Yes and no. I don't know. Yes and no. According to the National Survey of Religious Leaders, 78% of white evangelical clergy reject the assertion that human actions are the cause of climate change. 78, why that's almost 80. That's nearly 80%. That's funny. Isn't that roughly the amount of white evangelicals that voted for Donald Trump in the last three elections? Yeah, was it 82, 83% Yeah, 81, 82. It seems to line up almost exactly with the percentage of white evangelical clergy that reject anthropomorphic, not anthropic, anthropomorphic climate change is when the climate starts looking like a person. Anthropic climate change is climate change caused by humans. And if you follow Jesus, you must reject it. In America. That's what, yeah, just in America. And just if you're white. If you're white and you follow Jesus in America, you must reject anthropic, not anthropomorphic. That's where I turn the climate into a puppet and I talk through the climate. That's fun. By contrast, only 27% of black Protestant clergy and 21% of liberal or mainline Protestant clergy reject anthropic climate change. Are you okay? I don't know what happened. I got something in my throat. You're okay. And Skye objects. Sorry. Oh, I object, sir. Wait, but also only 29%

of Catholic clergy. Did

I skip that one? Well, I'm looking at the graph. Oh, okay. Do you want to walk it off? Do you need to take a little walk?

It's almost like a bug flew into my throat.

Maybe it did here at our well-kept news studios. By contrast, most clergy, including white evangelicals, endorsed a medical approach to treating depression in addition to a spiritual approach. The study found that 87% of evangelical clergy say they would encourage their congregants to seek help from a mental health professional when suffering from depression. Okay, that's interesting. So it doesn't seem to be that we have a problem with science. Seems to be we have a problem with science that goes against the political narrative. So climate science is suspect, but psychological

science is

okay. And you know, like should I treat my cancer and should I treat it with medicine or just prayer or just, you know, by rubbing two sticks together and then holding them over my heart, which wouldn't work. And maybe the better analogy

would be what caused your cancer. It wasn't smoking four packs a day. It's just how the world goes. It's anthropomorphic cancer. I made it a puppet.

The contrast between the two views of science, the rejection of climate science, but the acceptance of medical science is striking and researchers suggest one motivating factor. I

can't imagine what it is. Politics. Politics. Wow. Wow. I

was thinking they were going to say seed oils or something else, but they said politics. Phil's

been on Instagram.

So, yeah. So this would, Robert P. Jones was interviewed for this story in Religion News Service. He said, climate change has been politicized in a way that mental health has not. So it's not that evangelicals don't believe in climate science and they do believe in the science behind medications and psychological counseling. It's that rejecting climate change has been established as a necessary tribal partisan belief in a way that rejecting mental health treatment has not. Okay.

But so what this seems to be saying is that the final arbiter on what white evangelicals believe is going to be determined by political allegiance, right? Rather than science evidence or maybe even-

Well, or determined by your tribe. Yeah. Your tribe, your political allegiance. Is that? Oh, Caitlin says nay. Caitlin says nay,

Scott. Yes, but I do think this is one of those instances where there is some blame to be shared across groups of people. And it's really easy to look at this and go, oh, well, white evangelicals are doing what everyone, if we're being honest, is doing, which is having their partisan preferences shape their beliefs more than the things they claim to hold more deeply like religion or any other kind of basic ideological commitments. There's a really interesting book about this called The Nature of the Religious Right by Neil Pogue, where he goes through some of this 20th century history on this. And one of the things I found so striking when I read that book a couple of years ago, I thought it would tell basically that story of, yes, evangelicals had some heritage of environmentalism. The environmental movement in the US has really deep religious roots, actually, like a lot of progressive causes in the United States. But somewhere along the way, as evangelicals got kind of looped in with the Republican Party mid-20th century, their views came to be determined by Republican Party views. And he makes part of that argument, but he also makes pretty clear that especially in like 60s, 70s, when Earth Day is starting, when the environmental movement is taking on a particular shape, there was such heavy anti-racism. religion rhetoric in that movement that put honestly unfair blame on religion, particularly Protestantism for having an extractive mentality towards creation that was not one of care for creation, that didn't rightfully acknowledge the whole broader Christian history of thinking of creation in terms of stewardship and care and worship to God. And some of the stuff that came out, especially around Earth Day in the 70s, was pretty explicitly anti-religious. And he, as a historian argues, really pushed evangelicals, as they're already getting a culture war mindset in that period, to viewing particularly environmental concerns as a whole, but especially climate change as an issue where they needed to be on the Republican side of this because the alternative, they bought into the marketing. To be religious means to not care about creation. Sure, well, then we'll go along with that too. And so I just say that to say, sometimes when people are getting overwhelmed with stories of white evangelicals having unfair political opinions or having their religious beliefs be shaped more by political opinions than vice versa, I do think it's helpful to sometimes go, that's overwhelmingly our fault, and we should take responsibility for that and lament. And also some of this political history is pretty complicated and some of it does come from a context in which it was really heavily fed to Christians and non-Christians that that divide was just inherent. Is

it another way of saying that the early environmental movement in the 60s and 70s was largely populated by hippies? It was a little hippie. It was hippie. It was a little hippie dippy. And conservative white evangelicals were not. We were not pro-hippie. They're not pro-hippie. I

remember my grandfather. Look at those guys.

