Katharine Hayhoe: Evangelical Christian, Climate Scientist
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Today's video features Katharine Hayhoe. Katharine Hayhoe is a highly-respected expert on climate change. An associate professor in the Department of Political Science and director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University, her focus is developing new ways to quantify the potential impacts of human activities at the regional scale. As founder and CEO of ATMOS Research, she also bridges the gap between scientists and stakeholders to provide relevant, state-of-the-art information on how climate change will affect our lives to a broad range of non-profit, industry and government clients. Her work has resulted in over 50 peer reviewed publications in key reports on the issue. She is currently writing a guidebook and creating accompanying videos on how to incorporate climate projections into impact assessments for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife. She also teamed up with Andrew Farley, author, professor and lead teaching pastor of Ecclesia, to write A Climate for Change: Global Warming Facts for Faith-Based Decisions.
As an evangelical scientist, Katharine Hayhoe is already a member of a rare breed. As a climate change researcher who is also married to an evangelical Christian pastor, she is nearly one of a kind. In these three videos, Hayhoe divulges her beliefs about God, climate change, and the difficulties of believing in both those things.
The first video, “10 Questions with Katherine Hayhoe”, introduces the scientist in a brief and light-hearted interview. Hayhoe is presented with 10 questions concerning her personal life and beliefs. When asked, she explains that one thing people should know about Christianity is that having a relationship with the God of the universe is one of the most incredible experiences that a person can have. Later, she discusses climate change, saying that people must come to realize that “climate change really is happening and that most of it really is because of human activity”. As the video unfolds, the viewer quickly begins to realize that, despite her unique profession of two seemingly incompatible beliefs, Hayhoe is a remarkably sane and “normal” individual. Her role model, she explains, is her father- the person who first introduced her to science and showed her that it could be “really cool”. On a more serious note, the scientist admits that being both a scientist and a Christian can be difficult. The most frustrating thing about her position, she says, is the amount of disinformation which is targeted at her very own Christian community.
In the second video, “Climate Change Evangelist”, Katharine Hayhoe delves into deeper discussion of the perceived conflict between climate change and Christian faith. She explains that admitting her identity as a Christian scientist can be uncomfortable. Since evangelicals are the targets of much disinformation concerning science in general -- and specifically the science surrounding climate change -- many people in the church have a misguided view of the subject and do not look kindly at her career choice. One woman encountered by Hayhoe at a church in Texas, for example, believed that global warming was a lie taught in schools to mislead her children. In an effort to realign misguided views like these, Katharine Hayhoe and her husband wrote a book addressing the deep-rooted emotions often associated with climate change. People fear that addressing the climate issue will bring forth changes in the economy and uproot their way of life. However, Hayhoe encourages her viewers to act out of love, as the Bible calls us to do, rather than out of fear. Acting out of love inspires us to consider the poor and disadvantaged people around the globe when we respond to the reality of a changing climate.
In the final segment of this three part video montage, Hayhoe addresses the question of what climate change means. She discusses the implications climate change has for the future of the earth. Specifically, she is concerned about how global warming affects people on a personal level. While global warming generally brings to mind melting ice caps and polar bears, in actuality, its implications are widespread, affecting the lives of everyone around the world- from cotton farmers in Texas to public health workers in Chicago. If nothing is done to change current emission levels, the number of days per year which exceed 100 degrees Fahrenheit, for example, will begin to increase dramatically, and if emissions are increased, many areas will even develop extreme conditions like those seen currently in Death Valley. Hayhoe’s goal is to demonstrate clearly that the only way to preserve the world for future generations is to significantly reduce dependence on inefficient means of getting energy and instead transition to cleaner renewable energy sources.
Editor's Note: These videos first appeared on the Nova program "The Secret Life of Scientists & Engineers".
Commentary written by the BioLogos editorial team.
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May 26th 2011
To some of us Christians outside the US, the idea that there is any inherent linkage between Evangelical faith and climate change denial is, to say the least, bizarre.
Reply to this commentOne might legitimately argue that God in his providence could ensure that catastrophic climate change will not, in the event, occur. But that providence must include the heeding of warnings, just as his individual providence includes our being sensible enough not to play Russian Roulette, attempt to fly off cliffs, and so on.
One could also (mistakenly) see climate change as a scientific conspiracy - but that has nothing whatsoever to do with Christian theology and everything to do with cultural paranoia.
