Baptist News Global
Sections
  • News
  • Analysis
  • Opinion
  • Curated
  • Storytelling
    • Faith & Justice >
      • Charleston: Metanoia with Bill Stanfield
      • Charlotte: QC Family Tree with Greg and Helms Jarrell
      • Little Rock: Judge Wendell Griffen
      • North Carolina: Conetoe
    • Welcoming the Stranger >
      • Lost Boys of Sudan: St. John’s Baptist Charlotte
      • Awakening to Immigrant Justice: Myers Park Baptist Church
      • Hospitality on the corner: Gaston Christian Center
    • Signature Ministries >
      • Jake Hall: Gospel Gothic, Music and Radio
    • Singing Our Faith >
      • Hymns for a Lifetime: Ken Wilson and Knollwood Baptist Church
      • Norfolk Street Choir
    • Resilient Rural America >
      • Alabama: Perry County
      • Texas: Hidalgo County
      • Arkansas Delta
      • Southeast Kentucky
  • More
    • Contact
    • About
    • Donate
    • Planned Giving
    • Letters to the Editor
    • Advertising
    • Ministry Jobs and More
    • Transitions
    • Subscribe
    • Submissions and Permissions
Support independent, faith-based journalism. Donate
Search Search this site

Pro-Trump pastor Robert Jeffress uses Bible to debunk science of climate change

NewsBob Allen  |  September 27, 2019

A Southern Baptist pastor who supports President Donald Trump says 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg should worry less about science and more about the Bible.

Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, joined conservative pundits piling on criticism of the Swedish teenager’s Sept. 23 address at the United Nation chastising world leaders for not taking sufficient steps to address climate change.

Greta Thunberg

“This is all wrong,” Thunberg said in a passionate five-minute address at Monday’s U.N. Climate Action Summit. “I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you!”

“You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words, and yet I’m one of the lucky ones,” she said. “People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!”

“For more than 30 years, the science has been crystal clear,” she continued. “How dare you continue to look away and come here saying that you’re doing enough, when the politics and solutions needed are still nowhere in sight.”

Jeffress, a spiritual adviser to President Trump and frequent defender of the administration’s policies, downplayed Thunberg’s concerns Sept. 23 on Todd Starnes’ radio show by referencing the biblical story of Noah’s Ark.

“Somebody needs to read poor Greta Genesis Chapter 9 and tell her next time she worries about global warming just look at a rainbow,” Jeffress said. “That’s God’s promise that the polar ice caps aren’t going to melt and flood the world again.”

The three-chapter-long Genesis flood narrative — where God spares Noah, his family and livestock from a worldwide flood that kills all land-dwelling creatures — ends with God setting his bow in the clouds to signify a covenant promising “the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh.”

It’s one of the first Bible stories that children learn in Sunday school, but by the time they are adults many Christians read the story not as a literal account of history but in a figurative way.

Scientific and historical evidence suggest there was never a global flood and the Ark’s dimensions in Genesis would not accommodate a male and female specimen of all modern animals.

That hasn’t stopped numerous modern expeditions from searching for the remains of a Noah’s Ark. The Ark Encounter — a Kentucky theme park owned by the young-earth creationist ministry Answers in Genesis — attracts as many as 8,000 visitors a day to a 510-foot replica of Noah’s Ark, now in its fourth year of operation.

A new report by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — prepared by 104 leading scientists from 36 countries around the world — recommends urgent action to reduce greenhouse emissions, protect and restore ecosystems and manage the use of natural resources to slow the rate of global warming. Scientists say global warming has already reached 1 degree Celsius above the pre-industrial level, causing melting glaciers, rising sea levels and changes to the weather.

A majority of the U.S. public believes there is scientific consensus that the Earth is getting warmer because of human activity, and 80 percent support stronger laws and regulations to protect the environment. Among white evangelicals, however, just 28 percent attribute global warming to human activity, and 37 percent say there is no solid evidence to support climate change.

Thunberg became an environmental activist at age 15, when she took time off school to demonstrate outside the Swedish parliament by holding up a sign calling for stronger action to mitigate climate change. That sparked an international movement of students taking time off from class to participate in demonstrations demanding that their governments meet benchmarks of the 2016 Paris Agreement approved by the U.N. secretariat for climate change.

