A Lost and Dying World Indeed

Same song, second verse. I'm continuing what I started in my last post with my reference to The Evangelical Ecologist's entry in this week's Carnival of the Green. He gave me this link himself, good fellow, so I followed it. It's David Roberts in Grist Magazine's blog, Gristmill, on the NAE's refusal to take any sort of stand on global warming. I must admit I - oh silly silly me - believed the hype that was bruited about by the likes of Richard Cizik, that Evangelicals were taking global warming as a serious issue that committed Christians needed to act upon. Roberts wasn't fooled, as he says in the piece, Jesus Interruptus:

The purported rationale for the NAE abstaining on the issue is that "global warming is not a consensus issue" and "there should be room for Bible-believing evangelicals to disagree about the cause, severity and solutions to the global warming issue." As for "solutions," I seriously doubt that the NAE would have proposed anything particularly controversial. So that pretty much leaves "causes and severity," and I'm sure you're all familiar with those arguments.

But let's leave aside the substantive merits, since they aren't really the point. The point, put bluntly, is this: The right-wing base still contains a large number of people who view climate change as a piece of communist propaganda, and this fact works to the immense benefit of the Republican leadership. The very reason it would have been miraculous if the 30-million-member NAE had come out against global warming is the reason it was always unlikely to happen.

The list of signatories reveals far more about the letter than the text itself. These guys -- Dobson, Colson, Wildmon -- are heavy players in Republican political circles

Well, of course, what was I thinking? Roberts has the NAE letter and all its outstanding signatories in his post. We environmentalist commie dupes are left holding the fort, abandoning the hope that the Evangelical cavalry was coming to strengthen our ranks and bring with them all their substantial numbers.

My favorite portion of the letter is the last paragraph, which I am giving you here:

Evangelicals are to be first and foremost messengers of the good news of the gospel to a lost and dying world. We are to promote those things that please God and oppose those things in the world that clearly violate His righteous standard of conduct. We respectfully ask that the NAE carefully consider all policy issues in which it might engage in the light of promoting unity among the Christian community and glory to God.

I'm not an Evangelical Christian, nooooo, far from it, but it would seem to even my agnostic soul that God might find totally ruining the planet, losing countless species, making life ultimately more wretched and difficult for the least of our brethren, as a violation of His righteous standard of conduct. Eh, but what do I know?

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