Do the proponents of such views also believe that unleashing several thousand nuclear warheads would have no serious effects either, and that therefore test ban treaties, and so on, are merely an attempt to weaken the forces of democracy and freedom and undermine faith?
On the face of it this would seem to be another example of where cultural insularity trumps both science and theology. In the UK, Katharine’s work would not be regarded as even slightly surprising for an Evangelical.
May 28th 2011
As a Canadian myself, I know where you’re coming from. It was an unpleasant shock to me when I first moved to the US and started hearing what people at church thought of my area of study. To my mind, if we believe that God created the earth and mankind committed the original sin, it is no great stretch to see that we’ve a long history of messing up all the good things God gives us. Climate change is just one example in that long history of how we’ve gone wrong!
Reply to this commentHere in the US, however, it is the sad truth that there are many
well-respected Christian organizations, including Focus on the Family
and Answers in Genesis, that make statements, generate literature, and
(in the case of AiG) even produce videos stating that human-induced
climate change is a hoax. Two of the most prominent U.S. scientists who
identify themselves as “climate skeptics” also identify themselves as
Christians and use their faith as part of their argument against the
reality and/or severity of this problem.
Arguments specific to
the Christian faith (in addition to the usual ones about natural cycles,
sunspots, and data errors) include the assertion that God would never
let something like this happen to our planet, or that demonstrating our
complete dominance over our planet (in other words doing whatever we
want to maximize our short-term gain) is God’s will, or even that
climate disruption will only hasten the end-times and so should be
welcomed.
Additional misinformation comes from the fact that
Christianity and politics are so closely linked in the U.S. The
Republican party, particularly many of the newly-elected members, speak
frequently about both their faith and their rejection of climate
science, including arguments that “God would never allow the entire
Earth to flood again”. With such opinion leaders voicing doubts on
climate change directly to their constituents and even couching them in
religious terms, it is no wonder that 60% of US pastors agree with their
position, and evangelical protestants have the highest percentage of
rejecting climate change of any political/religious sub-group in the
United States.
The bottom line is that too many of us are allowing our politics to inform our faith, rather than our faith informing our politics.
May 28th 2011
“... the assertion that God would never let something like this happen to our planet, or that demonstrating our complete dominance over our planet (in other words doing whatever we want to maximize our short-term gain) is God’s will…”
Reply to this commentWell, I guess it’s understandable since the Bible has parallels to this. I mean, if God had chosen a people, made a covenant with them, settled them in a promised land and dwelt in a Temple amongst them, he’d never dream of exiling them and destroying the Temple, would he? Just so long as they kept repeating, “The Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord.”
It was only the prophets who challenged that self-serving complacency, so all power to your elbow, Katharine!
May 28th 2011
On “the assertion that God would never let something like this happen to our planet, ” ... it is especially lamentable that U.S. Christians as a whole have so shut themselves away from all things ‘evolution’. Two books by Jared Diamond (“Guns, Germs, & Steel”, and especially “Collapse”) will disabuse anyone of the notion that civilizations are automatically protected from wide scale change. But his writings are so steeped in—founded on, evolutionary research and data as to generate automatic dismissal by those who won’t look past the ‘e-word’. And that despite the fact that Diamond, unlike Dawkins, doesn’t waste time trying to be anti-religious or anti-Christian. He’s just trying to present a coherent picture of anthropological history and does a wonderfully plausible job. But even without the benefits of such insights, we Christians from our own Bible history ought to see the absurdity of the “it can’t happen to us” fantasy.
Reply to this commentI do refer to “us” and not the “planet” because here, in my own turn, I am skeptical about long term planetary doom short of that brought about by God (as in large asteroid collisions, etc.) Regarding anything we’ll do—even nuclear apocalypse—it isn’t so much the planet (or even life in general) that will end up devastated as it will be us and the current ecological systems as we now enjoy them. I.e. We may not survive our own stupidity, but something will, and will end up thriving without us, feasting on whatever the new environ offers. And here I think a curious paradox rears its head allowing all of us—especially evangelicals, to choose the side each finds convenient. We have learned of the sensitivity of ecological systems to disruption or even gradual change. But we have also learned of an adaptive life that has been molded into each present environ over eons of change and out of many past eons of other species that had their epochs in turn—long before human presence. So the irony here is that the very evangelicals who, on the surface, object to evolutionary thought, can still find it convenient (perhaps subconsciously) as a tool to dismiss concerns over global change—look at how evolutionarily hardy the world is, after all!. And I have some sympathy along those lines as well. I think its helpful to keep our focus on how we can protect our present ecological niches for the sakes of our global human community and for the next dozen or so generations. Any pretense that our footprint is/will be so deep as to ruin life forever is its own kind of hubris just like the opposite “hubris” (often masquerading as humility) of thinking that nothing we can do will have any effect whatsoever. It seems the sensible middle ground that Christ would call our attention to is to focus on our neighbor (both far and near) and our children, and future grandchildren.
