’s an illogical syllogism, but that’s what has occurred…. Our mistrust, our distrust, our denial, and that has to change.” The NAE official did not note the fact that a number of those evangelicals who disagree with his views on global warming are natural scientists with full academic credentials.
Cizik was confident, nevertheless, that evangelicals would play a crucial role in the ultimate passage of climate change legislation. He stated, “I happen to think that my community, that is 40-50 percent of those red states that heretofore have done nothing to press their politicians, is the key to changing this reality.”
Cizik hinted that evangelicals have already begun to move closer to his position. “I would say that it’s fast changing,” he said. “The most interesting poll of evangelicals, almost a flip from four or five years ago, is that 80 percent of people think we need to refer to legislation” to counter climate change. (The relatively soft poll question did not specify the nature of the legislation. A more probing question, which asked people to prioritize their concerns, revealed that both NAE board members and evangelicals generally ranked global warming low on their list of priorities, according to an article posted on the NAE website.) Cizik added that he believed this supposed evangelical turnabout on climate change amounted to “a moral awakening [that] is occurring that will literally reshape the 21stcentury in a positive way and it has implications across foreign policy lines, across domestic policy.”
“If we especially, my community as evangelicals, were to really understand that number one, our natural resources are finite, and two, everything is connected,” Cizik asserted, “we’d begin to change the way that we live, which is fundamentally what we all have to do.” The NAE lobbyist encouraged Christians to begin, as he did, with his own household. He recounted the aftermath of the 2002 conference at which he had his climate change “conversion”: “I came back from Oxford and I told my wife and family that we’ve got to change. We sold our RV…. I bought a Prius…. We upgraded with Energy Star. We’ve greened our house, we’ve tried to green our lifestyle, and we’ve taken our message down the street…. We’re a bit evangelistic about this.”
However, in his crusade against climate change, Cizik considered lifestyle change as only the first step. He maintained, “I think we also have to change policy.” Specifically, Cizik encouraged his audience, predicting, “I think that the Climate Security Act [imposing carbon emissions limits and setting up a system to trade emissions allowances] may well make it through Congress in the next year or so.”
Cizik barely alluded to the arguments of those who oppose the Climate Security Act—for example, that its mandated limits might harm the economy and hurt the poor while doing little to alter the trends of climate change. So it was left to Dean Lloyd of the cathedral to ask delicately: “What do you make about the arguments that come out so often that ‘…We’re playing around the edges of something that’s so big it [our efforts to stave off climate change] really can’t make a difference… Why should we do the small things that seem to make only a marginal difference?’”
Cizik side-stepped the question about consequences. Instead he reframed the issue in terms of motives. For Christians, Cizik declared, “It’s [anti-climate change activism is] an issue of faithfulness.” The clear implication was that those who disagreed with him were unfaithful. And he had earlier suggested that such unfaithfulness would fall under the stern judgment of the Almighty.
No comments yet
