Forty-five senators and 186 representatives earned 80- to 100-percent approval ratings from the nation's three most influential Christian right advocacy groups—the Christian Coalition, Eagle Forum, and Family Resource Council—in 2003. Many of those lawmakers also got flunking grades—scoring less than 10 percent, on average—from the League of Conservation Voters.
These statistics are puzzling at first. Opposing abortion is consistent with the religious right's belief that life begins at conception. Opposing gay marriage is consistent with its claim that homosexuality is proscribed by the Bible. Both beliefs are a familiar staple of today's political discourse. But a scripture-based justification for anti-environmentalism—when was the last time you heard a conservative politician talk about that?
Odds are it was in 1981, when President Reagan's first secretary of the interior, James Watt, told Congress that protecting natural resources was unimportant in light of the imminent return of Jesus Christ. "God gave us these things to use. After the last tree is felled, Christ will come back," Watt said in public testimony that helped get him fired.
Today's Christian fundamentalist politicians are more politically savvy than Reagan's interior secretary; you're unlikely to catch them attributing public policy decisions to private religious views. But their actions suggest that many share Watt's beliefs. Like him, many Christian fundamentalists feel that concern for the future of our planet is irrelevant, because it has no future. They believe we are living in the End-Time, when the son of God will return, the righteous will enter heaven, and sinners will be condemned to eternal hellfire. They may also believe, as do millions of Christian fundamentalists, that environmental destruction is not only to be disregarded but welcomed—even hastened—as a sign of the coming Apocalypse.
We are not talking about a handful of fringe lawmakers who hold or are beholden to these beliefs. The 231 legislators (all but five of them Republicans) who received an average 80 percent approval rating from leading religious-right organizations make up over 40 percent of the US Congress. These officials include some of the most powerful figures in government, and key environmental decision makers: Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN), Assistant Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Conference Chair Rick Santorum (R-PA), House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL), Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX), Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-MO), and quite possibly President Bush.
And those politicians are just the powerful tip of the iceberg. A 2002 TIME/CNN poll found that 59 percent of Americans believe that prophecies in the Book of Revelation will come true. Nearly one-quarter think the Bible predicted the 9/11 attacks.
Like it or not, faith in the Apocalypse is a powerful force in modern American politics. In 2000, the Christian Right cast 15 million votes for George W. Bush. In 2004, GOP strategist Karl Rove mobilized approximately 20 million conservative evangelical voters, especially in swing states, to propel Bush back into office and strengthen a Republican majority in Congress, according to exit polls, says the Washington Post.
Because of its power as a voting bloc, the Christian Right has the ear, if not the souls, of much of the nation's leadership. Some of those leaders are End-Time believers themselves. Others are not. Either way, their votes are swayed by an electoral base that accepts the Bible as literal truth and eagerly awaits the Apocalypse. That, in turn, is sobering news for those who hope for the protection of the Earth, not its destruction.
Since the dawn of Christianity, believers have searched the scriptures for signs of the End-Time and Second Coming. Today, most of the roughly 50 million fundamentalist Christians in the US probably believe in some form of End-Time theology, according to Joan Bokaer, director of Theocracy Watch, a project of the Center for Religion, Ethics, and Social Policy at Cornell University (www.theocracywatch.org).
Those believers make up a subset of an estimated 100 million US born-again evangelicals, who are by no means uniformly right-wing anti-environmentalists. In fact, the political stance of evangelicals ranges widely, from conservative to liberal, to apolitical. The Evangelical Environmental Network, for example, melds biblical interpretation with environmental science to promote earth stewardship. But the political impact of the extreme Christian right is hard to overestimate. It is also difficult to understand without grasping the belief systems underlying and driving it. While there are many divergent End-Time theologies, the most politically influential are the dispensationalists and reconstructionists.
Tune into America's 1,600 Christian radio or 250 Christian TV stations and you'll likely get a heady dose of dispensationalism, an End-Time doctrine invented by 19th-century theologian John Nelson Darby. Dispensationalists espouse a "literal" interpretation of the Bible that gives a detailed chronology of the end of the world. (Mainstream theologians dispute that literality, arguing that Darby wildly misinterprets and distorts biblical passages.) Believers link that chronology to current events—four hurricanes hitting Florida, gay marriages in San Francisco, the September 11 attacks—as proof that we are what dispensationalist writer Hal Lindsey calls "the terminal generation."