—Merv
May 26th 2011
What I learned in Sunday School and Church was that Christians are called to be good stewards. Since God gave humanity dominion over the earth, we are called to be good stewards of God’s Creation, not to pollute it or destroy it. It is not that humans can’t destroy the earth, because the Bible says we can.
Reply to this commentWe should know better than think that God will allow us in the West to get away with using the rest of the world as our dump and source of cheap labor and raw materials.
May 26th 2011
Agree with John above: I can’t understand why Christian belief and the idea that humans have contributed to climate change could possibly be considered incompatible. These are completely orthogonal.
Reply to this commentThe problem is not Christian beliefs but perhaps the weak intellectual culture in which a great number of US Evangelicals are immersed. To be fair, the climate change issue also tracks with political affiliation and so the phenomenon of tribal identity also contributes in this instance.
May 26th 2011
Argon is certainly right about politics plays a role.
Reply to this commentIt does seem to me that certain “evangelical” leaders who sought power and influence in and through the Republican Party have made an unholy alliance with big money interests.
posting new comments.
May 27th 2011
Hey I bump into the Hayhoe clan here in Toronto.
May 27th 2011
Hi Robert.
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Reply to this commentMay 27th 2011
Robert wrote: “In reality evangelical christians are solidly middle class folks with
Reply to this commentmiddle with good percentages of upper middle class jobs. Lower class
people are seldom interested in christianity.”
That was a ‘classist ’ observation to make, Robert! -especially in light of James 2:2-7 (which is itself a fairly ‘classist’ statement, but the other way!) I can appreciate (and even join in) the efforts of all sides to want to show that a lot of smart people are Christians. But in light of Scriptures like the James 2 passage or I Cor. 3:18,19, I try not to ring that bell too hard or loudly, and only while remembering there is another side. My imagination has a hard time conjuring up images of Jesus preferring the respectable management / office life over the snubbed and disdained of the streets.
—Merv
posting new comments.
May 28th 2011
Nope.
May 28th 2011
Please don’t confuse this parochial and untheological prosperity stuff with historic Evangelicalism. It has been roundly rejected here in the UK since it first raised it’s ugly head when I was a young believer, and moreover is an offence to the poor Evangelical brethren I have known personally in Sri Lanka, Russia, South Africa, West Africa, Palestine, Turkey, Kuwait, Azerbaijan, Brazil… amongst many other countries.
Reply to this commentIt was such self-satisfied middle class prosperity that led to the later Puritans in this country becoming first ineffective, then extinct. It’s not just unbiblical - it’s a crude caricature of what Christianity is.
In other words I disagree with it.
May 28th 2011
I’m not really sure whether to take this as a very convincing joke or a serious statement. If the latter, I may begin to weep.
Reply to this commentChrist came to give life and it more abundantly (John 10:10), not so we can have a nice education, a picture perfect, Rockwellian family and house and a good paying job.
If in fact this is serious, I must rebuke, in the fullest love, that you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men.
May 27th 2011
There are a number of evangelical Christians working on climate change. Here is one such initiative: http://chge.med.harvard.edu/programs/unite/
Reply to this commentSomeone here mentioned that only 2% of scientists in the US are evangelical Christians? Doesn’t sound correct to me. If they could provide a source that would be great.
May 28th 2011
The Harvard program is a great initiative; however, I don’t believe any of the scientists involved in that project would identify themselves as evangelical Christians. It’s scientists plus evangelicals, not scientists who are evangelicals.
