Russ McBee

In a fairly surprising move, leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention have adopted a position on global warming which stands in direct contradiction to their position taken only a year ago:

Signaling a significant departure from the Southern Baptist Convention’s official stance on global warming, 44 Southern Baptist leaders have decided to back a declaration calling for more action on climate change, saying its previous position on the issue was "too timid."

The new position states:

"Our cautious response to these issues in the face of mounting evidence may be seen by the world as uncaring, reckless and ill-informed."

The document also urges ministers to preach more about the environment and for all Baptists to keep an open mind about considering environmental policy.

And this:

[E]vidence of global warming is "substantial," and that the threat is too grave to wait for perfect knowledge about whether, or how much, people contribute to the trend.

In addition, the statement says that negative human impact on the environment is often "reckless, preventable and sinful."

That message of stewardship represents a pretty big shift from positions taken in the recent past by prominent Baptists; for example, that odious little worm Jerry Falwell once said about predictions of global warming, and about the environmentalist movement in general, "It is Satan's attempt to redirect the church's primary focus away from evangelism."

The SBC's new position on the subject could be a harbinger of greater shifts to come. Fundamentalists have been fracturing away from the political right wing for a little while now, and this declaration may be another signpost along that road:

Even Cal Thomas, who once served as vice president of the late Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority, is critical of the Religious Right these days.

[...]

In a column written shortly after Falwell's death in May, Thomas opined, "The flaw in the movement was the perception that the church had become an appendage to the Republican Party and one more special interest group to be pampered. If one examines the results of the Moral Majority's agenda, little was accomplished in the political arena and much was lost in the spiritual realm, as many came to believe that to be a Christian meant you also must be 'converted' to the Republican Party and adopt the GOP agenda and its tactics."

It seems even the Southern Baptist Convention, who've been GOP loyalists for decades now, have finally begun to see that their adoptive political home isn't so welcoming after all. Maybe now the fundamentalists will begin to realize just exactly how their erstwhile political allies in the GOP have been fleecing the flock all these years.

In a tangentially related development, the Pope has issued a list of brand new sins. I'm totally in favor of having more sins to choose from; after all, the old ones do get stale after a while. However, I think it's interesting that one of the new sins is pollution.