Evangelical environmentalists push for climate votes as election nears: 'Care for God's creation'

Source: NBC News

Oct. 8, 2024, 5:00 AM EDT


When groups of evangelical students canvass for climate votes at their Christian colleges later this month, they’ll have a tagline: “Love God, Love Your Neighbor, Vote for Climate!” It’s the first such in-person campaigning on campuses that the nonpartisan group Young Evangelicals for Climate Action has organized since it launched in 2012. The volunteers — members of chapters at six Christian colleges — aim to draw connections between communities affected by the climate crisis and the Christian duty to “love thy neighbor” and help those in need.

The initiative is part of a larger movement driven by the Evangelical Environmental Network, an organization that lobbies for faith-based climate action. Its members are a minority in their community: A 2022 poll from the Pew Research Center found that evangelical Christians were the most likely among U.S. religious groups to express views skeptical of human-caused climate change.

In the 2020 election, 84% of white evangelical Christians voted for Donald Trump — who in the past has called climate change a “hoax,” contradicting decades of scientific consensus. As recently as last week, Trump incorrectly claimed that “the planet’s actually gotten a little bit cooler recently,” and he called climate change “one of the greatest scams of all time” at a rally Sept. 29.

White evangelical voters cast a third of the winning votes for Trump in 2016, and a Pew Research poll released last month found that 82% said they would do so again this year. Still, Jessica Moerman, CEO of the Evangelical Environmental Network, is committed to getting Christians to see climate change as a matter of loving the Earth that God made, as she describes it.

Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/science/climate-change/evangelical-christian-environmentalists-push-climate-votes-election-rcna174018