CWFA vs. Mother Earth

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Another awe-inspiring fuckwaddery as uttered by the Concerned Women for America. But, in reading it, I was reminded that there is a huge difference between evangelical Christians and fundamentalist Christians. And while I am neither, I happen to think that the evangelicals may at least have the advantage of conscious thought on their side.

CWA President Wendy Wright said, "It is hard to believe that a foundation that gives millions to Planned Parenthood, International Planned Parenthood, the Sierra Club, and the Center for Reproductive Rights would give money to a group and not expect to see the results it wants. The ECI signers are linked to an initiative funded by a group utterly opposed to the basic Christian principle of life. While it is absolutely necessary that Christians be good stewards of the Earth, there is no Biblical basis for elevating the Earth above human beings in priority. We care for Nature so it can sustain God's crowning creation - the only thing made in His image - mankind. When the mission comes in conflict with the Biblical, pro-life stance that evangelicals live by, it negates itself."

What’s got their grandma-pant knickers in a twist? The fact that the Evangelical Climate Initiative, a group of evangelicals who think it’s time to deal with the impending disaster that is global warming, accepted a chunk of change from Hewlett Packard. It turns out, according to Ms. Wright, that HP wants to kill all the unborn babies in the world and convert them into silica. Okay. Not really. But the woman’s so bat-shit crazy, I would not be surprised if she argues such a thing.

Let's go back to the passage I’ve highlighted: Um. Does that register as cognitive dissonance to you?

According to Wendy, if the priority is humans or the earth, humans win. But, you may say, aren’t humans dependent on the earth for such basics of life as air, water, and food? Shouldn’t it be obvious that if the air is so polluted and you can’t breathe, or global warming has destroyed areas of once arable land, or seawater has flooded what used to be fresh water areas, that humans would die?

Apparently what’s more obvious to Wendy is that corporations like Hewlett Packard have a vested interest in population control. The CWFA is so violently against birth control that it gets the vapors whenever the topic is brought up, so clearly any attempt to have people practice good stewardship of the earth by maybe not reproducing themselves as often is a plot. Seriously. It’s an environmentalist/UN plot according to her sister CWFA’er, Lindsay.

”The IRD/AI paper argues that the initiative's failure to address population control indicates that "...the ECI signers seem naively unaware that such dystopic interpretations of human activity are often tied to and derived from campaigns to reduce the human population. This connection is not a coincidence. Population control is official doctrine for many environmental groups just as it is in certain circles of the U.N." It goes on to say that "...these Evangelical leaders who in good faith associated themselves with the ECI are being exploited by organizations that not only deny their biblically-based value system, but hold such beliefs in contempt.

Of course, if I was a cynic, I might find this statement from the ECI to be the one that really provoked the rage:

Claim 2: The Consequences of Climate Change Will Be Significant, and Will Hit the Poor the Hardest

The earth's natural systems are resilient but not infinitely so, and human civilizations are remarkably dependent on ecological stability and well-being. It is easy to forget this until that stability and well-being are threatened.

Even small rises in global temperatures will have such likely impacts as: sea level rise; more frequent heat waves, droughts, and extreme weather events such as torrential rains and floods; increased tropical diseases in now-temperate regions; and hurricanes that are more intense. It could lead to significant reduction in agricultural output, especially in poor countries. Low-lying regions, indeed entire islands, could find themselves under water. (This is not to mention the various negative impacts climate change could have on God's other creatures.)

Each of these impacts increases the likelihood of refugees from flooding or famine, violent conflicts, and international instability, which could lead to more security threats to our nation.

Poor nations and poor individuals have fewer resources available to cope with major challenges and threats. The consequences of global warming will therefore hit the poor the hardest, in part because those areas likely to be significantly affected first are in the poorest regions of the world. Millions of people could die in this century because of climate change, most of them our poorest global neighbors. original emphasis

The CWFA doesn’t give a shit about helping the poor. Apparently, in their version of the Bible, Jesus didn’t say nothing about that stuff. And since the CWFA’s fundamentalist reading of the Bible is clearly more accurate than whatever “peace, love, and understanding” version the Evangelicals are smoking, they cannot be trusted.

Here’s what they recently wrote about poverty:

The expectation of and demand for responsible behavior –– as opposed to the old liberal ideas that people are victims helplessly at the mercy of their environment –– has brought a new day of hope to the lives of millions. With that hope has come greater personal responsibility and progress; despite the recession of the opening days of this decade, black child poverty is lower today than it ever was during the heyday of liberal social welfare policy in the 1970s and 1980s (Figure 1) and poor black children are a smaller percentage of all poor children than ever before (Figure 2).
With the rebirth of the American creed of personal responsibility and self-reliance, millions in the so-called “underclass,” millions of those written off by liberals as hopelessly in need of a government dole, have found jobs and are recovering the American dream of independence and self-respect. A true “realistic” worldview –– one that sees us all as endowed by our Creator with the possibility of choosing what is right and good –– has produced a hope for a new future for all those previously thought trapped by poverty.
PDF.

So, if the poor are the ones who suffer the worst effects of global warming, well tough shit. They deserve to be poor. They're irresponsible. They're sexual. They have no control. But things are changing: the poor are starting to see the light of the Creator.

And besides, as long as white middle-class Americans are not affected, it doesn’t matter. The only neighbor I have to take care of is the member of my church who lives across the street. The rest of you can go to hell. Literally.

