Bartholomew's Notes

Senator James Inhofe continues his war against the “hoax” of global warming with an attack on…the National Association of Evangelicals. Agape Press reports:

He claims liberals have convinced some evangelical groups to support global warming initiatives in order to bring in new funding that the Left can spend on other causes. Also, Inhofe asserts, liberals are “trying to suck up some of the evangelical crowd and put them into the issue of global warming. And when they do that, they give up their litmus tests. They give up their positions on abortion, their positions on gay marriage, and all that.” However, the Oklahoma senator contends that the theory of global warming is a scare tactic being played up by the Left and the national media and that a number of Christian groups have bought into it. “I’m afraid there’s one large organization, the National Association of Evangelicals, who have fallen into this trap,” Inhofe laments.

So liberals made up global warming to fleece evangelicals for cash to fund abortion and gay marriage!

American Evangelical concern over climate change was first noticed by the MSM back in March, in an article by Laurie Goodstein for the New York Times (all links added by me):

The Rev. Rich Cizik, vice president of governmental affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals and a significant voice in the debate, said, “I don’t think God is going to ask us how he created the earth, but he will ask us what we did with what he created.”

…The Rev. Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, an umbrella group of 51 church denominations, said he had become passionate about global warming because of his experience scuba diving and observing the effects of rising ocean temperatures and pollution on coral reefs.

…In October the association paved the way for broad-based advocacy on the environment when it adopted “For the Health of the Nation: An Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility,” a platform that included a plank on “creation care” that many evangelical leaders say was unprecedented.

Goodstein also noted how global warming became an issue for the NAE:

…Mr. Cizik said that [Rev. Jim Ball of the Evangelical Environmental Network] “dragged” him to a conference on climate change in 2002 in Oxford, England. Among the speakers were evangelical scientists, including Sir John Houghton, a retired Oxford professor of atmospheric physics who was on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a committee that issued international reports.

…Mr. Cizik and Mr. Ball then asked Sir John to speak at a small meeting of evangelical leaders in June in Maryland called by the Evangelical Environmental Network, the National Association of Evangelicals and Christianity Today, the magazine. The leaders read Scripture and said they were moved by three watermen who caught crabs in Chesapeake Bay and said their faith had made them into environmentalists.

John Houghton is also the chairman of the John Ray Initiative, dedicated to “connecting Environment and Christianity”. Profiles of him and other members can be seen here:

Sir John Houghton is chairman of the John Ray Initiative. He has held positions as chairman or co-chairman of Scientific Assessment for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 1988-2002, Professor of Atmospheric Physics at the University of Oxford, 1976-1983, Director General and Chief Executive of the UK Meteorological Office, 1983-1991, Chairman of the UK Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, 1992-1998, member of the UK Government Panel on Sustainable Development, 1994-2000. He has received numerous awards including Fellowship of the Royal Society of London and the International Meteorological Organisation Prize. His publications include The Physics of Atmospheres (3rd edn. CUP, 2002), Global Warming: the Complete Briefing (2nd ed CUP 1997) and The search of God, can science help? (Lion, 1994).

So this is the man who James Inhofe believes represents “the Left” which has led the NAE into a “trap”. Either that, or Inhofe is just once again proving himself to be a nasty and ignorant demagogue.

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