The social and environmental crises of our times, dispensationalists say, are portents of the Rapture, when born-again Christians, living and dead, will be taken up into Heaven. "All over the earth, graves will explode as the occupants soar into the heavens," preaches dispensationalist pastor John Hagee, of the Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas. Those nonbelievers who aren't raptured will be left behind to endure seven years of unspeakable suffering on earth called the Great Tribulation, culminating in the rise of the Antichrist and final battle of Armageddon between God and Satan. A victorious Christ will send unbelievers into the pits of Hell, re-green the planet, and reign in peace with His followers for a millennium.
Dispensationalists haven't cornered the market on End-Time interpretation. Reconstructionists (or dominionists), a smaller but politically influential faction, put the onus for the Lord's return not in the words of biblical prophesy but in political activism. They believe Christ will only come back when the world has prepared a place for Him, with the Christianizing of America as a first step. "Christian politics has as its primary intent the conquest of the land—of men, families, institutions, bureaucracies, courts, and governments for the Kingdom of Christ," writes reconstructionist George Grant. Christian Dominion will be achieved in the US by ending the separation of church and state, replacing democracy with a theocracy ruled by Old Testament law, and ending government social programs, turning that role over to churches. Reconstructionists would abolish government regulatory agencies, such as the EPA, because they are a distraction from the goal of Christianizing America, and subsequently, the world. "World conquest. That's what Christ has commissioned us to accomplish. We must win the world with the power of the Gospel. And we must never settle for anything less," says Grant.
People captivated by such potent prophecies can't be expected to worry about the environment. Why care about the earth when ecological collapse is an inevitable sign of the Apocalypse foretold in the Bible? Why care about global climate change when you and yours will be rescued in the Rapture? And why care about converting from oil to solar when the same God who performed the miracle of the loaves and fishes can whip up a few billion barrels of light crude with a Word?
Many End-Timers believe that until Jesus' return, the Lord will provide. In America's Providential History, a popular reconstructionist high school history textbook, authors Mark Beliles and Stephen McDowell tell us that: "The secular or socialist has a limited resource mentality and views the world as a pie...that needs to be cut up so everyone can get a piece." However, "[T]he Christian knows that the potential in God is unlimited and that there is no shortage of resources in God's Earth. The resources are waiting to be tapped." In another passage, the writers explain: "While many secularists view the world as overpopulated, Christians know that God has made the earth sufficiently large with plenty of resources to accommodate all of the people."
Resource depletion and overpopulation, then, are not concerns for End-Timers—and nor are other ecological catastrophes viewed by dispensationalists as presaging the Great Tribulation. Support for this view comes from a scant 11-word passage, Matthew 24:7: "[T]here shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places." Other End-Timers see suggestions of ecological meltdown in Revelation's four horsemen of the Apocalypse—War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death—and cite a verse mentioning costly wheat, barley, and oil as foretelling food and fossil fuel shortages. Some End-Timers note that Revelation 8:11 predicts a fiery mountain falling into the sea that kills many. The name of this biblical peak is "Wormwood," which dispensationalists say translates in Ukrainian as "Chernobyl."
A plethora of End-Time preachers, tracts, films, and Web sites hawk environmental cataclysm as Good News—a harbinger of the Second Coming. Hal Lindsey's 1970 End-Time pop classic The Late Great Planet Earth, was the first. In its movie version, viewers are pummeled with stock footage of nuclear blasts, polluting smokestacks, raging floods, and killer bees. The newest dispensationalist tomes are the best-selling "Left Behind" series by Moral Majority co-founder Tim LaHaye. With sales of 1.5 million copies per month, these novels weave ecological disaster into an action-adventure version of prophecy.
At RaptureReady.com the Rapture Index tracks the latest news in relation to biblical prophecy. Among its leading indicators of apocalypse are oil supply, famine, drought, wild weather, floods, and climate shifts. RaptureReady webmaster Todd Strandberg writes to explain why climate change made the list: "I used to think there was no real need for Christians to monitor the changes related to greenhouse gases. If it was going to take a couple hundred years for things to get serious, I assumed the nearness of the end-times would overshadow this problem. With the speed of climate change now seen as moving much faster, global warming could very well be a major factor in the plagues of the tribulation."
According to www.apocalypsesoon.org, we are at "the beginning of sorrows" (Matthew 24:9-10) marking the Great Tribulation. As evidence, the site provides links to BBC Science Online and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ross Gelbspan's climate change Web site. However, it adds a stern disclaimer regarding scientific proofs: "We do not, by any means, approve or recommend the sites this page links to. They were chosen simply because they document literally what the Word of God prophesizes for the End Days."
To understand how the Christian right worldview described above is shaping and even fueling congressional anti-environmentalism, consider two influential born-again lawmakers: House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX), and Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chair James Inhofe (R-OK).
