Evangelical Environmentalists Urge Climate Vote As Election Approaches: ‘Care for God’s Creation’

When groups of evangelical students seek climate votes at their Christian colleges at the end of the month, they will find themselves with the slogan: “Love God, Love Your Neighbor, Vote for Climate!”

This is the first such in-person campus campaign organized by the nonpartisan group Young Evangelicals for Climate Action since its founding in 2012.

The volunteers – members of chapters at six Christian universities – aim to establish a connection between communities affected by the climate crisis and the Christian obligation to “love thy neighbor” and help 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 community: A 2022 survey by the Pew Research Center found that among U.S. religious groups, evangelicals were the most likely to express views skeptical of human-caused climate change.

In the 2020 election, 84% of white evangelical Christians voted for Donald Trump, who has a history of calling climate change a “hoax,” denying decades of scientific consensus. Just last week, Trump falsely claimed that “the planet has actually gotten a little colder lately,” and at a rally on September 29, he called climate change “one of the greatest hoaxes of all time.”

In 2016, white evangelical voters cast a third of their winning votes for Trump, and a Pew Research poll released last month found that 82% said they would do so again this year.

Still, Jessica Moerman, executive director of the Evangelical Environmental Network, is trying to persuade Christians to see climate change as a matter of love for God’s created Earth, as she describes it.

“As evangelicals, we have a biblical obligation to care for God’s creation,” said Moerman, who is also a pastor and climate scientist. “And in the 21st century, that means taking climate action.”

Moerman said she has seen an increase in interest in climate issues from evangelicals who have experienced extreme weather. That’s why her group is starting to focus more on linking climate change with increasingly severe storms and wildfires, she added.

Young Evangelicals for Climate Action is a ministry of the Evangelicals for the Environment Network, and its activities extend beyond university campuses. A member of the association is Adam Hubert, a middle school science teacher at the Hope Academy GSO faith-based school in Greensboro, North Carolina. She incorporates climate science into her middle school biology and environmental science classes.

This spring, the class went on a field trip to the Blue Ridge Mountains to learn how climate change may affect forests and wildlife.

Hubert said many of his students tell him that school is the only place where they talk about climate change.

“I hope my students leave my classroom with respect for the natural world,” he said. “So when they’re 18 and they go to the ballot box or talk to their neighbors, they might think about it.”

Most of Hope Academy’s 130 students come from low-income families of color. Hubert said the climate change denial rhetoric expressed by some prominent evangelicals does not reflect the attitude of the school community.

“I believe that white evangelicals have this ability to deny or pretend that something doesn’t exist,” he said. “I think we see that with racial injustice. I think we’ve seen this during the pandemic. We definitely see that with the climate crisis.”

Moerman sees climate change denial among evangelical Christians as a product of disinformation.

“Unfortunately, my own evangelical community has been one of the main targets of this disinformation,” she said.

Some conservative evangelical politicians have been stoking climate change skepticism for years. Jim Inhofe, the late Republican senator from Oklahoma, presented the snowball to the Senate a decade ago as proof that “only God can change the climate.” Last year, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee released a Christian children’s book debunking man-made global warming.

To combat such ideas, the Evangelical Environmental Network hosts webinars on the science of climate change and how faith connects to climate action. Volunteers run faith-based nature camps for children and organize listening sessions in Christian communities affected by the climate crisis.

The group Pro-Life Clean Energy’s primary campaign presents efforts to combat air pollution as a way to protect unborn children, given research that shows pollution can increase the risk of premature birth and low birth weight. A petition related to the campaign has collected over 2 million signatures.

The network is also connecting with pastors and preachers to provide guidance on incorporating climate discussions into sermons.

Among the members of this network is Caleb Haynes, pastor of the small Kaleo Nashville church in Nashville, Tennessee. He believes that it is a Christian’s responsibility to take climate into account when voting and preaches accordingly.

“The year is 2024 and not only Christians are talking about apocalyptic times,” he told his faithful during a Sunday morning service in July. “As the glaciers melt and sea levels rise and greed dominates the show, God’s people must show up!”

Haynes does not endorse specific candidates, focusing instead on the connections between Christian teachings and caring for the planet.

“Some pastors kind of get away from talking about climate change, but for me it’s biblical faithfulness 101,” he said in an interview. “Our original sin was the assumption that we consumed however we wanted, whatever we wanted, from any tree in the garden we wanted, and that there would be no consequences.”

“We are talking about the future of life on Earth and the lives of millions of people,” he added.

Both Haynes and Moerman said they see climate change as a child care issue.

“As evangelicals, we are called to defend the life of every child,” Moerman said. “To really do this, we must take climate into account, because it is our children, both born and unborn, who are most affected by climate damage.”

Trump courted the vote of evangelicals in his campaign by speaking at Christian conferences, with some success: Trump voters were spotted at a March campaign rally in Ohio wearing costumes that read “Jesus is my Savior, Trump is my President.” At a Trump rally in Montana in August, several evangelicals said they viewed the failure to assassinate him as “divine intervention.”

Still, Moerman said she still sees evangelicals as an important, untapped voter base in the fight against climate change.

“We only activated a small part of society,” she said. “To solve a problem as big as the climate, we need everyone.”