The Riot Act

Kenneth W. Chilton responds to the recent evangelical call for environmental stewardship:

Evangelicals have taken bold stands on controversial issues such as embracing a culture of life, protecting traditional marriage and family, promoting abstinence as AIDS prevention and many others. But this necessary activism does not mean they should try to take on every social issue.

Evangelicals are to be first and foremost messengers of the good news of the Gospel. Evangelicals ought to promote those things that please God and oppose things that clearly violate his righteous standard of conduct.

Climate change just doesn't rise to that level of moral imperative; climate change is not an "evangelical" issue.

Shorter Chilton: Stick to beating up on fags and women, and leave pollution to the experts at BushCo.

Obligatory background information: Chilton's a former member of the Weidenbaum Center, an anti-environmental think tank heavily funded by Exxon. He currently directs the Institute for the Study of Economics and the Environment at Lindenwood University, which has also received funding from Exxon. His other main affiliation is with the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance, which was launched on November 16, 2005, under these droll circumstances:

The ISA’s press conference was hosted at the Ugandan Embassy in Washington, DC by Her Excellency Edith Ssempala, Ugandan Embassador to the U.S. According to the ISA, Uganda has a balanced approach to dealing with environmental issues.

You can read more about Uganda's "balanced" approach to the environment here.

As for the ISA, it's essentially a revamped version of the Interfaith Council for Environmental Stewardship. Like the ICES, it's based on the Cornwall Declaration, a crazy quilt of dominionist and free-market balderdash rubberstamped by folks like James Dobson, Charles Colson, Paul Weyrich, and Donald Wildmon. The ISA site offers no funding information, but its advisory board includes people like Robert Sirico of the Acton Institute, a remarkably extreme anti-environmental think tank funded by Philip Morris, Exxon, and the Bradley Foundation; Michael Cromartie of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a neocon think tank funded by the Scaife and Olin Foundations; David Barton, the anti-Constitutional theocrat behind the Wallbuilders; and a host of other well-connected zealots.