The Intimidation Factor. Charles Redfern

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      4. Griswold, “Billy Graham’s Striking Gospel of Social Action,” The New Yorker, 2/23/2018.

      5. Dayton & Strong, Rediscovering an Evangelical Heritage, 49–51.

      6. See Wimber, “A Hunger for God,” in Springer, ed., Power Encounters Among Christians in the Western World, 3–14.

      7. This “radical middle” terminology is used in Jackson, The Quest for the Radical Middle: A History of the Vineyard.

      8. Pulliam Bailey, “The Trump Effect?,” Washington Post web site, 10/19/2016; Jones & Cox. “Clinton maintains double-digit lead (51% vs. 36%) over Trump.” PRRI. 2016.

      Part One

      Tips of the Iceberg

      Case Studies in Intimidation

      2

      Climate Change and a Heretic Hunt

      Few arenas display Evangelicalism’s bully takeover more than climate change, where the coal mine’s canary has been hacking, spitting, and turning blue.

      Deniers of the scientific consensus, often trained in political advocacy and marketing techniques, yell at the bird. They question its motives, tell it the fumes are imaginary, and drop hints that it’s wheezing a heretical wheeze. Consensus-driven evangelical moderates rallied to the cause at first, then muted their voices when the fists slammed the tables. The sad result: The deniers hogged the microphone for far too long, needlessly embarrassing biblically-centered Christianity and harming the Gospel’s advocacy.

The Board of Directors for the National Association of Evangelicals finally displayed moral courage in its resolution of October, 2015. The key sentence: “A changing climate threatens the lives and livelihoods of the world’s poorest citizens.”9 Unfortunately but predictably, news outlets barely mentioned the statement, and American evangelical Christianity still houses the headquarters for anti-scientific denialism.

      I deeply respect the NAE, which represents forty member denominations and a plethora of groups and individuals. I admire its recently-retired president, Leith Anderson. He wisely shepherded the organization through pain and controversy when he took the helm in 2006. I have no wish to sully its reputation. But the NAE’s slow response, however understandable, makes for a case study in bully evangelicalism’s dynamics: Intimidators foment fear while conflict-adverse moderates silence themselves in the name of unity.

      The Realities

Cold reality prompts the canary’s cough. Fact: The world’s glaciers are shrinking. Fact: The polar ice caps are melting. Another fact: Peter Doran and Maggie Kendall Zimmerman discovered that 97% of all active climatologists are agreed—human activity spurs the Earth’s rising temperatures, weird weather, glacial melting, and the ocean’s acidification.10 Then there are the reports: A federal advisory draft released in January, 2013, predicted catastrophe unless policies change,11 as did a World Bank warning in November, 2012.12 A UN study revealed that this century’s first decade was the hottest in 160 years.13 The 2018 reports grew even more ominous: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that average global temperatures may cross the crucial 1.5-degree Celsius threshold as early as 2030.14 A Congressionally-mandated National Climate Assessment came the following month. It described climate change in the present tense and warned of rapidly rising sea levels.15

      These facts and reports—as well as wild fires, droughts and super storms—resemble that poor canary in the coal mine, whose death signaled dangerous methane levels and the need for action.

Surely evangelical Christians can emulate their Catholic and Eastern Orthodox brothers and sisters and explore this dilemma without fear. No historic creed is at stake and Scripture advocates creation care: We’re the Lord’s designated stewards (Genesis 1:27–30). We were called to guard God’s sanctuary (a more literal rendering of the wording in Genesis 2:15). Our Earthly rule fits Walter Kaiser’s description: “The gift of ‘dominion’ over nature was not intended to be a license to use or abuse selfishly the created order in any way men and women saw fit. In no sense were humans to be bullies and laws to themselves.”16 Kaiser is right: God’s leadership motif is “help” (Psalm 121:1–2), and service (Matthew 20:28). Psalms 19 and 104 testify to God’s glory in creation and Romans 8:18–22 looks forward to its redemption. Kudos to Francis of Assisi, who cherished the animals and plants. And just to make sure everything’s on the up-and-up, we’ve had our inside people: Sir John Houghton, a British evangelical, co-chaired the IPCC for many years.17 Katharine Hayhoe, a Billy Graham fan, pastor’s wife, and Texas Tech university professor, has served as a reviewer for the IPCC.18

The evidence, the Bible, and historic Christianity motivated 280 leaders to sign the petition, “Climate Change, An Evangelical Call to Action” in 2006.19The names read like an evangelical VIP litany: Andy Crouch, then Christianity Today’s executive editor; Jack Hayford of the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel; Gordon P. Hugenberger of Parkstreet Church in Boston; Duane Litfin, president of Wheaton College; Gordon MacDonald, editor-at-large for Leadership Magazine; David Neff, also of Christianity Today; Tri Robinson, pastor of the Boise Vineyard; Berten Waggoner, then the National Director of the Vineyard USA; and Rick Warren, senior pastor of Saddleback. To name a few. What’s more, 44 Southern Baptist leaders, including the convention’s president and two past presidents, signed the initiative, “A Southern Baptist Declaration on the Environment and Climate Change.”

      A wrench is thrown

      But something was amiss. In some circles, calling attention to the hacking canary was both unpatriotic and unorthodox. Many were swayed. I’ve already mentioned my experience as a pastor: I was blasted as a “liberal” (perish the thought) because I agreed with these two assertions:

•“There is now a broad consensus in this country, and indeed in the world, that global warming is happening, that it is a serious problem, and that humans are causing it.”20

•“we agree that climate change is real and threatens our economy and national security.”21

The late Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona wrote the first quote in 2007, along with Senator Joe Lieberman. Republican Senator Lindsay Graham wrote the second in 2009 along with Democrat John Kerry. The senators, along with retired generals and admirals alarmed about climate change’s potential security concerns,22 implicitly invited us to embrace an opportunity: We can shelve annoying labels. Let’s brew enough caffeine to spike our blood pressure, roll in the whiteboards, and brainstorm while pacing back and forth with our Type A personalities on full display . . .

No. We’re “liberal.” We’ve failed a vague orthodoxy test, which means we’re worse than erroneous: We’re suspect. Forget evidence, the biblical mandate for stewarding creation, precedent, and recognized authorities. According to a 2007 CNN article, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Institute speculated that climate change is part of a leftist agenda threatening evangelical unity.23 The late Jerry Falwell proclaimed this from his pulpit on February 25 of that year: “I am today raising a flag of opposition to this alarmism about global warming and urging all believers to refuse to be duped by these ‘earthism’ worshipers.”24 Calvin Beisner, head of the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, suggested the worries are “an insult to God.”25 He also СКАЧАТЬ