Recently, an evangelical group calling itself the Evangelical Climate Initiative issued a documented called “Climate Change: An Evangelical Call to Action.” It stated “climate change is the latest evidence of our failure to exercise proper stewardship and constitutes a critical opportunity for us to do better.”

This is merely an instance of how the evangelical community is becoming increasingly divided about climate change and global warming, with groups such as ECI and the Washington-based Evangelical Environment Network seeing it as their moral duty to confront this issue within a religious context while others, such as Focus on the Family, persist in denials or wishy-washy dithering.

The National Association of Evangelicals, an umbrella organization dedicated to coordinating evangelical ministries, has remained conspicuously and cowardly neutral.

Evangelicals—admittedly an amorphous, problematic term—have often campaigned for more religion in public life, or at the very least, made the argument that the ethical imperatives of Christianity compelled them participate in government and public service. For all that I despise in their narrow-minded moralizing and nutty theology, I think this is a consistent position, deserving of respect, and suggestive of decency and integrity. Their convictions are solidly backed up by action. It was the evangelicals who first started denouncing the genocide in Sudan, well before the shrill and sanctimonious diatribes of Nick Kristof.

So kudos to the evangelicals who think global warming is an ethical problem and see how their religion demands they be involved its solution (They’re also going to need hard science, which they don’t seem to be too friendly with, but that’s another blog).

For the others, like James Dobson of Focus on the Family, who sees “neither a scientific nor an evangelical consensus on the topic,” they are essentially using religion as a political tool, touting Christian principles when it serves their agenda, but deserting the difficult road of high morality when it conflicts with the business and industrial interests that bankroll the Republican Party.