The Intimidation Factor. Charles Redfern
of unity.
The Realities
Cold reality prompts the canary’s cough. Fact: The world’s glaciers are shrinking. Fact: The polar ice caps are melting. Another fact: Peter Doran and Maggie Kendall Zimmerman discovered that 97% of all active climatologists are agreed—human activity spurs the Earth’s rising temperatures, weird weather, glacial melting, and the ocean’s acidification.10 Then there are the reports: A federal advisory draft released in January, 2013, predicted catastrophe unless policies change,11 as did a World Bank warning in November, 2012.12 A UN study revealed that this century’s first decade was the hottest in 160 years.13 The 2018 reports grew even more ominous: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that average global temperatures may cross the crucial 1.5-degree Celsius threshold as early as 2030.14 A Congressionally-mandated National Climate Assessment came the following month. It described climate change in the present tense and warned of rapidly rising sea levels.15
These facts and reports—as well as wild fires, droughts and super storms—resemble that poor canary in the coal mine, whose death signaled dangerous methane levels and the need for action.
Surely evangelical Christians can emulate their Catholic and Eastern Orthodox brothers and sisters and explore this dilemma without fear. No historic creed is at stake and Scripture advocates creation care: We’re the Lord’s designated stewards (Genesis 1:27–30). We were called to guard God’s sanctuary (a more literal rendering of the wording in Genesis 2:15). Our Earthly rule fits Walter Kaiser’s description: “The gift of ‘dominion’ over nature was not intended to be a license to use or abuse selfishly the created order in any way men and women saw fit. In no sense were humans to be bullies and laws to themselves.”16 Kaiser is right: God’s leadership motif is “help” (Psalm 121:1–2), and service (Matthew 20:28). Psalms 19 and 104 testify to God’s glory in creation and Romans 8:18–22 looks forward to its redemption. Kudos to Francis of Assisi, who cherished the animals and plants. And just to make sure everything’s on the up-and-up, we’ve had our inside people: Sir John Houghton, a British evangelical, co-chaired the IPCC for many years.17 Katharine Hayhoe, a Billy Graham fan, pastor’s wife, and Texas Tech university professor, has served as a reviewer for the IPCC.18
The evidence, the Bible, and historic Christianity motivated 280 leaders to sign the petition, “Climate Change, An Evangelical Call to Action” in 2006.19The names read like an evangelical VIP litany: Andy Crouch, then Christianity Today’s executive editor; Jack Hayford of the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel; Gordon P. Hugenberger of Parkstreet Church in Boston; Duane Litfin, president of Wheaton College; Gordon MacDonald, editor-at-large for Leadership Magazine; David Neff, also of Christianity Today; Tri Robinson, pastor of the Boise Vineyard; Berten Waggoner, then the National Director of the Vineyard USA; and Rick Warren, senior pastor of Saddleback. To name a few. What’s more, 44 Southern Baptist leaders, including the convention’s president and two past presidents, signed the initiative, “A Southern Baptist Declaration on the Environment and Climate Change.”
A wrench is thrown
But something was amiss. In some circles, calling attention to the hacking canary was both unpatriotic and unorthodox. Many were swayed. I’ve already mentioned my experience as a pastor: I was blasted as a “liberal” (perish the thought) because I agreed with these two assertions:
•“There is now a broad consensus in this country, and indeed in the world, that global warming is happening, that it is a serious problem, and that humans are causing it.”20
•“we agree that climate change is real and threatens our economy and national security.”21
The late Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona wrote the first quote in 2007, along with Senator Joe Lieberman. Republican Senator Lindsay Graham wrote the second in 2009 along with Democrat John Kerry. The senators, along with retired generals and admirals alarmed about climate change’s potential security concerns,22 implicitly invited us to embrace an opportunity: We can shelve annoying labels. Let’s brew enough caffeine to spike our blood pressure, roll in the whiteboards, and brainstorm while pacing back and forth with our Type A personalities on full display . . .
No. We’re “liberal.” We’ve failed a vague orthodoxy test, which means we’re worse than erroneous: We’re suspect. Forget evidence, the biblical mandate for stewarding creation, precedent, and recognized authorities. According to a 2007 CNN article, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Institute speculated that climate change is part of a leftist agenda threatening evangelical unity.23 The late Jerry Falwell proclaimed this from his pulpit on February 25 of that year: “I am today raising a flag of opposition to this alarmism about global warming and urging all believers to refuse to be duped by these ‘earthism’ worshipers.”24 Calvin Beisner, head of the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, suggested the worries are “an insult to God.”25 He also insinuated that diminishing our oil dependence aligns us with the unfaithful steward of Matthew 25:14–30.26 After all, the oil is there: God gave it to us. We should use it (the same logic would render us fickle if we failed to smoke marijuana as well; after all, it’s there for the asking). His organization veered close to rendering anthropogenic climate change a theological impossibility in its Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming: “We believe Earth and its ecosystems—created by God’s intelligent design and infinite power and sustained by His faithful providence — are robust, resilient, self-regulating, and self-correcting, admirably suited for human flourishing, and displaying His glory. Earth’s climate system is no exception. Recent global warming is one of many natural cycles of warming and cooling in geologic history.”27
That’s naïve. Our species is not immune to world-wide calamity. Remember the fourteenth century, when nature and human activity wed in a ghoulish marriage. Commerce flowed over new trade routes between East and West and conveyed flea-bearing rats. The fleas leaped onto humans and infected them with the Black Death. Roughly half of all Europe died.
I long to ask: Who defines unity? Is assessing evidence and asking questions inherently disruptive? Is it wrong to seek solutions to a potentially grave problem—especially since there are virtually no doctrinal risks (Beisner notwithstanding)? Apparently, yes. We’re pagan “earthism” worshipers. We’re divisive conspirators in a leftist plot—never mind that Perkins was flourishing a rhetorical ploy with a one-two punch: levy a nebulous charge no one can disprove; then, as the opponent reels, accuse him of divisiveness. Any challenge fulfills the charge. Few can stay calm and ask: Who is calling whom names? Who flings the accusations and mows down the straw men? Who is really divisive?
But none of those questions stems the accusatory tide. Deniers of climate change grab any real or imagined flaw. I’ve been warned, over coffee and doughnuts, that I’m falling prey to Al Gore, who, apparently, is evil incarnate and wields hypnotic power. The ice caps will recover if he vanishes—just like the Vietnam War would have evaporated if a tiger ate Dan Rather. I try to tell people I’ve never seen An Inconvenient Truth, but no one believes me.
Gotcha . . . Maybe Not
For a brief moment in 2009, it looked like the deniers were onto something. Computer hackers stole more than 1,000 e-mails from a research unit at Great Britain’s University of East Anglia. The e-mails, dating back some 13 years, held reams of information, “everything from the mundanities of climate-data collection to comments on international scientific politics to strongly worded criticisms by climate-change doubters,” to quote Bryan Walsh of Time.28 There seemed to be references to oppressing opposition, withholding information, pressuring editorial boards of academic journals, and skewing research.
Besides, the e-mails weren’t nice.
The unit’s head, Phil Jones, took a leave of absence pending an investigation.
Nothing came of it. Parliamentary and university reports exonerated Jones. Perhaps he could have been more forthcoming and more couth, but, in the words of the parliamentary committee: “In the context of sharing data and methodologies, we consider Professor Jones’s actions were in line with common practice in the climate science community.”29 References