The United States ratified the agreement in 2016, but President Trump announced in 2017 he was withdrawing from the pact to prevent global temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, saying it runs contrary to the best interests of the American economy.

Right-wing pundits had a field day ridiculing the teen activist’s U.N. speech.

Fox News apologized after a guest called her mentally ill. Thunberg is diagnosed with Asperger syndrome, an autism spectrum disorder distinguished by a child’s obsessive interest in a single object or topic to the exclusion of others. She calls it her superpower.

Conservative commentator Dinesh D’Souza compared her trademark long braids and Nordic appearance to images used in Nazi propaganda. Sebastian Gorka, who served briefly in the Trump White House as an assistant to the president and strategist, found her “performance” at the U.N. “disturbingly redolent of a victim of a Maoist ‘re-education’ camp.”

Fox News host Laura Ingraham augmented a segment on the influence of climate-change “hysteria” on youth with a clip from the 1984 horror movie Children of the Corn.

President Trump tweeted sarcastically that Thunberg “seems like a very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future.”

Thunberg appeared to take it all in stride.

“As you may have noticed, the haters are as active as ever — going after me, my looks, my clothes, my behavior and my differences,” the teen said on Twitter. “They come up with every thinkable lie and conspiracy theory.”

“I honestly don’t understand why adults would choose to spend their time mocking and threatening teenagers and children for promoting science, when they could do something good instead,” she said. “I guess they must simply feel so threatened by us.”

Trump skipped most of the U.N. presentation on climate change, focusing instead on religious persecution, an issue popular with his evangelical voter base. Jeffress, along with others, applauded the president’s decision.

“It is a remarkable thing that this president would skip a U.N. climate change summit on an imaginary problem to address the very real problem of global persecution of believers,” Jeffress said in an early morning interview on Fox & Friends Sept. 23.

“Think about it,” Jeffress said. “What president in history would have the guts to do what President Trump is doing? It’s this kind of leadership that is absolutely infuriating the president’s enemies, but it’s also energizing his base, especially his religious base of voters.”

Later in the interview Jeffress said Trump believes religious freedom is not granted by government but is a gift from God.

“The Democrats believe the great human right that transcends all others is the right to kill your own babies through abortion, and the previous administration supported that for the world,” Jeffress said. “This president says no, it’s not the murder of babies that’s a basic human right, it is religious liberty that is granted by our creator.”

Previous story:

Robert Jeffress says Trump doesn’t have ‘messiah complex’

 

Tags:Climate ChangePoliticsRobert JeffressNoah's ArkGreta Thunberg
Bob Allen
More by
Bob Allen
  • Get BNG headlines in your inbox

  • Featured

    • If you want to help the poor, first understand their humanity

      News

    • How American exceptionalism is killing America

      Opinion

    • In state legislatures, a push against trans teens, for churches as ‘essential’ and seeking to define ‘religious freedom’

      News

    • Months after two hurricanes, vaccinated volunteers finally heading to Lake Charles

      News


    Curated

    • Panel advances bill to let Arkansas teachers talk creationism

      Panel advances bill to let Arkansas teachers talk creationism

      April 9, 2021
    • Are LGBTQ students at Christian schools discriminated against? A lawsuit, scholarly studies say yes.

      Are LGBTQ students at Christian schools discriminated against? A lawsuit, scholarly studies say yes.

      April 8, 2021
    • A Georgia church, kicked out of the SBC for allowing gay members, wants to make sure ‘everybody’s welcome’

      A Georgia church, kicked out of the SBC for allowing gay members, wants to make sure ‘everybody’s welcome’

      April 8, 2021
    • Faith leaders call for elimination of Senate filibuster

      Faith leaders call for elimination of Senate filibuster

      April 8, 2021
    Read Next:

    Contrary to what you’ve heard, study finds churches thrive with racial diversity

    NewsCynthia Astle

    More Articles

    • All
    • News
    • Opinion
    • Curated
    • Now Beth Moore is taking on patriarchy in the church

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • When pastors change churches during a global pandemic, it takes creativity and perseverance

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • Angry man with bulldozer severely damages Dellanna West O’Brien School in Liberia

      NewsGrace Thornton

    • Where is Mike Huckabee?

