ZCS - NAEs Anderson on Global Warming

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WASHINGTON (ABP 3.06.07) -- The leader of the National Association of Evangelicals is reportedly backing the group's governmental-affairs specialist after calls from some evangelicals that Richard Cizik stop his advocacy for global-warming issues.

According to news reports from March 2 and 3, NAE President Leith Anderson supports Cizik, the organization's vice president for governmental affairs. "I'm behind him," Anderson said, according to the Washington Post.

Anderson was responding to a letter that a group of 25 politically connected evangelical leaders sent to NAE board members. Dated March 1, the letter asked NAE directors to silence or fire Cizik for what they called his "relentless campaign" to draw evangelicals' attention to human-caused global warming.

"While many of us consider Richard to be a friend, he regularly speaks without authorization for the entire organization and puts forward his own political opinions as scientific fact," the letter-writers -- who included Focus on the Family head James Dobson and Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council -- wrote.

"The existence of global warming and its implications for mankind is a subject of heated controversy throughout the world," the letter said. "It does appear that the earth is warming, but the disagreement focuses on why it might be happening and what should be done about it. We believe it is unwise for an NAE officer to assert conclusively that those questions have been answered or that the membership as a whole has taken a position on a matter."

The letter also claimed that Cizik is "using the global warming controversy to shift the emphasis away from the great moral issues of our time, notably the sanctity of human life, the integrity of marriage, and the teaching of sexual abstinence and morality to our children. In their place has come a preoccupation with climate concerns that extend beyond the NAE’s mandate and its own statement of purpose."

Through an assistant March 5, Cizik referred questions regarding the matter to Anderson. An associate pastor at Anderson's church in suburban Minneapolis said he was unavailable. Anderson had not returned the call by press time for this story.

According to the Post, Cizik said his attempts to broaden evangelical concerns to include environmental issues aren't a preoccupation with a side issue.

"I speak with a voice that is authentically evangelical on all the issues, from religious freedom around the world to compassion for the poor [to] ending oppression in Darfur -- and yes, creation care is one of those issues," he said.

Anderson, meanwhile, told the paper Cizik was "a great asset" and noted that Dobson's organization released the letter to the news media before NAE officials were aware of it. "I guess that says it all," he said.

NAE's board is scheduled to meet March 8-9 in Minnesota.

A divide among conservative evangelicals over global warming has become increasingly evident in the past year. In February 2006, a letter from a similar group on the evangelical right forced Cizik and NAE's then-president, Ted Haggard, to back away from formally joining a new anti-global warming campaign. The group, Evangelical Climate, had support from more than 80 prominent Christian leaders, including California megachurch pastor Rick Warren and the presidents of several Baptist colleges.

In January, Cizik and several other evangelical leaders joined a group of scientists in calling for a partnership between scientists and evangelicals to combat anthropogenic climate change. Among other participants was Joel Hunter, the pastor of a megachurch near Orlando. Hunter had recently declined to become president of the Christian Coalition after disputes with the group's board over broadening its focus to include environmentalism.

Some evangelical groups minimized the partnership effort. A statement from the conservative Interfaith Stewardship Alliance called it "just another attempt to create the impression of growing consensus among evangelicals about global warming. There is no such growing consensus."

While broad consensus exists in the scientific community that global warming is real and caused or exacerbated by human activity, a handful of scientists have disagreed. Groups like Interfaith Stewardship Alliance argue that without more certainty about global warming, some governmental measures taken to combat it may create disastrous economic consequences. (Source: Associated Baptist Press, www.abpnews.com)