c. 2006 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ A fledgling alliance of Democrats and evangelical Christians is attempting to tackle global warming, motivated by the recent release of two documentaries on the subject, a solid scientific consensus and a growing concern over “creation care.”

The Canadian documentary “The Great Warming,” narrated by pop singer Alanis Morissette and actor Keanu Reeves, got a screening in a cramped room on Capitol Hill before about 40 people Wednesday (June 28) afternoon. In the audience were several House Democrats, the director of the Sierra Club’s global warming initiative and the president of an evangelical school in New York City.

Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash., spearheaded a discussion after the movie, prodding the group for ways to broaden a faith-based dialogue on global warming.

“Why are politicians so far behind evangelicals on this?” Inslee asked.

“The evangelical community is more alert than (politicians) realize,” said Paul de Vries, the president of the New York School of Divinity and a board member of the National Association of Evangelicals.

“The Great Warming,” which was first released in 2003 as a TV miniseries, has been reworked into a feature film similar to Al Gore’s box office success, “An Inconvenient Truth.”

Where Gore’s film uses large graphs to illustrate some of its points, “The Great Warming” jumps from New Hampshire to Inner Mongolia in search of people changing their lifestyles to combat global warming.

The documentary features the Rev. Richard Cizik, a vice president of the National Association of Evangelicals, as one of its interview subjects.

Experts agree there is still conflict among evangelicals in general over how high a priority to place on global warming.

“You cannot by any stretch of the imagination claim that there is any kind of uniform view on this within the evangelical community,” said Joseph Loconte, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a conservative Washington think tank.

De Vries and Cizik are among more than 80 evangelical leaders who have spoken out on the need to address global warming. They have found open ears at the Democratic Party’s congressional Faith Working Group. De Vries stressed that for him, the issue transcends political boundaries; he has talked about global warming with Republicans like Sens. Sam Brownback of Kansas and Lindsay Graham of South Carolina.

Because there is less unity among evangelicals on global warming _ at least compared with hot-button issues like gay marriage or genocide in Sudan _ Loconte said the group lacks the cohesion to lobby its traditional political ally: the Republican Party.

“The Democratic side is more engaged on the global warming question on the agenda right now,” Loconte said.

Advocates like de Vries and Cizik justify their position by highlighting what they see as humanity’s role in being stewards of God’s creation. If people pollute the earth and tarnish God’s creation, then it is their responsibility to clean it up and restore it, de Vries has said.

But other leaders within the evangelical community, like Focus on the Family’s James Dobson, worry that beating the drum on global warming is distracting members from its other priorities.

“We serve one Lord, not one issue,” de Vries said Wednesday, pointing to other topics many evangelicals are concerned about, like abortion and same-sex marriage. “Those are still very important issues, but life is bigger.”

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Political science and religion experts are not ready to say the evangelical-Democrat alliance marks a significant shift in policy for the religious group.

The issue is most prominent among what some have called “elites” within the community, like evangelical pastors, leaders and community advocates, said veteran politics watcher John Green.

“There is no evidence one way or the other that it has spread to the broader evangelical community,” said Green, a political science professor at the University of Akron and an analyst at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. “It’s a little too early to tell how much success they’re having.”

Those evangelicals who are giving more attention to global warming are still a minority, Green said.

“It’s significant politically,” he said. “Many of the evangelical leaders who care about these topics are uncomfortable about being too closely aligned with the Republican Party.”

But Josh Holmes, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee, downplayed any suggestion that evangelicals are shifting sides because of environmental issues.

“I wouldn’t agree that being pro-environment is at all distancing anyone from the Republican Party,” Holmes said.

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