- It's almost like it isn't even Christianity.
It's a different religion.
It's a religion called American Political Christianity.
And the tenants of faith are those espoused
by the conservative media and politicians.
(calm music)
Here in the United States,
evangelical is now a political term.
It encompasses not only people who take the Bible seriously
but it also encompasses people whose statement of faith
is written first by their political ideology.
And only a very distant second by the Bible.
And if the two come into conflict,
they will go with political ideology over the Bible.
But I also grew up with the idea that if, as Christians,
we truly believe that the same God who was responsible
for the Bible is responsible for this universe,
then how could studying those two things
possibly be in conflict with each other?
Unfortunately, that is not what happened
in the Christian community.
A day does not go by, literally,
without me hearing from people,
whether it's on social media, on Facebook, on Twitter,
whether it's emails, even some phone calls,
handwritten letters, hearing from people who self identify
as Christians in the US, but have taken time
out of their day to tell me how ignorant I am,
how wrong I am, how I am, you know, worst case scenario,
a jezebel, a whore, a handmaiden of the beast,
or a high priestess of the antichrist.
And unfortunately, we see these political divisions
among Catholics and Protestants.
When it comes to who's most concerned about climate change,
Hispanic Catholics are at the very top of the list.
And so people might say, well, of course,
that's because Pope Francis cares so much
about climate change.
He speaks about it frequently.
He wrote a whole encyclical back in 2015,
talking about how climate change was important.
But then you go to the very bottom of the list,
who is least concerned about climate change, and right there
you've got white Catholics and white evangelicals,
neck and neck, in terms of people
who are at least concerned.
It has nothing to do with the Pope.
It has nothing to do with the Bible.
It has everything to do with our political affiliation.
Somehow we've confused our politics with the Bible.
I think really we are in the situation
that Noah was in.
The waters are rising both literally and figuratively
when it comes to climate change.
And the question now is what can we save?
And here's the interesting thing. I study this.
So I study what's gonna happen in the future
depending on the choices that we make.
And I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt
that our choices will make the biggest difference
in the world.