Blame

One way that some people respond to Climate Change is by trying to locate its cause. In this sense environmentalists and some of the radical fundamentalist subsets of Evangelical Christianity agree. Both believe that global warming is caused by human actions. However, as Avi Selk pointed out in an article for the Washington Post, they disagree about which human behaviors cause climate change and severe weather. One prominent Evangelical activist mentioned in Selk’s article is Randall Terry. The author of a rather fascinating e-book entitled The Judgment of God, Terry asserts that God is provoked to punish the United States through severe weather due to our country’s collective sins.

What initially struck me about Terry’s claims is that they did not seem to primarily be explanations for severe weather. Rather, his accusations seemed focused around efforts to alter the behavior of others. For example, his assertions about God’s punishments do not seem to express concern with the impact of hurricanes and wildfires so much as delight with God’s awesome and justified wrath. While he clearly views abortion as something that is immoral, it is not clear whether he is more interested in actually preventing abortions or ostracizing those who provide or undergo them. Based on this I believed that his motivations might be somewhat similar to those observed by Evans Pritchard among the Azande in regards to witchcraft accusations.

Pritchard found that witchcraft accusations were typically levied against those who were seen to be breaking some taboo or social norm. Further, the noted that witches did not know that they were witches until an accusation was leveled against them and their witchcraft was confirmed by an oracle. In this way accusations of witchcraft primarily functioned as a way to maintain social norms. One clear difference between the Azande and Terry’s accusations is that those who were found to be witches among the Azande were likely to accept their guilt and change their behavior. In the case of Terry and his co-believers perhaps it is enough to simply have someone to blame for catastrophes. It must be a kind of comfort to know that whatever wrath God brings down on the country, it is not their own fault.

In addition to social control, I was struck by another feature of Terry’s message that might appeal to Evangelicals. This is the demand he makes for tangible changes in the real world. Like the Pietists, he denies the boundary between religious practice and everyday life.  And, while it easy to scientifically debunk a direct link between abortion or homosexuality and climate change, the connection between global warming and capitalism might actually have some merit. For example, a case could be made that an ethos of ever-increasing consumption and global trade are linked to excess carbon emissions. While Terry seems more concerned with capitalism’s spiritual effect than its carbon footprint I must admit that if more people shared this particular aspect of his magical thinking then it might be politically easier to prevent further anthropogenic global warming.