      OpinionRobert P. Sellers

    • American Christianity in China also imports gender bias and Calvinism

      AnalysisRick Pidcock

    • We cannot now close our border to those fleeing the horror we helped create

      OpinionChris Conley

    • That time I went to the school board meeting to speak against banning books

      OpinionMark Wingfield

    • Chip Gaines writes about building a network of support and not being constrained by conventional wisdom

      NewsMaina Mwaura

    • What I found hidden in my mother’s Bible after her death

      OpinionKim Brewer

    • Months after two hurricanes, vaccinated volunteers finally heading to Lake Charles

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • Four ways to help others through grief and mourning amid social isolation

      OpinionJacob George

    • Ministry jobs and more

      NewsBarbara Francis

    • Understanding human capital makes volunteer recruitment easier

      AnalysisBrian Foreman and Justin Nelson

    • Contrary to what you’ve heard, study finds churches thrive with racial diversity

      NewsCynthia Astle

    • CBF Benefits Board names executive vice president and COO

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • A few good men?: Promising Young Woman and the culture of abuse

      OpinionGreg Garrett, Senior Columnist

    • In state legislatures, a push against trans teens, for churches as ‘essential’ and seeking to define ‘religious freedom’

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • I knew the truth about women in the Bible, and I stayed silent

      OpinionBeth Allison Barr

    • How American exceptionalism is killing America

      OpinionRichard T. Hughes

    • The end of American exceptionalism

      OpinionSteve Sullivan

    • What we missed most about in-person church, what’s coming back and what’s likely to change

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • To live into Easter, we need to keep writing a new song

      OpinionLaura Mayo

    • How to find resilience for the long run of COVID, as we’re ‘almost there, but not quite yet’

      OpinionPaula Mangum Sheridan

    • If you want to help the poor, first understand their humanity

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • Second Easter during pandemic brings greater sense of hope nationwide

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • Now Beth Moore is taking on patriarchy in the church

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • When pastors change churches during a global pandemic, it takes creativity and perseverance

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • Angry man with bulldozer severely damages Dellanna West O’Brien School in Liberia

      NewsGrace Thornton

    • Chip Gaines writes about building a network of support and not being constrained by conventional wisdom

      NewsMaina Mwaura

    • Months after two hurricanes, vaccinated volunteers finally heading to Lake Charles

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • Ministry jobs and more

      NewsBarbara Francis

    • Contrary to what you’ve heard, study finds churches thrive with racial diversity

      NewsCynthia Astle

    • CBF Benefits Board names executive vice president and COO

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • In state legislatures, a push against trans teens, for churches as ‘essential’ and seeking to define ‘religious freedom’

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • What we missed most about in-person church, what’s coming back and what’s likely to change

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • If you want to help the poor, first understand their humanity

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • Second Easter during pandemic brings greater sense of hope nationwide

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • In Tigray, Ethiopia, six months of pain, suffering and disaster

      NewsAnthony Akaeze

    • Ryan Burge sifts the data to paint an evolving portrait of the ‘nones’

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • Transitions for the week of 4-2-21

      NewsBarbara Francis

    • 25 faith-based schools named in LGBTQ discrimination case against Department of Education

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • Less than half of Americans now claim a formal congregational membership

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • Ministry jobs and more

      NewsBarbara Francis

    • Virginia interfaith leaders explain how other states could abolish death penalty just as Virginia has done

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • New data on COVID vaccine efficacy is good news for faith leaders seeking to be influencers

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • Georgia mom is an advocate for organ donation because her son is one of the longest-living heart transplant recipients in the nation

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • Arkansas allows medical providers to deny service based on a provider’s own ethics or religious beliefs

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • New devotional book asks what it means to follow God in a time of global pandemic

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • It’s official now: Death penalty no more in Virginia

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • Prominent Atlanta church announces property deal that will fund a relaunch and a missions and ministry endowment

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • Where is Mike Huckabee?

