Today’s Washington Post article, "The Greening of Evangelicals" (subscription required) opens an intriguing window on the world of American conservative Christians and their attitudes toward environmental issues.
"Evangelicals feel besieged by the culture at large," Ball said. "They don’t know many environmentalists, but they have the idea they are pretty weird — with strange liberal, pantheist views."
Without betraying a hint of irony, the author continues to describe some of the unusual belief systems at work behind this perspective:
"… the return of Jesus and the end of the world are near, so it is pointless to fret about environmental degradation.
James G. Watt, President Ronald Reagan’s first interior secretary, famously made this argument before Congress in 1981, saying: "God gave us these things to use. After the last tree is felled, Christ will come back."
Haggard, the leader of the National Association of Evangelicals, concedes that this thinking "is a problem that I do have to address regularly in talking to the common man on the street."
The application of common sense by people like Haggard seems to be unravelling the extremists and pushing this viewpoint more and more into the fringes of that community. The article suggests that despite their extreme wariness of "environmentalists", American conservative Christians are becoming more informed about environmental issues, and more concerned.
The signs of independant thinking among a community that has until now appeared easily manipulated by government and corporate spin is encouraging. It would be good news indeed if they were to shake off their passivity and fret a little.
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