"Jesus Camp", Global Warming, and evangelicals

My adult Sunday School class is watching and discussing the movie "Jesus Camp"[it's a PCUSA church, and the class members span wide ranges of possible responses to the movie]. This morning we watched the first of three sessions.

The filmmakers highlighted one family that home schools their children, and the film points out that of the homeschools in the U.S., 75% are Christian -- a figure that seems reasonable to me. The hostility of home schooling Christians to evolution is commonly known. Rather than evolution, however, the teacher (a.k.a. the mom) in the film talked about how global warming was not on. For the home schoolers evolution was also bad science, but it was given short shrift compared to global warming. Of course, this bias may be completely a product of editing by the filmmaker; this home schooler might in reality spend much more time "debunking" evolution than global warming. But I'm curious if this (the idea that global warming now, along with evolution, is "bad" science) is a major emphasis of the home school curriculum.

In one sense it might not be as controversial as the evangelical hostility to evolution, since the naive but interested observer of the American scene could very well get the impression that the certainties about global warming are more political than scientific.

However, what is interesting is that global warming is highlighted in this film. One example (the particular family in the film) does not indicate that anti-global warming is an evangelical cause, but there have been dust-ups within the conservative Christisn community over the issue lately, with people like James Dobson coming on strong against it.

Why the hostility? One can understand, perhaps, the hostility to evolution, since that "theory" has implications that are clearly problematic for a six-literal-creation-day view of Genesis. But why would Christians pick on global warming as bad science? I don't remember any preachers getting upset over cold fusion. There are crackpots claiming every day to get energy from water by violating the first law of thermodynamics, and I've yet to hear of an evangelical movement against them.

Of course, I know* why -- the evangelical community, following its leadership is in a very close relationship with the political right, which includes not only conservative Christians, but also right wing secular ideologues (who have no regard for the religious other than the votes they have) and business leaders. These latter, particularly those of the sort that have collected and self-assembled around the Cheney-Bush administration, are very much against the theory of climate change, and consistently do what they can, both in politics and propaganda, to "stay the course" on fossil fuel use and the environment. Their efforts to dis-inform the public on the issues are available for all who have ears to hear and eyes to see.

The evangelical wing of Christianity, of which I once considered myself to be a part, has been playing with the fire of apostasy in its alliance with right wing politicians since the days of Ronald Reagan and the Religious Roundtable. However, it has moved much farther in these last days (i.e., the GW Bush administration), and has allowed its view of the world and the gospel to be manipulated, if not controlled by politics and, in the case of global warming, business interests. It is interesting that evangelicals, who were once representative of many of the poor and marginal in the U.S. (William Jennings Bryan, spokesperson for evangelicals in the early 20th Century, espoused political/social positions that today would be "liberal" and "progressive"), are now the tools of big American business. But for their goals of abortion and gay marriage eradication, evangelicals are indistinguishable politically from the interests of big business and the secular, nationalistic right wing.

*I know that I don't know anything. I (along with 6 billion other people) only believe certain notions with varying degrees of certainty. Thus what I know, which includes what I say about why evangelicals are hostile to the notion of global warming, is merely a personal opinion at which I've arrived, based one would hope on at least some amount of evidence rather than my own hostility or aversion to a particular group.