Saturday, October 15, 2005

A Christian Right environmentalist: Too good to be true?

Hard to tell. But this is a reminder that conservative Protestant Christianity does not necessarily equate to politically conservative: God and Global Warming St. Petersburg Times editorial 10/15/05.

Science and religion may differ on how we got here, but increasingly there is little disagreement on where we are headed if we don't begin to address the causes of climate change. Scientists have long warned of the dangers of global warming attributed to our profligate use of fossil fuels. Now, one of the nation's most influential religious groups is delivering the same message, if based on an alternative standard of proof.

"I had a conversion experience on the climate issue not unlike my conversion to Christ," Richard Cizik, vice president for governmental affairs at the National Association of Evangelicals, told the environmental magazine Grist. "I was at a conference in Oxford where Sir John Houghton, an evangelical scientist, was presenting evidence of shrinking ice caps, temperatures tracked for millennia through ice-core data, increasing hurricane intensity, drought patterns, and so on. I realized all at once, with sudden awe, that climate change is a phenomenon of truly biblical proportions."


Count me as a Doubting Thomas on this one. As stated in that editorial, this makes a lot of sense. I would be very happy to hear that Cizik and the National Association of Evangelicals are serious about this.


But Christian Right types are fond of making vague statements that sound like they are embracing some liberal cause just for show. It's not at unusual to hear that some Christian Right leader or group has made a surprising statement suggesting that God cares about the poor, or some other blinding religious revelation such as that, which most Christians had taken for granted all along.

But when you start looking closely at what might come of it, more often than not it's just a puff of hot air.

I hope that's not the case with Cizik and environmentalism. But the article goes on to say that he "doesn't rule out formal collaboration with secular environmental groups such as the Sierra Club" - hardly a ringing commitment to militant environmentalism. Or even to moderate environmentalism.

He also claims to have swapped his RV for a Prius, which gets better gas mileage. Which is fine. But it also happens to echo the Republican Party line of the moment that conservation is a matter of volunteer action by individuals, as a way of avoiding the hard policy choices involving gas mileage standards, emission controls and development of renewable energy sources.

This interview with Cizik posted 11/12/03 shows him doing a lot of "dancing on the head of a pin", shall we say, to present a clean-shaven view of hardline Christian Right positions: PBS/Frontline site for The Jesus Factor. In this section, the interviewer presses him for specifics on how his religious vision translates into political positions. It's vague responses like the following that the following that throw many reporters off, if they aren't very well informed about the sales pitches of the Christian Right:

This is a big question, even among scholars. They ask, "Well, what is the overriding vision, political vision, of evangelicals?" It's very hard to define. Yet I think there's one influence, arguably so, which overrides and dominates all other political visions of evangelicalism, and that vision is called pietism.

What is pietism? Well, it's that New Testament-oriented, anti-ritualist, congregational governance belief system which leads evangelicals to an emphasis on individual conversion, and, lastly, a social witness over all of life. That we are called by God to not just obey him and be obedient to him and personal conversion to Christ, but also to share that faith over all the social realm - that is what distinguishes this movement politically more than anything else, I think.


This type of response is not only aimed at presenting a harmless image to the more secular; it's also designed to sound benign to religiously-conservative Protestants who may not be convinced that the highest social priority for the godly should be to insure that the wealthy don't have to pay taxes to support their country.

But this interviewer pressed enough to get Cizik to indulge in enough double-talk to make the average reader wonder what he's hiding. In this exchange, he tries to talk benignly (and vaguely) about civil rights. But what he means is not pressing to change aspects of the Patriot Act that might violate the civil rights of immigrants. By "civil rights", he means lobbying for Bush's "faith-based" programs to funnel money to fundamentalist churches to use for religious proselytizing:

What you just said is hard to understand, so I want to understand specifically what you mean. When you talk about the moral health or you talk about America in general, what are you talking about there? Are you talking about pro-life issues? Are you talking about gay marriage? I mean, we should just try to understand them in terms of what is going on contemporarily right now in our society.

In the 1980s, there was a great emphasis on the below-the-belt issues - described as abortion, homosexuality and the rest, gay rights. These were issues which motivated evangelicals into the public arena.

There's been a lot of maturation and growing of the movement to other issues, not just those, for example, like prayer in schools - which, frankly, is sort of a litmus test politicians use, which is quite outdated - to today, when evangelicals believe that we have to be concerned, not just for our own civil rights, but for the rights of others. That has led to a new emphasis on international issues.

... Domestically, what would you say your association cares about the most right now?

Probably the faith-based initiative of this president. We believe there has to be equality of treatment toward religious social service providers in America. That is what America ought to be all about - equality of treatment. What we believe equality of treatment means is not the preference for evangelical social service providers, but equality of treatment, so that they're treated the same as secular service providers - equal competitors for federal dollars to be able to dispense services to the needy. That's what the faith-based initiative of this president is about. I think it's probably one of our top priorities.

