Evangelical voters find new mission in climate
WASHINGTON — A growing body of evangelical leaders is ramping up pressure on Republican lawmakers to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, breaking from some within their faith’s long skepticism of climate change.
At a time when American business and military leaders are becoming increasingly vocal on the urgent need to reduce U.S. reliance on fossil fuels, the evangelical campaign threatens to alienate Republican lawmakers from another core constituency.
“Is an Evangelical going to vote for Elizabeth Warren? When hell freezes over, but they might stay home,” said Mitch Hescox, a minister and president of the nonprofit Evangelical Environmental Network. “My goal is to make Republicans feel more safe on climate, to tell Democrats there has to be a middle ground.”
The National Association of Evangelicals, which represents 45,000 churches nationwide, first called on Christians four years ago to “exert legitimate means to persuade governments to put moral imperatives about political expediency on issues of environmental destruction and potential climate change.”
Since then, the issue has taken on greater urgency for the faithful— as it has for businesses and other interests traditionally aligned with Republicans — as scientists’ warnings become more dire and storms more powerful, destructive and frequent .
In Washington last week, hundreds filed into the Capitol Hilton for a “Conservative Clean Energy Leadership Summit,” hosted by the Christian Coalition and its sister organization, Young Conservatives for Energy Reform. The National Association of Evangelicals, meanwhile, is meeting with lawmakers to urge action on the issue, said Galen Carey, vice president of government relations at the group.
“We’re very diverse and decentralized, so you still have people who question the whole
premise,” he said. “But that statement has been well received by our members. It’s been a slow process of gradually coming to see the importance of the issue.”
In recent months, Republican lawmakers have started to come around on climate change, calling for greater research into emissionfree energy technologies such as batteries and nuclear reactors, and even machines to suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.
But the question now is whether evangelical activists can convince Republicans to go even further, to take steps to raise prices on fossil fuels such as oil and natural gas, if they expect churchgoers to come out and vote for them.
Hescox, a former equipment designer for coal power plants, is pushing Congress to pass a tax on greenhouse gas emissions, with the revenues going back to low-income Americans. Sitting down for lunch at a Capitol Hill Tex-Mex restaurant, he claims to know 18 Republicans in the Senate and 35 in the House that are “leaning towards a carbon price.”
When asked for names, though, he shakes his head and laughs, “It would blow everybody out of the water.”
A regular on Capitol Hill — driving two hours each way from his home-office in Central Pennsylvania — Hescox said he’s had 250 meetings with House and Senate Republicans over the past 12 months, rattling off the names of senators including Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, and Bill Cassidy and John Kennedy, both of Louisiana — as well as staffers of Texas’s John Cornyn.
Those senators declined to comment.
There is plenty of skepticism in Washington that evangelical leaders have yet achieved the level of influence necessary to force a real shift on an issue like putting a price on carbon emissions.
A lobbyist with one environmental group, who asked not to be named because he did not want to publicly undermine Hescox’s effort, questioned whether there’s enough agreement among evangelicals about climate change to force Republicans’ hand.
“It’s great there’s a budding network of evangelicals,” he said, “but it needs to reach a tipping point for their specific voice to matter.”
Powerful figures such as Rev. Jerry Falwell Jr. are openly dismissive of climate scientists. Falwell tweeted in April, “Climate change may be caused by whatever caused the warming that ended the last Ice Age- maybe sun spots?”
And the Christian Coalition, while supportive of clean energy as an energy security measure, refuses to take a position on whether greenhouse gas emissions are causing the planet to warm.
Those schisms within church leadership have resulted in more evangelicals speaking up on climate, but not in anywhere close to the numbers they bring to an issue such as abortion.
When the Evangelical Environmental Network organized a day for prayer on climate change in Houston last summer — part of a nationwide, interdenominational event — only around 30 people turned out, said Rev. Ted Law of the Access Evangelical Covenant Church in Houston’s Spring Branch neighborhood.
“Here in Texas, it’s been slow going. They’re a decade behind on a lot of environmental issues,” he said. “But there’s a lot more interest than there was, even from oil company folks.”
In recent years, a series of crucial Republican constituencies has come out in favor of taking action on climate change, including military leaders who see it as a national security matter, and Fortune 500 CEOs who are watching consumers demand corporations reduce their carbon footprints.
And the hope among the socalled eco-right is that with time evangelicals will join together en masse on climate change.
“Politics is a lot about who you got with you,” said Bob Inglis, a former Republican congressman from South Carolina and head of the nonprofit republicEn, which advocates for a market-driven approach to climate change. “And there’s a growing awareness among sincere believers we need to act on climate, particularly among young believers.”
But the marriage between climate activism and evangelical Christianity is not always easy. For instance, when Hescox travels around the country meeting with local churches, he generally tries avoid talking about reports from the United Nations warning of rising oceans and cataclysmic crop failures.
He estimates as many as 40 percent of American evangelicals don’t believe in evolution and are skeptical of modern science atlarge. So, he prefers to talk about the Christian ideal of tending the earth.
“So much of the disinformation about climate change played into (evangelicals’) basic fears. It’s all about big government and Al Gore,” he said. “Some people have never been taught about caring for God’s creation.”