DeLay, who sets the House environmental agenda, has said that the Almighty has anointed him to "march forward with a Biblical worldview" in US politics, reports Peter Perl in the Washington Post. DeLay wants to convert America into a "God centered" nation whose government promotes prayer, worship, and the teaching of Christian values.
Inhofe, the Senate's most outspoken environmental critic, is also unwavering in his wish to remake America as a Christian state. Speaking at the Christian Coalition's Road to Victory rally just before the GOP sweep of the 2002 midterm elections, he promised the faithful: "When we win this revolution in November, you'll be doing the Lord's work, and He will richly bless you for it!"
But neither DeLay nor Inhofe includes environmental protection in "the Lord's work." Both have ranted against the US Environmental Protection Agency, calling it "the Gestapo." DeLay has fought for the repeal of the Clean Air and Endangered Species acts. In 2003, Inhofe declared global warming "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people."
DeLay has said that he intends to smite the "socialist" worldview of "secular humanists," who, he argues, control the US political system, media, and public schools. He called the 2000 presidential election an apocalyptic "battle for souls," a fight to the death against liberalism, feminism, and environmentalism, forces that are corrupting America. The utopian dreams of such movements are doomed, argues the majority leader, because "they are not inspired by God."
"DeLay is motivated more than anything by power," says Jan Reid, co-author with Lou Dubose of The Hammer, a just-published biography of DeLay. "But he also believes in the power of the coming Millennium [of Jesus Christ], and it helps shape his vision on government and the world." This may explain why DeLay's Capitol office furnishings include a marble replica of the Ten Commandments and a wall poster that reads: "This Could Be The Day"—meaning Judgment Day.
DeLay is also a Christian Zionist, a member of an End-Time faction numbering roughly 20 million Americans, reports the Christian Science Monitor. Christian Zionists believe that the 1948 creation of the state of Israel marked the first event in what author Hal Lindsey calls the "Countdown to Armageddon" and they are committed to making that doomsday clock tick faster, speeding Christ's return.
In 2002, DeLay visited pastor John Hagee's Cornerstone Church. Hagee preached a simple and horrific message: "The war between America and Iraq is the gateway to the apocalypse!" he said, urging his followers to support the war and bring about the Second Coming. After Hagee's talk, DeLay rose to second the motion. "Ladies and gentlemen," he said, "what has been spoken here tonight is the truth from God."
With those words DeLay placed himself squarely inside the End-Time camp, a faction willing to force the Apocalypse. In part, DeLay may embrace Hagee in a calculated attempt to win fundamentalist votes—but he was also raised a Southern Baptist, steeped in the Bible and End-Time dogma. Biographer Dubose says that the majority leader probably doesn't grasp the complexities of dispensationalist and reconstructionist theology but "I am convinced that he believes [in] it." For Delay, Dubose says, "If John Hagee says it, then it is true."
James Inhofe is an environmentalist's worst nightmare. The Oklahoma senator makes major policy decisions based on corporate and theological influences, flawed science, and probably an apocalyptic worldview; he also chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
That committee's links to industry funders are both easier to trace and more infamous than its ties to religious fundamentalism, and it's true that the influence of money can scarcely be overstated. For example, from 1999 to 2004, Inhofe received over $586,000 in campaign funding from the fossil fuel industry, electric utilities, mining, and other natural resource interests, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
But the influence of theology is perhaps no less significant. Inhofe, like DeLay, is a Christian Zionist. In a Senate Foreign Relations speech, he recently argued that the US should ally itself unconditionally with Israel "because God said so." Quoting the Bible as divine Word, Inhofe cited Genesis 13:14-17, ("for all the land which you see, to you will I give it, and to your seed forever") as the Lord's justification for permanent Israeli occupation of the West Bank and for escalating aggression against the Palestinians. (Such an extreme position might not be so dangerous if it were not so prominently held in Congress. A 2002 Christian Coalition sponsored Christian Zionist rally was attended not only by Inhofe and DeLay, but by 14 other congressmen.) Inhofe also openly supports dispensationalist Pat Robertson, who touts every hurricane and suicide bombing as sure signs of Christ's return.
A good fundamentalist, Inhofe scored a perfect 100 percent rating in 2003 from all three major Christian Right advocacy groups, while earning a five percent score from the League of Conservation Voters (and a string of zeroes from 1997 to 2002). Likewise, eight of the nine other Republicans on the Environment and Public Works Committee hold an average 93 percent approval rating with the Christian Right, while scoring a dismal four percent average environmental approval rating.
