SOUL FOOD:Global warming turning Evangelicals green with worry

Some things take time.

Eight years ago, conservative Christian broadcaster and former Republican presidential candidate Pat Robertson plunked down a sizable bankroll in hopes of reviving a has-been oil refinery east of Los Angeles.

According to documents cited by Communities for a Better Environment — the California nonprofit environmental health and justice organization that filed a federal lawsuit to stop him — the Robertson Charitable Foundation invested $75 million in the venture.

That the refinery, adjacent to an elementary school, senior housing and a convalescent home, had been an appalling polluter until it shut down didn’t faze Robertson. He viewed environmentalism with suspicion, environmentalists as scallywags. He scoffed at the evidence for man-made global warming.

Several months ago, Robertson was still preaching the same anti-green gospel according to the Republicans.

Wednesday night, during a Public Affairs Television documentary titled “Is God Green?,” Robertson was shown in clips from his “700 Club” speaking with James Inhofe, Republican senator from oil-rich Oklahoma and chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.

“Could it be that man-made global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people?” asks Inhofe, who answers his own question. “I believe it is.”

In another segment from The Christian Broadcasting Network, Robertson tells anchor Lee Webb that he believes some Evangelicals “are being used by the radical left to further their agenda,” an agenda “to shut America down … shut our industries down and put people out of work.”

In August, though, Robertson confessed a change of heart.

Citing the sweltering temperatures of our recent summer months, he acknowledged that he, too, has become convinced humans are causing global warming. And, he says, we need to do something about it.

Even as our weather cools down, the debate within the evangelical community remains as hot as ever.

Bill Moyers, who with producer and director Tom Casciato conceived and wrote “Is God Green?,” has called the debate “a new holy war” that could change the future of both American politics and the Earth.

Among Christians, being green is no longer the sole province of progressive or liberal adherents.

During a September teleconference, Moyers said, “At large, the constituency of conservative evangelicals, the kind of people I come from in Central Baptist Church in Marshall, Texas, they have always been reluctant to see this as an important issue.

“As evangelicals go, so goes the Republican base. They voted nearly four to one for Bush in 2004. These are people who take their faith seriously. Their opinions and beliefs matter and so do their votes.”

Traditionally, the conservative Christian community in Marshall, Texas — and elsewhere — has voted the Republican Party line.

However, Moyers noted — as under-reported as it might be, especially in broadcast media — that has begun to change. “It’s a big political story,” he said.

In January, in response to a statement titled “Climate Change: An Evangelical Call to Action” drawn up by members of the Evangelical Climate Initiative and signed by 86 evangelical pastors, college presidents, mission heads and other leaders, another group known as the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance sent “An Open Letter to the Signers of ‘Climate Change: An Evangelical Call to Action’ ” to the National Assn. of Evangelicals asking that it not adopt an official position on global climate change.

Signatories of both documents included prominent evangelicals. Both documents claimed the same, biblical moral high ground.

“Millions of people could die in this century because of climate change, most of them our poorest global neighbors,” claims the Evangelical Climate Initiative, and for this reason “evangelicals must engage this issue without any further lingering over the basic reality of the problem or humanity’s responsibility to address it.”

Not so, says the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance.

“We have the same motive proclaimed by the Evangelical Climate Initiative in its “Call to Action,” reads the letter from the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance. “But motive and reason are not the same thing. It matters little how well we mean if what we do actually harms those we intend to help.

“We believe the harm caused by mandated reductions in energy consumption in the quixotic quest to reduce global warming will far exceed its benefits. For the world’s 2 billion or more poor people who can barely afford sufficient food, clothing and shelter to sustain life and who are without electricity and the refrigeration, cooking, light, heat and air conditioning it can provide, it can mean the difference between life and death.”

Moyers’ hour-long documentary gives voice to both sides. His keenest interest though goes to those who are among the increasing numbers of evangelical Christians levying a greater importance on the care of creation.

Rich Cizik, vice president of governmental affairs for the National Assn. of Evangelicals, plays prominently in the film. If Cizik is right, the numbers of evangelicals who now believe “climate change is real and we’ve got to do something about it now” have reached 63%.

Tri Robinson, a rancher and the pastor of Vineyard Boise Church in Idaho — the most Republican state in the union according to Rocky Barker, who covers the environment for the Idaho Statesman — is among them.

On camera, Barker describes Robinson as a “strong Bush supporter … an avowed creationist … very pro-life … against gay marriage … a traditional Republican evangelical,” then adds, “except now he’s green.”

Before he dared to preach his first sermon on the environment, says Moyers in the film, Robinson had been a pastor for 15 years. Now Robinson says, “I think Christians all around [the] country are just waiting for their pastors and leaders to stand up and say, ‘It’s OK’ and give them license to be environmentally friendly and conscious, [and] love the creation and participate with it.”

In his teleconference last month with a group of reporters, Moyers said, “I like the approach of the evangelicals who say … the earth is our only home … [we] have to take care of it.” For him, it holds the best hope that his five grandchildren will live in an environment still hospitable to life as they grow to be his age.

Some things take time. When it comes to global warming, if we don’t act now, we may soon find that time was the very thing we did not have.

Note: “Is God Green” will air again Sunday at 4 p.m.