Summary
- A group of young evangelical Christian students plans to campaign at religious colleges to persuade them to consider climate change at the ballot box.
- It’s part of a small movement within the evangelical community to connect Christian values with climate action.
- The effort comes as Donald Trump continues to court evangelical voters by calling climate change a “hoax.”
When groups of evangelical students canvass Christian colleges for a climate vote later this month, their slogan will be: “Love God, love your neighbor, vote climate!”
This is the first such in-person campaign on campuses organized by Young Evangelists for Climate Action since it started in 2012.
The volunteers – members of chapters at six Christian colleges – aim to build connections between communities affected by the climate crisis and the Christian duties of “loving your neighbor” and helping those in need.
The initiative is part of a larger movement led by the Evangelical Environmental Network, an organization that lobbies for faith-based climate action.
Its members are a minority in their communities: A 2022 survey by the Pew Research Center found that evangelical Christians most likely Expressing skepticism about human-caused climate change among US religious groups.
in the 2020 elections 84% of white evangelical Christians the caller voted for Donald Trump in the past Climate change ‘lie’ against the decades scientific consensus. As of last week, Trump made the wrong claim At a Sept. 29 rally, he said “the planet has actually cooled a little lately” and called climate change “one of the biggest hoaxes of all time.”
White evangelical voters voted the third 2016 Trump poll and Pew Research poll released last month 82% said they would do it again this year.
Jessica Moerman, CEO of the Evangelical Environmental Network, is committed to ensuring that Christians see climate change as, as she describes it, a matter of loving the Earth God created.
“As evangelicals, we have this biblical mandate to focus on God’s creation,” said Moerman, who is also a pastor and climate scientist. “And in the 21st century, that means taking action on climate.”
Moerman said evangelicals who experience extreme weather are seeing increased interest in climate issues. So his group is beginning to focus more on making connections between climate change and increasingly powerful storms and wildfires, he said.
Young Evangelicals for Climate Action is a ministry of the Evangelical Environmental Network, and colleges it plans to campaign include Indiana Wesleyan University in Indiana and Olivet Nazarene University in Illinois. But the group’s work goes beyond that. Adam Hubert, a middle school science teacher at Hope Academy GSO, a faith-based school in Greensboro, North Carolina, is a member. It incorporates climate science into high school biology and environmental science classes.
This spring, the class traveled to the Blue Ridge Mountains to learn how climate change could affect forests and wildlife.
Hubert said many of his students tell him that school is the only place they talk about climate change.
“I hope my students leave my classroom with some kind of respect for the natural world,” she said. “So they can think about it when they turn 18 and go to the polls or talk to their neighbors.”
Most of Hope Academy’s 130 students come from low-income families of color. Hubert said the climate-denying rhetoric of some prominent evangelicals does not reflect the attitudes of the school community.
“I believe white evangelicals have the ability to deny or pretend something isn’t there,” he said. “I think we see it with racial injustice. I think we saw that in the pandemic. And we definitely see this with the climate crisis.”
Moerman sees climate denial among evangelical Christians as a product of misinformation.
“Unfortunately, one of the main targets of this misinformation has been my evangelical community,” he said.
Some conservative evangelical politicians have been skeptical of climate change for years. The late Republican Senator Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma presented a snowball on the Senate floor a decade ago that said “only God can change the climate.” And last year, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee published a Christian children’s book refuting man-made global warming.
To combat such ideas, the Evangelical Environmental Network is hosting webinars on climate change science and how faith connects to climate action. Volunteers organize faith-based nature camps for children and facilitate listening sessions in Christian communities affected by the climate crisis.
The group’s cornerstone Pro-Life Clean Energy Campaign pushes to fight air pollution as a way to protect unborn children, given research that shows pollution can. raise the risk of premature birth and low birth weight. A petition related to the campaign has collected more than 2 million signatures.
The network also connects with pastors and preachers and provides guidance on how to incorporate climate discussions into sermons.
Caleb Haynes, pastor of Kaleo Nashville, a small church in Nashville, Tennessee, is among the network’s members. He believes it is a Christian duty to consider the climate when voting, and he preaches accordingly.
“It’s 2024 and it’s not just Christians who are talking about apocalyptic times,” he told his congregation at a Sunday morning service in July. “When the glaciers melt and the sea level rises and they want to put on a show of greed, God’s people must show up!”
Haynes does not endorse specific candidates, instead focusing on the connections between Christian teachings and caring for the planet.
“Some pastors shy away from talking about climate change, but for me it’s Bible 101,” he said. “Our first sin here was to assume that we could consume whatever we wanted from whatever tree we wanted in the garden and there would be no consequences.”
“We are talking about the future of life on Earth and the lives of millions of people,” he said.
Both Haynes and Moerman said they see climate change as an issue of taking care of children.
“As evangelicals, we are called to defend the life of every child,” Moerman said. “And to really do that, we need to take climate into account – because it’s our children, both born and unborn, who are most affected by climate damage.”
There is Trump demanded the evangelical vote speaking at Christian conferences in his campaign, with some success: Trump voters was observed At a campaign rally in Ohio in March, she wore a dress emblazoned with the slogan “Jesus is my Savior, Trump is my President.” At Trump’s August rally in Montana, several evangelical attendees said they saw a plot against him failing. “Divine intervention.”
Even so, Moerman said, he still sees evangelicals as an important, untapped constituency in the fight against climate change.
“We only activated a small part of the community,” he said. “To solve a big problem like climate, we need everyone.”