So in other words, when you have a system that doesn't actually give money to any faith-based organizations in essence, it's discriminating against -

Oh, absolutely. For decades, religious service providers have been told, "You're religious. You don't qualify. You can't even compete," in spite of the fact that our institutions, our social service providers, have done the best job, according to many social scientists, in helping people. Helping the inmate who's back on the street. Helping the drunk or the derelict. Helping the unwed mother who needs help. Our social service providers have done the best job, the most effectively, at the least cost. Yet for decades, we've been told, "You don't qualify." That's simply not the American way. ...


It's not only his mealy-mouthing about "civil rights" that's dishonest. Federal money has been available to religious organizations for a long time. I once worked for the local government agency in Santa Clara County (CA) that administered federal job-training funds. I was very impressed with the competence - and political sophistication - of the religious-connected service providers with which I worked, like the Catholic St. Vincent De Paul agency and the National Conference of Christians and Jews. They were certainly eligible for federal funds, and they were very competitive because they were good at what they did and they also had good administrative structures in place.

What Bush's "faith-based" programs tried to do was to drop restrictions about public money being used for specifically religious purposes involving religious proselytizing.

The Christian doctrine of the Just War, historically and theologically one of the most important Christian concepts, doesn't seem to trouble him much:

Talk about how it is to have one of your own in the White House, and what that means in terms of this success, as well. I mean, you have an ally.

Yes, we do have an ally. I mean, we don't overstate that. George Bush and evangelicals probably agree on 75 percent of our issues - not all. A majority, probably. It doesn't mean we're going to get everything we want, by any stretch of the imagination.

It does mean, however, that we have a president who, I think, as an evangelical Methodist, understands the way we think. In the Oval Office at the signing ceremonies for the Sudan Peace Act, he said, "I know if I don't follow up on this, I'll hear from you," which is to say we had to prod him and he has heard us and done what he could. ...

Is it a comfort to your association and to you, having someone like George Bush in the White House?

Yes. I sleep better at night. I slept better at night during the recent war in Iraq, knowing that George Bush is in the White House.


Why?

I sleep better at night knowing he is a man who isn't afraid to say he prays, just like George Washington and many other presidents. Yes, it's a comfort. I think he is a man who has a proper humility, who doesn't let his faith or his religious beliefs improperly influence his role as commander in chief. But he's got a healthy balance, and I sleep better knowing it. Sure. No doubt about it.


Gosh, what can you say about that? I can't get past what he may have meant by "the recent war in Iraq". This was November of 2003. Was he still believing in Bush's May 1 "Mission Accomplished" speech earlier that year? Wow.

But I believe in conversion and redemption, too. So we'll see what kind of results his road-to-Damascus experience on environmentalism produces.

It probably will be at least better than the fundamentalist Christian that Reagan appointed to head the Department of the Interior, the chief federal conservation department. (In Europe, the "interior" ministry is similar to the American Deparment of Justice.) He became famous for such Christian notions as claiming that the Beach Boys attracted an undesirable sort of people; he thought Wayne Newton was a much more wholesome performer. Lou Cannon wrote of Watt in President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime (1991):

Watt was a radical who favored virtually unlimited development of public lands. Before his appointment he had served as president of the Mountain States Legal Foundation, a counterforce to public interest law firms that had blocked nuclear plants and high dams and helped save parkland and wild rivers in the intermountain West. The purpose of Mountain States, as defined by Watt, was "to fight in the courts those bureaucrats and no-growth advocates who create a challenge to individual liberty and economic freedoms." As secretary of the interior, Watt deployed the resources of the federal government in this cause. ...

From Watt's point of view, [previous Republican Interior Secretaries] Hickel and his successor, Rogers C. B. Morton, had surrendered to the conservationist impulses of the Interior bureaucracy and the national media. Watt vowed repeatedly that he would not be "Hickelized." He divided people into two categories - "liberals and Americans" - and dismissed the respected Audubon Society, which wanted him fired, as "a chanting mob." Watt even took on the National Wildlife Federation, the most mainstream and conservative of the environmental organizations. He proclaimed his determination to open up wilderness areas and regaled national park concessionaires by telling them about a "tedious" float trip through the Grand Canyon which ended on the fourth day, when "we were praying for helicopters, and they came." The best that can be said about Watt's hostility to the environment is that he never disguised it. "We will mine more, drill more, cut more timber," he said, and he meant it.


That legendary Christian soul finally was pushed out of the Cabinet after offering his endorsement of diversity in hiring: "We have every kind of mix you can have. I have a black, I have a woman, two Jews and a cripple. And we have talent."

I suppose Watt considered that a commitment to "civil rights".

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