Humanity faces the greatest precarity in our history: climate change. But preachers don’t discuss that much. Many evangelicals deny that the planet’s temperature is rising and the glaciers are melting. Map projections for 2050 show Florida under water, the Gulf of Mexico at Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the Pacific Ocean at the root of the Rocky Mountains, and the East Coast cities under water. Somewhere in the weird dance between science and Christian faith, preachers need to ask about responsibility and stewardship.
Rodney Kennedy
Those preachers who aren’t willing to take responsibility had to furiously flip through the pages of their Bibles to find a text on which to hang climate denial. They landed on Genesis 9:11-13: “I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the Earth.’ God said, ‘This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the Earth.”
With climate change placing humanity on the endangered species list, we need more than a few verses of Scripture to guide our decisions. What the narrator of Genesis 9 emphasizes is that God keeps God’s covenant. We know from our sad experience how often humanity breaks covenant with God. The question is whether God promises to stop even natural disasters from destroying the Earth. Will God prevent humanity from destroying the Earth by greedy and sinful actions? This is one possible interpretation of the story.
The consistent testimony of the Bible, however, is that humans reap the consequences of their transgressions. Evangelicals love to quote, “God is not mocked, for you reap whatever you sow” (Galatians 6:7). Let’s accept this verse as evidence for humanity’s capacity to destroy everything including the planet. And as to the promise in Genesis 9, note that flooding is only one consequence of climate change. Global warming is a destructive, human-caused change. Humanity can destroy the planet.
Evangelicals have been dancing around science for centuries. Almost since the first copy of Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species was read in the U.S., there has been conservative rejection of evolution and biological science. The 1925 Scopes “monkey trial,” which ironically ended in a fundamentalist victory, pretty much signaled the end of fundamentalism as a factor in American public culture and church. Then in the 1980s, the fundamentalists returned to the political arena to push creationism and intelligent design. After a dozen courts ruled intelligent design was not science, the creationists have shifted their attacks. There is a solid string from anti-evolution in 1925 and climate denial in 2025.
Science and religion have always danced a weird dance with one another. The church has been both a supporter of science and a vicious enemy. For example, the church opposed Mondino de Luzzi, the father of modern medicine. The church also had famous scrapes with Copernicus, the father of modern astronomy; Galileo Galilei, for teaching the earth orbited around the sun; James Hutton, the founder of geology, of particular angst among creationists; and Charles Darwin and evolution. And, of course, many of today’s evangelicals take a determined anti-science stance.
But the church was also the original incubator of Western science, providing the resources, the universities, the equipment for science to flourish. In David Lindberg’s The Beginnings of Western Science, he documents that Christianity appreciated and employed the Greek heritage, preserved and transmitted it. Christianity provided funding for Hellenistic schools, preserved manuscripts and learning in the monasteries, and supported the early universities. Without this support, modern natural science (then known as natural philosophy) would have been impossible. Lindberg concludes, “Much of the credit for the emergence of modern science would have to go to the Christian tradition.”
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
Evangelicals today have, ironically, embraced the post-truth age. They can’t stand to be told that they don’t have as much epistemic right as anyone else (climatologists, physicists, oceanographers) when it comes to global warming. They have surrendered truth to opinion. Evangelicals have become the most post-modern and post-truth of all.
Their rhetoric gives away how little they know because they resort to taunting, humor, and ridicule. Robert Jeffress calls global warming an “imaginary crisis.” He even forgets his Southern manners when he attacks the views of climate activist Greta Thunberg. “Somebody needs to read poor Greta Genesis, Chapter 9,” Jeffress said, “and tell her the next time she worries about global warming, just look at a rainbow. That’s God’s promise that the polar ice caps aren’t going to melt and flood the world again.”
And the list goes on. Rick Santorum falsely claimed that U.S. policies aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions “will have zero impact” on climate change. Mike Huckabee said Islamic extremism poses a greater threat than climate change. He grossly understated the potential impact of climate change by saying it threatens to give Americans “a sunburn” — an absurd claim.
Evangelicals are making jokes about global warming while scientists are warning of its real dangers. In a role reversal no one saw coming, scientists have become the apocalyptic preachers of our time. According to the National Resources Defense Council, the consequences of climate change include more frequent severe weather events, higher death rates, dirtier air, higher wildlife extinction rates, more acidic oceans, and higher sea levels. As historian Paul Boyer noted, “A kind of secular apocalyptic sensibility pervades much contemporary writing about our current world.”
There are no good reasons for Christians to reject science. The teachings of the Bible don’t oppose science. The Bible neither disproves nor proves science. The Bible is not a science book. Rowan Williams offers a gentle answer: “Genesis may not tell us how the world began in the way a modern cosmologist would; but it tells us what God wants us to know, that we are made by his love and freedom alone.”
Evangelicals and their political allies are not only climate deniers, but they are also actively pushing back against the scientific initiatives to reduce the world’s carbon footprint. The new head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Lee Zeldin, said he will try to rescind $20 billion in grants awarded by the Biden administration for climate and clean-energy projects. In the face of this kind of opposition, there’s every reason for Christian preachers to push back as responsible stewards.
I am committed to a worldview held in common by the truth of Christianity and the truth of science. We must all demand action on the environmental apocalypse evangelicals are attempting to create. No one suggests worshiping science as if it deserves a capital “S.” We worship God — we use science to make life better. How much science do you want? I hope your answer will be, “As much as possible.” Planet Earth depends on this answer.
Rodney Kennedy has his M.Div. from New Orleans Theological Seminary and his Ph.D. in Rhetoric from Louisiana State University. The pastor of 7 Southern Baptist churches over the course of 20 years, he pastored the First Baptist Church of Dayton, Ohio — which is an American Baptist Church — for 13 years. He is currently professor of homiletics at Palmer Theological Seminary, and interim pastor of Emmanuel Friedens Federated Church, Schenectady, New York. His eighth book, Dancing with Metaphors in the Pulpit, is out now from Cascade Books.
