Warming Draws Evangelicals Into Environmentalist Fold

Peter A. Seligmann, chief executive of Conservation International, an Arlington-based nonprofit group that seeks to preserve terrestrial and marine biodiversity worldwide, asked himself what sector of society was best positioned to shift U.S. climate policy: "What bloc of people has enormous influence, especially on the Republican Party? That group of people is right-wing Christian evangelicals" -- who made up 24 percent of the U.S. electorate in the 2004 and 2006 elections.

So Seligmann set about wooing church leaders. At the suggestion of former NBC anchor Tom Brokaw and his wife, Meredith, who serves on his organization's board, Seligmann flew to Colorado Springs to discuss global warming with Ted Haggard, then president of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE). Haggard proved to be a willing partner until a scandal involving drugs and homosexual activity ended his public career. ("I bet on the wrong horse," Seligmann observed wryly.)

But Seligmann also made savvy choices, such as hiring Ben Campbell -- an evangelical who had worked on agricultural policy for Conservation International in the past -- to reach out to the religious right.

At the same time that Conservation International and other groups such as the Sierra Club were starting to strengthen their ties with religious groups, Houghton was making headway with Protestant leaders including Hunter and NAE lobbyist Richard Cizik.

Cizik -- another ebullient evangelical, who quips that "When I die, God isn't going to ask me 'Did I create the Earth in six days or five days?" but 'What did you do with what I gave you?' " -- started lobbying other evangelicals to sign a statement on climate change. Jim Ball, a friend of both who heads the Evangelical Environmental Network, sent it to Hunter.

Hunter began researching the subject. Afterward he wondered, "How have I missed this?" He not only signed the statement but also filmed a national television ad on climate change, and by summer of 2006 he found himself at a Windsor Castle retreat with Houghton and Cizik, talking about global warming. There was a private session with Prince Charles and a tour of the organic garden at the prince's Highgrove estate, as well as intense conversations among the participants about how Genesis 2:15 calls upon Adam to "serve" and "keep" the Garden of Eden.

Hunter had joined the civil rights movement in college, but he become disillusioned with activism after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination. Global warming offered a chance to reconnect his faith to national politics.

King's death prompted "a crisis of faith," he recalled. He questioned whether politics could actually spur societal change. "What I realized was political systems are simply mechanisms of power," he said. Religious faith, on the other hand, could prompt people to change the way they lived their lives. Now he was doing both.

Seeking Reconciliation

Several eminent scientists also set out to repair the breach that had divided American faith leaders and scientists for nearly a century. Harvard University entomologist Edward O. Wilson, who had grown up Southern Baptist but drifted away in college, decided that if he could win over the religious right, he might be able to convince Americans that their entire ecological heritage was in jeopardy.

"I was working off the 'New York effect': If you can make it in New York, you could make it anywhere," Wilson said. In the fall of 2006 he published "The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth," a short treatise in which the biologist makes his case for environmentalism in a series of letters to an imaginary pastor.

Last fall, Hunter and Wilson were among more than two dozen scientific and evangelical leaders who met secretly at a retreat in Thomasville, Ga., to draft a joint statement calling for immediate action on climate change. A month and a half later, they released a statement saying both camps "share a moral passion and sense of vocation to save the imperiled living world before our damages to it remake it as another kind of planet."

After the meeting, Hunter and Conservation International's Campbell drafted a tool kit titled "Creation Care: An Introduction for Busy Pastors" to send to evangelical leaders. Within a matter of months, they had produced a package of Bible passages and information on scientific findings to promote action on climate change.