Faith-based arguments that deal with climate change are a smokescreen that mask the real problem

As underscored by the current consternation of conservatives with Pope Francis over his encyclical on global warming, religion is perhaps the most confounding variable when it comes to grappling with the issue of climate change. Even more than Catholics like Jeb Bush and Rick Santorum, however, it's been evangelicals who have been most reluctant to accept the science of global warming. Which is actually a bit of a puzzle, really, once you start to really parse the arguments they put forward in religious garb, because the grounding in Scripture or theology is nowhere to be found.

Katherine Hayhoe talks about faith and climate change.

Katharine Hayhoe is one person who was particularly puzzled by evangelical objections to climate change. Hayhoe is both a climate scientist and an evangelical Christian herself, and, as a Canadian largely removed from the polarizations of American political culture, she saw nothing in her evangelical faith more compelling in relationship to global warming than a strong moral imperative to care for God's creation. That all changed when she married an American, and then found out how differently he saw things.

Read the Salon story by Paul Rosenberg - “Faith-based arguments that deal with climate change are a smokescreen that mask the real problem.”

Study: Katharine Hayhoe is successfully convincing doubtful evangelicals about climate change

Approximately one-quarter of Americans identify as evangelical Christians, and that group also tends to be more resistant to the reality of human-caused global warming. As a new paper by Brian Webb and Doug Hayhoe notes:

Katharine Hayhoe speaks about climate change
to students and faculty at Wayland Baptist University on
November 9, 2011, in Plainview, Texas.

“a 2008 study found that just 44% of evangelicals believed global warming to be caused mostly by human activities, compared to 64% of nonevangelicals (Smith and Leiserowitz, 2013) while, a 2011 survey found that only 27% of white evangelicals believed there to be a scientific consensus on climate change, compared to 40% of the American public (Public Religion Research Institute, 2011). 

These findings appear to stem from two primary factors. First, evangelicals tend to be socially and politically conservative, and climate change is among the many issues that have become politically polarized in America. Second, there is sometimes a perceived conflict between science and religion, as Christians distrust what they perceive as scientists’ “moral agenda” on issues like evolution, stem cell research, and climate change. As Webb and Hayhoe describe it:

“theological conservatism, scientific skepticism, political affiliation, and sociocultural influences have reinforced one another to instill climate skepticism into the evangelical tribe mentality, thus creating a formidable barrier to climate education efforts.

Read The Guardian story - “Study: Katharine Hayhoe is successfully convincing doubtful evangelicals about climate change.”