US evangelicals are split between those who claim 'dominion' over the planet and those who want to save it from global warming - and the fight is getting dirty. Seán O'Driscoll reports from Salem, Massachusetts
It's 5pm on Essex Street on a busy shopping day in Salem, Massachusetts. Evangelical preacher Edgar Riel, a retired linesman for the AT&T phone company, is handing out leaflets headed Have You Believed Another Gospel? while his friend Patrick shouts to the crowds about the evils of "earth worship", "the strange occult" and, as a gay couple walk by, "religions that tolerate the sin of lesbianism".
As Patrick shouts out his creed, Edgar tells me he wants to save the souls of "deluded witch people who worship the earth and not its creator" and warns against "the evils of Darwinism - the biggest trick the devil ever played on humanity". For an entire month in the run-up to Halloween, white witches, Wiccans and pagans flock to Salem to honour the 20 people executed in 1692 for suspected witchcraft.
Paganism and witchcraft, with its emphasis on nature and the environment, is a natural feeding ground for the busloads of evangelical preachers and Christian college students who pour into town to convert the witches, while also hoping to convert the throngs of dress-up-for-the-day tourist witches who line Salem's bustling streets for palm readings and fortune-tellings.
For Edgar, a slim man whose soft voice reels off Old Testament quotations, the witches' emphasis on respect for nature shows that they are worshipping "the creation and not the creator" and are committing the sin of idolatry.
But away from the noise of the Salem streets, a quiet revolution is taking place within evangelicalism, the huge conservative Protestant movement with an emphasis on personal saviour, biblical scripture, and a belief in the cultural impact of Christianity.
In a religious movement with so much focus on cultural trends, implanting environmentalism into a landscape dominated by opposition to gay marriage and abortion could have major repercussions.
Some of this revolution is taking place in Edgar Riel's home town of Amherst, Massachusetts, home of the National Religious Partnership for the Environment, one of a growing number of groups that are inspiring evangelicals to throw off their traditional conservatism and embrace the environmental movement.
The stakes are extremely high. Americans produce 25 per cent of the world's carbon emissions and 25 per cent of all Americans identify themselves with evangelical churches. Of those, four-fifths voted for President Bush in the last election and the latest polling figures show that only 33 per cent of all white evangelicals believe that humanity is responsible for global warming.
Last February, when 86 evangelical leaders signed an Evangelical Climate Initiative statement calling for rapid action on global warming, some evangelical leaders immediately pounced, threatening to cut off the signers from the mainstream evangelical movement.
Remarkably, Richard Ciznik, vice-president of governmental affairs for the 30-million strong National Association of Evangelicals, was one of those who backed down, despite being one of those who organised the declaration. The pressure also forced out the head of the National Association of Evangelicals, Rev Ted Haggard, the Colorado-based chief pastor at the US's largest megachurch.
Rev Ciznik admits that he was warned he would be sidelined from the National Association of Evangelicals if he signed the declaration, but says he continues to speak out against environmental abuse.
While he will not name those within the evangelical movement who put pressure on him to withdraw from the global warming declaration, he admits that he is "absolutely shocked" by the actions of Rev E Calvin Beisner, theology professor at Knox Theological Seminary in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, who helped organise anti-environmental opposition into a group called the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance, some of whose member groups have strong links to the Exxon Mobil Corporation.
LAST WEEK, BEISNER appeared on a Public Broadcasting Service documentary entitled Is God Green? to denounce Rev Ciznik and the environmental movement.
To host Bill Moyer, also an evangelical environmentalist, Dr Beisner claimed that energy companies should not tread lightly over the natural world when wrenching out natural resources for humanity's benefit. He also claimed that earthquakes, hurricanes and volcanoes are punishment from God for human sin.
"I am just stunned at what he had to say," said Rev Ciznik, describing Dr Beisner as a "hyper, hyper-Calvinist. I was raised into Calvinism and the reform movement myself but I never heard anything like that in my life." Rev Ciznik believes that such extremist biblical interpretations are a minority opinion in the evangelical movement, despite Beisner's role as an elder in the Presbyterian Church in America.
Ciznik is far more concerned with the so-called "prosperity bible", as preached in the southern megachurches, which teaches its followers that Jesus wants them to be rich, drive big cars, and clothe themselves in jewellery.
"It's greed turned into religion," says Rev Ciznik bluntly. "The prosperity bible is nothing more than a bastardisation of scripture to get what they want, and it's completely against environmental principles." But the deeply atavistic us-versus-nature preaching of extreme Calvinism and the clap-happy "SUVs for everyone" prosperity bible of the southern megachurches are not the only forces lining up against Rev Ciznik and environmentally conscious evangelicals.
Focus on the Family, a pro-business Christian advocacy group that rejects everything from gay marriage to evolution, is among the larger groups that oppose the Evangelical Climate Initiative.
GARY BOOKER, A spokesman for Focus on the Family, declined to comment directly after checking out the social viewpoint of The Irish Times with the group's Irish section. He also rejected claims that there is widespread scientific consensus on global warming.
However, he did release a written statement in which he said that Focus on the Family "firmly disagrees" with evangelical leaders who place global warming as the most important social issue.
"For some evangelicals to position the theory of global warming above the reality of the ongoing attacks against the family and a Christian worldview is perplexing and troubling," he said.
Such a view does not hold much credibility with Larry Schweiger, the president of the US's largest conservation group, the National Wildlife Federation.
Schweiger has been involved in evangelical churches since he was nine years old. He first embraced the environmental movement at 14 after watching the environmental degradation of Lake Eerie as a result of sewage pollution.
"It's very easy to perpetuate ignorance about global warming in America," he says. "When I was in Ireland, I saw more in the media about global warming than I did in five years in America." Focus on the Family, the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance and other groups misinterpret the biblical command to have "dominion" over the natural world, he says.
"It is meant in the same sense in Hebrew that David said he had "dominion" over his own children. It means being an engaged father, a loving father, but the Hebrew message had been distorted to mean domination and control." That's also the view of Tri Robinson, pastor at Vineyard Christian Fellowship in Boise, Idaho, who came to "creation care" after more than a decade of meditation on America's worsening environmental impact.
A former biology teacher, he received a standing ovation when he first brought his new theories to his church. His congregation includes the type of perky, enthusiastic young evangelicals who might have been out preaching on the street in previous times.
They help collect the old cell phones and printer cartridges left by congregation member in the lobby as part of the church's recycling drive, and a cardboard recycling centre lies at the back of the church. The congregation also pulls bio-unfriendly weeds in the woods and fix damaged hiking trails so the public can marvel at the beauty of nature.
The author of Saving God's Green Earth, Robinson believes that evangelicals have lagged behind other Christian groups and have some atoning to do.
"We cannot just take back our place in the natural world, we have to earn it back," he says. "In our congregation, we accept our past lack of leadership and have asked for God's forgiveness. Now we're asking other church leaders to look deep into their hearts.
"Can they really keep promoting SUV culture? Can they really claim that something is not going seriously wrong? The time is coming for conscience clearing and that time is coming very soon."