Evangelicals Are Losing Their Climate Skepticism

No wonder the pushback on President Joe Biden’s climate agenda has thus far been minimal.

Let’s start with the numbers.

In 2014, Pew reported that just 28% of white evangelicals attributed global warming to human activity. Last October, by contrast, 44% of them said climate change was due “mostly to human activities,” according to a Climate Nexus poll.

Notwithstanding the difference in how the question was asked, white evangelicals have clearly become more willing to acknowledge anthropogenic climate change over the past decade. Indeed, while they remain less concerned about the issue than other major American religious communities, Climate Nexus found them to be closer to mainstream opinion than they used to be.

Thus, 63% of them (versus 74% of all adults) think climate change is happening. Fifty-six percent (versus 75%) said it’s best described as a crisis or a major problem. Sixty-seven percent (versus 71%) said they “strongly” or “somewhat” support government action to address climate change. And 56% (versus 70%) said they thought passing a comprehensive bill to address climate change should be a “top” or “important” priority for Congress and the president in 2021.

Those numbers are little short of astonishing, given the successful effort of evangelical leaders (backed by the fossil fuel industry) to turn climate change into a religious issue comparable to abortion and LGBT rights in the Great American Culture War. Read More