ABILENE, Texas (ABP) — “Premillenial pessimism” and blind allegiance to politicians backed by oil companies contribute to evangelicals' relative silence about the threat of global warming, said Richard Cizik, the National Association for Evangelicals' vice president for governmental affairs.
In a Hardin-Simmons University chapel address, Cizik challenged students to use “moral imagination” in exercising stewardship of the world.
“I believe global warning threatens everything,” he said, echoing a position that came close to costing him his job earlier this year.
In March, about 24 high-profile Religious Right figures — including James Dobson of Focus on the Family — called on the NAE board either to silence or fire Cizik for his public statements on global warning.
They insisted that an emphasis on environmentalism would dilute evangelicals' political clout and take their focus off issues such as abortion and gay marriage.
But Cizik, an ordained Presbyterian minister, insisted that environmental degradation is a pro-life issue and that global climate change threatens all of God's creation.
“We're not using resources for heavenly purposes but for our own selfish interests,” he said. “Our dependence on foreign oil means we're transferring wealth to Middle Eastern religious dictators and importing oil to fuel a lifestyle that serves only our own interests.”
In part, creation care requires responsible lifestyle changes by individuals, he said. Recycling, driving hybrid cars and making homes more energy efficient will help, but it won't make enough difference. Citizens must demand public policy change — a difficult chore when politicians owe favors to big energy companies, he stressed.
“Are you going to save your friends or are you going to save the planet? I think, in effect, the president has said he will save his friends at the expense of the planet,” he said.
Some high-profile Religious Right figures have used global warming as a wedge issue. But Cizik, who is a “conservative Republican who voted for George W. Bush twice,” believes opposition to creation care grows out of fear that concern for environmental issues could drive some evangelicals into the arms of Democrats.
“They're interested in preserving the relationship between big business, particularly big oil, and evangelical conservatives — the two wings of the Republican Party,” he said in an interview. “I don't believe in conspiracy theories. It's not a secret conspiracy. It's right out in the open.”
And that reveals misplaced allegiance by some Christian conservatives, he added.
“It appears they care more about the welfare of the Republican Party than they do about the kingdom of God,” he said. “If that's not the case, then they should say so.”
Evangelicals truly motivated by a sense of stewardship to God's creation should “bridge outward” and find common cause with scientists and secularists who effect environmental change on the basis of public health or national security arguments, Cizik said.
“On this issue, we are all at peril. We must all work together,” Cizik said. “Everything is at stake — the future of the planet even.”
Once during the speech, a student interrupted Cizik to ask why environmental care mattered, since “the world will end in fire anyway.” Cizik responded by pointing to the New Testament image of the new heaven and new earth as a renewed and restored creation, and he stressed the stewardship responsibility given to God's people.
In an interview after his chapel sermon, Cizik said the student's question represented a viewpoint prevalent among many evangelicals.
“The premillenial dispensational view has produced a pessimism about the Earth that is frankly unbiblical,” he said, saying the issue does not have to do with eschatology but with theology.
Doomsday scenarios have contributed to the unwillingness of evangelical preachers to address the environment as a moral and ethical issue. Cizik compared it to how, in many evangelical circles, “churches opted out and preachers were silent” during the Civil Rights Movements of the 1950s and 1960s.
“I believe climate change and global warming is the civil rights issue of the 21st century,” he said. “We're at a historically defining moment.”
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— This is part of a series of stories about environmental responsibility.
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