Some Christians take issue with their conservative brothers in faith when it comes to global warming. Commentator Gary Schlueter says he’s a Christian, but he doesn’t see anything wrong with believing in the science that indicates global warming is partly caused by human activity:
Transcript
Some Christians take issue with their conservative brothers in faith when it
comes to global warming. Commentator Gary Schlueter says he’s a Christian,
but he doesn’t see anything wrong with believing in the science that
indicates global warming is partly caused by human activity:
In Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, we are warned to beware of the two
children under Father Christmas’ long red robe, this boy ignorance and this
girl want, but especially beware of this boy. Race forward a century or so and
we have Reverend Jerry Falwell concluding, “I believe that global warming is a myth.”
I repeat, beware this boy, ignorance!
Reverend Falwell, an influential evangelical Christian leader, is not alone among
his contemporaries in preaching that global warming is a myth, or worse: some clerical
leaders say to believe otherwise could jeopardize one’s salvation.
The Interfaith Stewardship Alliance, the ISA, is a mixed bag of religious leaders,
scientists and policy experts who, through a dark glass, shine a Biblical light on the
issues of environment and development. According to the ISA, “most U.S. evangelicals do not
back the call for regulating greenhouse emissions.” I repeat, beware this boy!
Recently, a group of more moderate Christian evangelical leaders joined together to
form the Evangelical Climate Initiative. They say global warming is real, that humans are
causing it, and that we need to do something about it. The ISA stands firmly against them.
The question is, why?
Why, in the face of hard warnings on the cover of the conservative Time Magazine with headlines
that read to “be worried. Be very worried” about global warming? Why, when the NASA scientist who
warned us 25 years ago that human activity was changing the Earth’s climate now warns
us we have a decade before we pass the point of no return? Got that? Point of no return.
Ten years! Why, against the growing tide of public and clerical opinion that mankind’s
contribution to global warming must be stopped, do they tell their flock to be like
Mad Magazine’s Alfred E. Newman and not to worry?
Are these Mad Magazine evangelicals antagonistic toward science because science brought
us the concept of evolution? Can they be so petty? Or do they see global warming as a way
to fulfill their direst prophecies of gloom and doom? Can they be so proud? Or is it their
sheer greed to gobble up Earth’s resources that brings them smiling sanguinely to the brink of
a disaster so profound the habititability of our entire planet is at risk? Can they be so selfish?
Selfish, proud, petty? Beware this boy!
This Earth is our only real sanctuary, it is a gift of God, how can it be of so
little concern to these anti-Earth evangelicals that they can continue to preach against it,
preach against God’s gift? I conclude, beware this boy, ignorance!
Host tag: Gary Schlueter is a former president of the Virgin Island Conservation
Society.