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Excerpt from the article, Para Legal Implications of the Climate Trials, in Philosophical Transactions, Vol 12, Issue 5. By Fred Penner, Phd., from Xanadu University, Washington State, USA.
Mikhial Bookchin had selected an obscure pastor from a small, inner-city church to lead the prosecution. While it might seem odd for a member of the clergy to prosecute the role of religion in the Climate Emergency, Lex Ploughrite proved to have an ability to identify and articulate the core issues at stake. The defence was presented by another obscure, yet talented individual. Kase Hugerman was a rural, small town news blogger who had what seemed to be an encyclopedic understanding of all religions. Watching the two work was less a battle or a debate than a simple “division of labour” as each helped the audience understand all the complex issues at play.
Lex began by setting out in great detail the paper trail that showed beyond a doubt that the theological opposition had been created by public relations agencies hired by fossil fuel companies rather than any sort of dispute among serious theologians. Kase responded by suggesting that it doesn’t really matter where an idea comes from if the body of Christ accepts it. God chooses leaders from all walks of life---indeed the term “Messiah” while it refers to Jesus himself in the Gospels, is used to describe many different types of individuals in the Old Testament ---including a non-Jew, Cyrus the Great of Persia. Is it that hard to believe that an advertising executive working for Exxon Mobile could also for a brief period of time be a “Messiah” anointed by God to spread his word? After all, the God of the Bible expresses himself in a myriad of different, seemingly absurd ways: through the mouth of Balaam’s Ass, through the hand writing on the wall of Belshazzar’s court, etc. The key issue isn’t the source of a theological notion, it is whether or not it is accepted by the body of Christ after praying over it.
Ploughrite then responded by asking about the much-vaunted belief in the “fundamental”, inerrancy of the Bible in this point of view. If people can pick and choose what they believe in based on their own judgment, then what is the difference between fundamentalist and liberal denominations? Hugerman said that the term “fundamentalism” is abusive and used by people who dislike Christianity. Instead, he suggested that the court use “evangelical”. By that term he used the “Bebbington” definition---emphasizing the need to be “born again”, a special emphasis on the Bible, to express belief through action, and, the fundamental importance of Christ’s crucifixion.
As Hugerman explained it, the psychological experience of being “born again” totally removes reason and evidence from epistemological preeminence in the life of the individual and replaces it with faith. From this starting point, the Bible ceases to be just one text among others that can be checked using academic criteria, but instead becomes a living, breathing document that enters into a dialogue with the person of faith when he approaches it prayerfully. That’s why someone from the outside looking in can’t understand why an evangelical Christian seems to have no problem with the many contradictions and hard-to-justify parts of the Bible. They simply don’t have the psychological viewpoint that comes with being born again and gaining the ability to use prayerful discernment to pick and choose which parts to emphasize and which to ignore.
While it is true that Christians are supposed to have an inner voice called “the Holy Spirit”, which is supposed to help them discern truth from falsity---evangelicals believe that this needs to be tamed by faith and by being a member of a church. The congregation and ecclesiastic hierarchy---which is known as “the Body of Christ”---adds another dimension that is missing when academics and non-Christians read the Bible.
This is why evangelicals dismiss the idea that someone can be “spiritual without being religious”. Being a Christian isn’t just a “belief system”, it’s a “belief culture” where someone builds their whole life around not just the Bible, but also the Bible as understood by those members of his community who are more experienced in its message. Hugerman explained that this speaks to the issue of the church leadership following the lead of the fossil fuel companies and the Republican party. Evangelicals believe that “faith without deeds” is empty, which is why they felt that they had to take an active part in politics, and were primed to follow the lead of the Church leadership, who were better able to discern the will of God---which meant supporting the Republicans.
At this point Ploughrite thanked Hugerman for what he thought was a remarkably clear and lucid description that made a lot of sense to him---as a description of the minds of evangelical Christians leading up to the Climate Emergency. But he then asked the following questions:
“Would you like your surgeon to think like this? Do you think it would be better if the man who designed this building thought this way? If you fly in an airplane, would you desire the people who built it to “prayerfully discern” the way to build the engines? Or would you rather that they calculated the stresses involved and experimented in a wind tunnel to see if their original hypotheses were correct?”
“I have no doubt at all about your description of the thought processes of the evangelical church members. But that leaves the underlying question: ‘Should people still be using this sort of thought process in the modern age?’”
“Doesn’t it make people vulnerable to control by hierarchical institutions that take advantage of their inability to think clearly and logically? And if a majority---or even an influential minority---of the population have been taught and trained to think this way, how can we expect them to respond to the increasing problems that have resulted from modern science and technology?”
Hugerman made an interesting response. He suggested that democracy is ultimately a non-Christian concept:
“Democracy is based on the pagan assertion that ‘man is the measure of all things’. But being a Christian is ultimately about submitting to the will of God. Those two visions of humanity are fundamentally at odds with one another.”
“Look at the theological history of Christianity. Human beings fell from their ‘natural state of grace’ in the Garden of Eden not because they harmed anyone else---but because they disobeyed God. Similarly, Satan was cast out of Heaven because he dared to think for himself and not do what he was told.”
“Liberals are often stunned by the hypocrisy of evangelical leadership---who often get caught doing exactly the opposite of what they preach in their ministries. Think about pastors who fight against gay rights but get caught in bed with gay prostitutes. But where the liberal sees “hypocrisy”, the evangelical sees “the spirit was willing but the flesh was weak” and evidence of humanity’s “fallen state”. That’s why they continue to support their leadership, simply because they ‘love the sinner but hate the sin’. What evangelical Christianity hates isn’t hypocrisy, it’s rebellion. The fundamental core of rebellion is thinking for yourself---and that’s also the core of democracy.”
“From the outside looking in, people often accuse the religion of Christianity of boiling down to not much more than ‘shut up and do what you are told’. But as the saying goes, for many believers ‘that’s not a bug, it’s a feature!’. People need to understand exactly what people are looking for when they get involved in an evangelical community. They generally aren’t seeking freedom, or spiritual growth---instead they are generally fearful of change, or they are recovering from making very bad personal life choices, or they are looking for some sort of social stability. Indeed, many people come to so-called “mega churches” simply because they are the only ‘social safety net’ left after decades of the ‘neo-liberal consensus’ has ripped their communities to pieces. These people aren’t looking for freedom---they want security. And security comes from a strong man on a white horse---not an argument in the public square.”
This is exactly the same point that Karen Armstrong makes in her book The Battle for God. Fundamentalism is driven not by theology per se, but rather by fear of modernity. And, unfortunately, conservatives have read an attempt to build a post-fossil fuel society as an attempt to rip away the existing economic and social order and replace it with something they fear will be far, far worse.
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