Evangelical Environmentalists

Interested in the role evangelicals are playing in matters related to climate change?  Wen Stephenson’s piece at Slate offers a nice overview of the various Christian groups and organizations who are pushing this issue and how environmentalism will fare in the new Congress.  Here is a taste:

Good news on the climate front can be hard to come by—in Cancun or on Capitol Hill. So here’s something: At least we know, as of last week, that John Shimkus of Illinois won’t be chairman of the powerful House energy and commerce committee. At a subcommittee hearing last year the GOP congressman— a contender for the gavel that will now go to Michigan Republican Fred Upton—invoked the Bible to justify a do-nothing approach to climate change. “Man will not destroy this earth. This earth will not be destroyed by a flood,” the congressman intoned. 


Shimkus’s theology “doesn’t hold water,” says Rev. Richard Cizik, president of the New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good and former top lobbyist for the National Association of Evangelicals. “Let’s be clear,” he told me, “the idea that we can’t irreparably damage this planet by our actions runs contrary to all that’s taught in the scriptures.”..

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