Reply to this commentThis article finds that less than 2% of scientists at a limited number of institutions identify themselves as evangelical: religion.ssrc.org/reforum/Ecklund.pdf
However, I think the results of this Pew Foundation study are more representative. It finds that 28% of the general population identifies themselves as evangelical protestant, but only 4% of scientists: http://pewforum.org/Science-and-Bioethics/Scientists-and-Belief.aspx
May 29th 2011
That’s the study. Ecklund also published a book, Science vs. Religion: What Scientists Really Think (2010, Oxford University Press, USA). That was a survey at 21 of the ‘high-flyer’ universities. In terms of impact, those at the elite universities do generally have a much greater impact in their fields and so that survey may tell us something in addition. The broader Pew survey Dr. Kayhoe references confirms that Evangelicals are distinctly under-represented among scientists. Evangelicals drop to 1/7x compared to <= 1/2x drops for other major Christian groups. In contrast, Judaism is a faith that is ‘over-represented’ in the sciences - Up by about 4x.
posting new comments.
June 1st 2011
Again someone says evangelicals are under represented in smart professions.
June 1st 2011
Robert Byers:
Reply to this commentBesides throwing out unweighted statistics and empirical fancies, do you have any real proof besides anecdotal comparisons?
Yet most importantly, do you have any scriptural proof that Christ was to make His servants “the best and the brightest”? Why did He tell us “Blessed are the poor in spirit” (Matt. 5:3) not “Blessed is the industrious”? Jesus commends us when we understand true poverty and living by the grace of God, not some big bank account. Jesus said He would give us the Comforter, not a mass of wealth. We are told to renounce worldly things and seek after the Kingdom of God, not horde wealth or spend the money extricating ourselves from society in our clean suburbs with nice houses*.
And why such a focus on “evangelicals”? There are many so called evangelicals who do not belong to Christ, who know Him not. And there are many who belong to the Holy Name of Christ who are Eastern Christians and Roman Christians. God seeks after the Heart, not the mundane vault known as the intellect**. Stop the nonsense!
*There’s nothing wrong with these things in and of themselves, but what is the reason many seek after them? For most, it is of personal standing and wealth and not spreading the Kingdom
**Nothing wrong with intellect and wisdom, both are noble to seek after and enhance but a Mind without the Heart is a blind sword swinging wildly.
June 1st 2011
June 1st 2011
To be fair, I did mention ‘weak intellectual culture’ in comment #61669. See also Mark Noll’s followup to his book here:
June 1st 2011
Argon, thank you for the reference to a very good article.
Reply to this commentIt is very apropriate because I think that climate change is a much better topic for cooperation between faith and science because ecology is better science than Darwinism. Unfortunately Darwinism has muddied the water which makes cooperation difficult. The history is difficult because people on both sides have taken opposing sides on the evolution issue, rather than try to resolve the problems. For climate change there are no real theological issues, just a climate of distrust, which of course is very real.
In terms of hope of course our Hope is Jesus Christ, the Logos, which Mark Noll points out very clearly, except he does not make the point that the Word is Jesus, not the Bible.
Noll also points to cooperation between evangelicals and Catholics as a step forward. Certainly they can learn from each other, but I think that we need to be moving forward into the future theologically, not back into the past.
The tradition which which I am associated, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, is both evangelical and academically oriented. African Americans know that education is necessary to survive and flourish in the USA, and to this end the AME Church has founded and supports many non-religious based colleges.
African American Christianity generally speaking is conservative theologically while being progressive in other areas, such as politics and science. Civil Rights is one of the brightest jewels in the Christian crown. I have predicted that a strong Christian AfroAmerican president will provide the US with the leadership it needs to get through the mess created by European American political, religious, and economic leadership. I do not think that the European American community takes the Black American Church seriously, seeing it as a dark reflection of itself, which it is not.
posting new comments.
June 2nd 2011
My point was that Evangelicals are represented just fine and in accurate percentages. there is no problem or need to boost numbers.
June 2nd 2011
June 2nd 2011
Hi all,
Reply to this commentAlthough the temptation to refute false claims can be irresistible, there is nothing to be gained from arguing with someone who doesn’t use or even understand the concept of facts. The two sides are not operating on the same playing field, by the same rules; such a discussion cannot yield any profit.
Katharine
June 2nd 2011
Agreed. http://xkcd.com/386/
Reply to this commentposting new comments.
June 3rd 2011
Oh no. They fired first.
February 17th 2012
Inspirational and helpful video,. good that I found it here. Thanks and I hope I can see more from you.
Reply to this commentFebruary 17th 2012
Inspirational and helpful video,. good that I found it here. Thanks and I hope I can see more from you.
Reply to this commentwill the world end in 2012