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March 10, 2005

GOP v. Religious Voters on Global Warming

Okay, this gets interesting, as the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), the umbrella organization of denominations representing 30 million evangelicals, are coming together to discuss a statement against global warming, on the same day that the GOP Senate Chair of the Environment Committee, James Inhofe, referred to the scientific consensus on global warming as "a hoax."

If progressives want to know where to engage conservative religious voters, the National Association of Evangelicals seems to be one place to start, as the organization is in the throes of a major internal discussion on the civic responsibility of religious voters. As I discussed in this post, the Association last fall came out with a general statement that included quite progressive stands on helping the poor, stating, that "God measures societies by how they treat the people at the bottom" and "We should try to persuade our leaders to change patterns of trade that harm the poor and to make the reduction of global poverty a central concern of American foreign policy."

Taking specific stands on issues like global warming is the next step and highlights the opportunity to get beyond gays and abortion and engage religious organizations on a range of issues where more secular progressives share strong values with these voters.

Also read this profile of the NAE from its own website, more interesting than most sanitized institutional histories and with some insight into the various factions among the religious conservatives.

Posted by Nathan at March 10, 2005 07:54 AM