      OpinionRobert P. Sellers

    • We cannot now close our border to those fleeing the horror we helped create

      OpinionChris Conley

    • That time I went to the school board meeting to speak against banning books

      OpinionMark Wingfield

    • What I found hidden in my mother’s Bible after her death

      OpinionKim Brewer

    • Four ways to help others through grief and mourning amid social isolation

      OpinionJacob George

    • A few good men?: Promising Young Woman and the culture of abuse

      OpinionGreg Garrett, Senior Columnist

    • I knew the truth about women in the Bible, and I stayed silent

      OpinionBeth Allison Barr

    • How American exceptionalism is killing America

      OpinionRichard T. Hughes

    • The end of American exceptionalism

      OpinionSteve Sullivan

    • To live into Easter, we need to keep writing a new song

      OpinionLaura Mayo

    • How to find resilience for the long run of COVID, as we’re ‘almost there, but not quite yet’

      OpinionPaula Mangum Sheridan

    • George Floyd’s murder: Knowing what cannot be unseen

      OpinionWendell Griffen

    • The habits of churches that need resurrection

      OpinionBrett Younger

    • Consider the trees: A Holy Week reflection on looking up

      OpinionRick Pidcock

    • Baylor, Baptists and slavery: A way forward

      OpinionGreg Garrett, Senior Columnist

    • Admitting our part in ‘Good’ Friday

      OpinionSteve Sullivan

    • Why I’ll remember 2021 as ‘The Year with Two Easters’

      OpinionTyler Tankersley

    • Holy Week 2021: Justice, gospel and cups of cold water

      OpinionBill Leonard, Senior Columnist

    • Through Scripture, understanding that my speech is a form of prayer

      OpinionEarl Chappell

    • This Holy Week, let us ‘go in peace’

      OpinionCurtis Ramsey-Lucas

    • Seeing gun violence as a pro-life issue

      OpinionShane Claiborne and Michael Martin

    • A Holy Week reflection on justice and the Cross

      OpinionDavid Gushee, Senior Columnist

    • This Good Friday, I’ll be at the hanging tree

      OpinionH. Stephen Shoemaker

    • The link between the Atlanta shootings and purity culture

      OpinionAmber Cantorna

    • Jesus and a union

      OpinionPaul Robeson Ford

    • Panel advances bill to let Arkansas teachers talk creationism

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Are LGBTQ students at Christian schools discriminated against? A lawsuit, scholarly studies say yes.

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • A Georgia church, kicked out of the SBC for allowing gay members, wants to make sure ‘everybody’s welcome’

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Faith leaders call for elimination of Senate filibuster

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Joe Biden is not planning to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Christian nationalism is a barrier to mass vaccination against COVID-19

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Celebrity lineup to read King’s anti-war speech on assassination anniversary

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Montana House backs bill on religious challenges to rules

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Georgia faith leaders to leave water bottles around Capitol in protest of new voter laws

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Vatican makes moral case for supporting people displaced by climate change

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Baylor partnership brings Baptist Standard archive online

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Survey: Most Americans know Biden is Catholic, far fewer know Harris’ religion

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Georgia’s new GOP election law draws criticism, lawsuits

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • At nationwide rallies, Christians stand up for Asian Americans

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Appellate court arguments set for Charleston church shooter

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Franklin Graham unfazed after evangelical base blasts him for encouraging vaccines

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Shooter at Kansas Jewish centers appeals death sentence

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Like Beth Moore, many women preachers have had to break free to follow God’s call

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Texas health care provider ordered to pay former employees for mandating prayer and religious discussions

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Many QAnon followers report having mental health diagnoses

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Final vote results show major setback for Israel’s Netanyahu

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • “We are complicit”: Only some churches are offering real reparations and repentance for slavery

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Pope Francis reduces cardinal wages as Vatican finances struggle due to pandemic

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Growing number of Southern Baptist women question roles

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • United Methodist bishops cancel virtual special session of General Conference

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    Conversations that Matter.

    © 2021 Baptist News Global. All rights reserved.

    Want to share a story? We hope you will! Read our republishing, terms of use and privacy policies here.

    • Facebook
    • Twitter
    • Instagram
    • LinkedIn
    • RSS