What you really have is negative polarization where if the hippie left is pro-environment. If my enemy

is for it, I am against

it. And you see that in multiple areas, not just environmentalism.

And if the hippie left is saying, yes, to be a Christian, to be religious at all, is to be against the environmental movement, that's a tough environment then for Christians to thrive

in. Not that that places no blame on us. And also colonialism or even some going so far as to demonize capitalism as a whole. And especially if you're in the Cold War, the tail end of the Cold War, where capitalism is part of the good guys that are opposing godless communism. to godless communism than to Jesus's own capitalism because Jesus minted money and sold his goods to the highest bidder, as we all know, then it's pretty easy to see where, you know, you're looking at a list of things that I should be for and against. Yeah. It's like a voter's guide. It's like then you get the voter's guide and says, these are the issues you should care about. Boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. And oh, guess what? This candidate cares about all the issues you care about. And the other one doesn't care about any of the issues you should care about. Right. It's package ethics. Right. Exactly. Exactly. But I appreciate Caitlin's historical context for

all this. It isn't just that white evangelicals don't believe in climate change because they're Republican. It's because there was a history where this issue became politically divisive, and there was a bundle of packaged ideas, including capitalism and free markets and on and on, that all went with the Republican side that also was not hippie and pro-environment and blah, blah, blah, I have raised

this point before, though, that there's also the factor that the heart of American Christianity in the Bible Belt overlays rather neatly with the parts of the country that are most, that employ the most people in the petrochemical industry. So that if you're saying, you know, we want to shut down big business that the extractive businesses. Well, Jeepers, Houston, Louisiana, you know, all across the Southeast, you've got a lot of extractive businesses and those people are giving money in their local churches and their elders. And so again, and this I think is the case wherever you have, you know, like an industry town. Like if you're a pastor in Michigan and someone starts railing against cars, you might not last very long. If you start railing against cars, you're not going to last very long in Michigan. Or unions, you're not going to last very long in Michigan. Yeah, but it's not like railing

against petrochemicals. It's even saying, you know, I think those scientists on Global War, they maybe have a point we should listen to. Yeah, but what

started first, what came first? That did not come first, people being hypersensitive about. Let's just hear what they have to say. What came first is we're ruining the planet and you have to stop driving your cars. Right, right. And you have to, you know, your SUVs are evil and gas is evil and extractive industries are evil. So that, you know, and those were, you know, and the Greenpeace movement and PETA throwing red paint on your fur coat. And it was all one big package of they hate us, those leftists hate us. And so we have to kind of circle the wagons and figure out what we're protecting. And we're protecting real America, real American jobs, and Christianity, and Jesus. Jesus and oil. Jesus and John oil. My new book. Caitlin?

Yikes. Do you have anything you'd to add to that? Well, I just want to say there is some good news in this, which is that sometimes when we believe an overly simplistic narrative that, for example, Christians or evangelical Christians in particular are just anti-science ideologically, and that we believe there is this real divide between faith and science, we one, come into conversations about something like climate change, assuming we know the terms that the conversation will take. And then we're not very effective in trying to persuade anyone or understand where they're coming from because we just kind of come in and say, well, I know what we're doing. We're having a science versus anti-science conversation. And two, if it's not actually that, if there's complicated historical political reasons why more evangelicals tend to be skeptical of human causes of climate change than the average population, then that means we actually have some opportunities. If it's not so deeply tied to foundational theological beliefs, we actually have some opportunities to say like, here are the other things you care about. Here are other areas where you don't think science conflicts with faith. Here are areas where you really care about creation. And here's passages that can line up with that. It doesn't mean you'll always be able to persuade everyone. But if it is largely shaped by these kind of historical political forces, I think there's more opportunities. Like I heard a story once of a theologian who was trying to counsel some people who were trying to get some local evangelical, more conservative people interested in some conservation efforts. And they basically came in very heavy handed with like, here's the science, here's why you're wrong, you know, really tried to shut them down. The conversation, not surprisingly, didn't go anywhere. But when they came in and said, talk to us about what you love about the land that you live on, talk to us about the hunting and the fishing that you love, which was not the kind of culture of the scientists that were involved in this conversation. They're not like hunters, fishers, like a part of, but once they said, like, talk to me about this land that you love and your connection to it, that was an entry point to say, okay, well then let us tell you now that we understand where you're coming from, how some of the work that we've done and the perspective we have could help you enjoy that longer and really honor that. And even use some kind of religious language to say like, you, you care lot about creation and God making this land and giving it to you. Here's ways that we can do that better. We just have better entry points, I think, given this information than we might have if we thought we had to tackle this whole giant faith versus science thing to even get into the conversation about climate change. If we don't have to do that, I think that actually could be surprisingly good

news.