What Do Evangelical Christians Really think About Climate Change?

Lydia Bean and Steve Teles's report, "Spreading the Gospel of Climate Change," was cited in a Newsweek piece on that subject.

There's an interesting report from Lydia Bean and Steve Teles in the New America Foundation that talks about how they were closely in touch with economic conservatives and the Republican party. At the same time as much as environmentalists were super excited that evangelicals might be coming on board, the other side had this whole group of people opposing action on climate change pushing as hard as they could against it.

Moving on to 2006, 2007, there's this growing concern from the conservative side [saying] we have to stop this push for action on climate change. Then in 2008, the Southern Baptist Environment Climate Initiative came out. Southern Baptists in the U.S. are the largest conservative Protestant denomination and they're known to be politically conservative. We were heading into election year, so it's going to be a major political shift, potentially. That ramped up concern. Without the Southern Baptists Environment and Climate Initiative perhaps it would have just kind of slowly fizzled. But that really suggested this movement was not going to go away.