Yes, There Are Evangelical Christians who Believe in Climate Change

Last updated on: June 3, 2015 at 8:13 am by Alicia de los Reyes

Yes, There Are Evangelical Christians who Believe in Climate Change 2015-06-03T08:13:20-08:00 Alicia de los Reyes

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While I was spending a year in Restoration Church, an evangelical church in Dover, NH, there was one topic I was always careful to avoid: the environment.

I was doing the immersion journalism thing: I visited the church, participated in Bible studies, and talked to members for about a year, then wrote about it in a series of essays that eventually became my master’s thesis. I didn’t have an agenda, per se, but I had made one promise to myself: not to make anyone on either side of the evangelical debate look crazy.

I wanted to show the normal side of evangelicalism, the side not found in mainstream media–the evangelical Christians who do not shout from street corners but rather, just like members of many other faiths, work quietly each day to follow their beliefs.

Going-to-the-Sun Road, Glacier National Park, c/o Esther Lee

With that in mind, I felt I couldn’t ask about the environment. I knew myself: though no super-green machine (I hate composting, which is required in the city of Seattle), I believe that climate change is happening and that it’s our fault. I love the outdoors: hiking, kayaking, running, biking. Last summer, I finally got the guts to go backpacking for the first time in the gorgeous Olympic Mountains. I don’t like to think about how quickly Glacier National Park is changing, because I haven’t seen it yet.

I knew that if I found out that my new friends thought that climate change was a load of crock, I’d look at them differently.

But I was operating on the assumption that evangelical Christians don’t believe in climate change–and, guess what, there are evangelical Christians who believe in climate change. Of course.

In fact, there is an evangelical climate change scientist: Katharine Hayhoe. She lives and works in Texas and spends time explaining climate change to other evangelical Christians.

She has essentially become a missionary among her own people. And in doing so she has single-handedly raised hopes of a potential breakthrough in U.S. climate politics. The reasoning is simple. If you can convince evangelicals of the reality of man-made climate change, the rest of the country will follow.

“It definitely was not something that I ever set out to do,” she says, laughing.

Hayhoe realized her mission after “converting” her husband to the realities of climate change. Eventually, the couple wrote a book together connecting climate change and faith.

Read the entire story at the (Canadian) National Post.

Edit: Katharine Hayhoe was actually feature here on Patheos as part of our April Public Square on Global Care. Check out her post as panelist here–great stuff!

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