http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/03/us/03evangelical.html?_r=1&ref=science&oref=sloginExcerpt:
Evangelical’s Focus on Climate Draws Fire of Christian Right
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
Published: March 3, 2007
Leaders of several conservative Christian groups have sent a letter urging the National Association of Evangelicals to force its policy director in Washington to stop speaking out on global warming.
The conservative leaders say they are not convinced that global warming is human-induced or that human intervention can prevent it. And they accuse the director, the Rev. Richard Cizik, the association’s vice president for government affairs, of diverting the evangelical movement from what they deem more important issues, like abortion and homosexuality.
The letter underlines a struggle between established conservative Christian leaders, whose priority has long been sexual morality, and challengers who are pushing to expand the evangelical movement’s agenda to include issues like climate change and human rights.
“We have observed,” the letter says, “that Cizik and others are using the global warming controversy to shift the emphasis away from the great moral issues of our time.”
Those issues, the signers say, are a need to campaign against abortion and same-sex marriage and to promote “the teaching of sexual abstinence and morality to our children.”
The letter, dated Thursday, is signed by leaders like James C. Dobson, chairman of Focus on the Family; Gary L. Bauer, once a Republican presidential candidate and now president of Coalitions for America; Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council; and Paul Weyrich, a longtime political strategist who is chairman of American Values.
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Good Lord, now I have heard everything. They think being good stewards of this planet is not a MORAL issue, but hating gays IS? That's it, these people of the Christian (and that word is used very loosely with them) Right are heartless phony bastards hiding behind Christ to use him as a shield for their own hatred. WHY DO THEY HATE THEIR OWN PLANET SO MUCH? I sure hope Evangelicals take a stand against them because this is a BLATANT POLITICAL maneuver on their part. Making this crisis a partisan political issue is counterproductive to the real progress we must make together as human beings to preserve this planet. I don't see any greater MORAL cause than that.