Danny ChaiI don’t get why so many evangelicals are global warming skeptics. Actually, this is changing quite a bit, which is a good thing. But for a while, it was like, the default stance of evangelicals was that global warming isn’t happening, and that if it were, it’s not man-made.
Why that is (or at least was) the default evangelical stance makes zero sense to me, because as far as I can tell, it has absolutely nothing to do with Christianity. The default evangelical stances on abortion and evolution, regardless of whether you agree or not, you can understand the Christian values they come from – a respect for the sanctity of life and belief in God the Creator. But global warming skepticism? What Christian value spurs that? If anything, I think the call to be good stewards of creation should lead us to have a general concern for the environment, rather than indifference until we see overwhelming, irrefutable, incontrovertible evidence.
As I see it, evangelicals have tended to be skeptics for one of two reasons. One, they’re so conditioned to being opposed to the social agenda of liberals that they tend to oppose any liberal agendum. I kind of think that’s why many evangelicals are also big on the right to bear arms, another issue that has nothing to do with Christianity. I still remember how shocked I was to hear an anti-gun control spot on KSBJ, Houston’s Christian music station (“God Listens”). They’ve just been conditioned to seeing any liberal cause as anti-Christian.
The other possible reason is, evangelicals who oppose evolution have become so conditioned to being skeptical of mainstream science that they apply the same skepticism to other fields of science that, like evolutionary biology, are difficult to directly test and confirm. Andy Crouch basically said this in a Christianity Today column a while back.
Regardless of the reason, it’s a spurious one – there is no Christian value that underpins skepticism of global warming. So why that was the default evangelical position is odd to me.