The arguments by the CWFA expose the differences among Evangelical and Fundamentalist Christians. Certainly, there is overlap, but there are differences that lead to the kind of attack on the ECI by the CWFA.

A recent article in Foreign Affairs argued this:

If fundamentalists tend to be pessimistic about the prospects for social reform inside the United States, they are downright hostile to the idea of a world order based on secular morality and on global institutions such as the United Nations. More familiar than many Americans with the stories of persecuted Christians abroad, fundamentalists see nothing moral about cooperating with governments that oppress churches, forbid Christian proselytizing, or punish conversions to Christianity under Islamic law. To institutions such as the UN that treat these governments as legitimate, they apply the words of the prophet Isaiah: "We have made a covenant with death, and with hell we are at agreement." It is no coincidence that the popular Left Behind novels, which depict the end of the world from a fundamentalist perspective, show the Antichrist rising to power as the secretary-general of the UN.

Fundamentalists, finally, are committed to an apocalyptic vision of the end of the world and the Last Judgment. As biblical literalists, they believe that the dark prophecies in both the Hebrew and the Greek Scriptures, notably those of the book of Revelation, foretell the great and terrible events that will ring down the curtain on human history. Satan and his human allies will stage a final revolt against God and the elect; believers will undergo terrible persecution, but Christ will put down his enemies and reign over a new heaven and a new earth. This vision is not particularly hospitable to the idea of gradual progress toward a secular utopia driven by technological advances and the cooperation of intelligent people of all religious traditions.

It’s kind of hard to convince Fundamentalists that the earth needs saving. What’s the point? The Second Coming is at hand. (I have written previously about the “End-Time” Christians versus the “Steward of the Land” Christians.)

Evangelicals are described thusly in the FP article:

Evangelicals, the third of the leading strands in American Protestantism, straddle the divide between fundamentalists and liberals. Their core beliefs share common roots with fundamentalism, but their ideas about the world have been heavily influenced by the optimism endemic to U.S. society. Although there is considerable theological diversity within this group, in general it is informed by the "soft Calvinism" of the sixteenth-century Dutch theologian Jacobus Arminius, the thinking of English evangelists such as John Wesley (who carried on the tradition of German Pietism), and, in the United States, the experience of the eighteenth-century Great Awakening and subsequent religious revivals.
…
Evangelicals resemble fundamentalists in several respects. Like fundamentalists, evangelicals attach a great deal of importance to the doctrinal tenets of Christianity, not just to its ethical teachings. For evangelicals and fundamentalists, liberals' emphasis on ethics translates into a belief that good works and the fulfillment of moral law are the road to God -- a betrayal of Christ's message, in their view. Because of original sin, they argue, humanity is utterly incapable of fulfilling any moral law whatever. The fundamental message of Christianity is that human efforts to please God by observing high ethical standards must fail; only Christ's crucifixion and resurrection can redeem man. Admitting one's sinful nature and accepting Christ's sacrifice are what both evangelicals and fundamentalists mean by being "born again." When liberal Christians put ethics at the heart of their theology, fundamentalists and evangelicals question whether these liberals know what Christianity really means.

Evangelicals also attach great importance to the difference between those who are "saved" and those who are not. Like fundamentalists, they believe that human beings who die without accepting Christ are doomed to everlasting separation from God. They also agree with fundamentalists that "natural" people -- those who have not been "saved" -- are unable to do any good works on their own.

Finally, most (although not all) evangelicals share the fundamentalist approach to the end of the world. Virtually all evangelicals believe that the biblical prophecies will be fulfilled, and a majority agree with fundamentalists on the position known as premillennialism: the belief that Christ's return will precede the establishment of the prophesied thousand-year reign of peace. Ultimately, all human efforts to build a peaceful world will fail.

Given these similarities, it is not surprising that many observers tend to confuse evangelicals and fundamentalists, thinking that the former are simply a watered down version of the latter. Yet there are important differences between the fundamentalist and the evangelical worldviews. Although the theological positions on these issues can be very technical and nuanced, evangelicals tend to act under the influence of a cheerier form of Calvinism. The strict position is that Christ's sacrifice on the cross was only intended for the small number of souls God intended to save; the others have no chance for salvation. Psychologically and doctrinally, American evangelicals generally have a less bleak outlook. They believe that the benefits of salvation are potentially available to everyone, and that God gives everyone just enough grace to be able to choose salvation if he wishes. Strict Calvinist doctrine divides humanity into two camps with little in common. In the predominant evangelical view, God loves each soul, is unutterably grieved when any are lost, and urgently seeks to save them all.

Given the belief by evangelicals that more can be saved, it makes sense that reaching out to the poor, the downtrodden, and those who suffer in foreign countries, is doing Christian work. The earth is worth saving, if only to give more time for that earth to be prepared for Christ’s return.

But in the universe inhabited by the Concerned Women for America, a universe of such cognitive dissonance and hypocrisy that I get dizzy trying to figure it out, the earth is only important as a showcase for God's greatest creation. That being us them. What doesn't make sense to me, and has never made sense to me, is that if the rest of us are going to hell anyway, why does the CWFA care so bloody much about what people do in their private lives? I actually know the answer to that question, but if I explain it to you, my head will blow up. So I'll leave you to mull that one yourselves.

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