As committee chair, Inhofe has subtly chosen scripture over science. The origins of his 2003 Senate speech attacking the science behind global climate change, for example, reveal his two masters: The speech is traceable to petrochemical industry dollars and think tanks, but also to the pseudo-science of Christian Right Web sites. In that two-hour diatribe, Inhofe dismissed global warming by comparing it to a 1970s "scientific scare" that suggested the planet was cooling—a hypothesis, he fails to note, was held by a minority of climatologists at the time. Inhofe's view on global cooling is similarly held by the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty—a Christian Right and free-market economics think tank that calls global warming "globaloney," and accuses environmentalists of being socialists who are attacking our "cherished freedoms."
Inhofe's views also echo the Interfaith Council for Environmental Stewardship (ICES), a radical right Christian group founded by evangelist James Dobson and dispensationalist Rev. Jerry Falwell. The ICES environmental outlook is shaped by the Book of Genesis: "Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the seas, the birds of the air, and all the living things that move on this earth." The organization says this passage proves that "man" is superior to nature and gives the go-ahead to unchecked population growth and unrestrained resource use. Such beliefs fly in the face of ecology, which shows humankind to be an equal and interdependent participant in the natural web.
Inhofe defends his backward scientific positions, no matter how at odds they are with mainstream science. "I trust God with my legislative goals and the issues that are important to my constituents," Inhofe told Pentecostal Evangel magazine. "I don't believe there is a single issue we deal with in government that hasn't been dealt with in the Scriptures." But Inhofe stayed silent in that interview as to which passages he applies to the environment, and he remained so when this author asked him if End-Time beliefs influence his leadership of the most powerful environmental committee in the country.
So weird have attempts to hasten the End-Time become that a group of ultra-Christian Texas ranchers recently helped fundamentalist Israeli Jews breed a pure red heifer, a genetically rare beast that must be sacrificed to fulfill an apocalyptic prophecy found in the biblical Book of Numbers, according to the National Review.
It is difficult for environmentalists, who cut their teeth on peer-reviewed science, to fathom how anyone can believe that a ruddy calf could bring about the end of the world, or how anyone could make a coherent End-Time story (let alone national policy) out of the poetic symbolism of Revelation. But there are millions of such people in America—including 231 US legislators who either believe dispensationalist or reconstructionist doctrine or, for political expediency, are happy to align themselves with those that do.
That's troubling, because the beliefs in question are antithetical to environmentalism. For starters, any science that contradicts the End-Timers' interpretation of Holy Writ is automatically suspect. This explains the scathing disregard for environmental science so prevalent among Christian fundamentalist lawmakers who deny threats from global warming, a damaged ozone layer, and toxic mercury pollution.
End-Time beliefs also make such problems inconsequential. Faith in Christ's impending return causes fundamentalists to be interested only in short-term political outcomes, not long-term solutions. Unfortunately, nearly every environmental issue, from the conservation of endangered species to the curbing of climate change, requires belief in, and commitment to, an enduring Earth. But no amount of scientific data will likely shake believers of their End-Time faith or bring them over to the cause of saving the earth.
"It's like half this country wants to guide our ship of state by compass—a compass, something that works by science and rationality, and empirical wisdom," quipped comedian Bill Maher on "Larry King Live." "And half this country wants to kill a chicken and read the entrails like they used to do in the old Roman Empire." Those who doubt the dangers of such faith-based guidance need only recall the 9/11 hijackers, who devoutly believed that 72 black-eyed virgins awaited them in paradise.
In the past, it wasn't deemed politically correct to ask probing questions about a lawmaker's religious beliefs. But when those beliefs play a crucial role in shaping public policy, it becomes necessary for the people to know and understand them. It sounds startling, but the great, unasked questions that must be posed to the 231 US legislators backed by the Christian Right, and to President Bush himself, are not the kind of softballs about faith lobbed during the presidential debates. They are, instead, tough inquiries about the details of that faith: Do you believe we are in the End-Time? Are the policies you support based on your faith in the imminent Second Coming of Christ? It's not an exaggeration to say that the fate of our planet depends on our asking these questions, and on the reshaping of our environmental and political strategies in light of the answers.
Many years ago, a friend introduced me to his "religious grandparents," who, whenever asked about the future, proclaimed: "Armageddon's comin'!" And they believed it. Christ was due back any day, so they never painted or shingled their house. What was the point? Over the years, I watched the protective layers of paint peel, the clapboards weather, the sills and roof rot. Eventually, the house fell into ruin and had to be torn down, leaving my friend's grandparents destitute.
In a way, their prediction had proven right. But this humble apocalypse, a house divided against itself, was no work of God, but of man. This is a parable for the 231 Christian Right-backed legislators of the 108th Congress. Their constituency's cherished beliefs may lead to the most dangerous and destructive self-fulfilling prophecy of all time.