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Fewer Protestant pastors believe global warming is real and man made
by StuartApril 20th, 2011
1 Comment
“Pastors’ sentiments on global warming have shifted right in step with Americans in general,” said Scott McConnell, director of LifeWay Research, in a statement released Monday.
A thousand randomly-selected pastors with different denominational backgrounds and political ideologies were interviewed in a survey conducted by LifeWay Research in October last year. Participants were asked if they “believe global warming is real and manmade” and told to answer either “strongly disagree,” “somewhat disagree,” “somewhat agree” or “strongly agree.”
Results revealed that 13 percent “somewhat agree” and 23 percent “strongly agree” with global warming warnings. On the other side, 41 percent of interviewees “strongly disagree,” up from 27 percent in 2008, while 19 percent “somewhat disagree.”
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According to the newly released survey, evangelicals are most skeptical to global warming. LifeWay’s report found that 68 percent of evangelical pastors “strongly disagree” or “somewhat disagree” with the statement that global warming is real and manmade. Among mainline pastors, less than half (45 percent) disagree with that notion.
Only 14 percent of evangelical pastors strongly agree that global warming is real and manmade.
The LifeWay Research poll also revealed that pastors with a more liberal political leaning tend to be convinced that global warming is real and manmade. Among pastors who describe themselves as progressive or liberal, 78 percent strongly agree with that notion. Yet only seven percent of conservative pastors and six percent of very conservative pastors strongly agree.
Protestant pastors rarely address environmental issues to their congregation, the survey also found.
Only half of Protestant pastors (52 percent) do so once a year or less. Pastors who consider themselves evangelical speak to their churches on the environment less often than mainline pastors. While 49 percent of evangelicals address the environment once a year or more, 67 percent of mainline pastors address it once a year or more.
Posted by Stuart James
1 Comments
It would seem that “man made global warming” is primarily a belief of the political left that lacks the definitive support of scientific evidence, particularly to support that climate change is primarily “man made.” Yet, it has taken on the mantle of “near religion” not unlike evolution. Both, it seems to me, are denominations in the “church of non-believers” (or, as I prefer to think of them more optimistically, “not-yet-believers”).