Thank God: 90% of our Christian leaders believe climate change is real

According to a new report by Boston College researchers, 90% of Christian leaders in the United States believe in artificial climate change, but most do not share that understanding with their fellow citizens.

The findings have implications for how Christians can help combat climate change, knowing their beliefs about the climate crisis being consistent with church values. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Although some well-known evangelical figures deny the facts of climate change, a survey of 1,600 religious leaders in the United States found that nearly 90% of Christian leaders believe in anthropogenic climate change to some extent. This includes 60% of people who think humans play an important role, and 30% of people who think they play a role, but smaller roles, the report said.

The survey found that about half of religious leaders had never discussed it with their congregation, and only a quarter mentioned it once or twice.

“Due to leaders’ silence on the matter, the No. 1 Christians think most of their leaders don’t believe it, or even talk about climate change with their fellow churches,” said Sparkman, who is with BC’s Postdoctoral Fellow and is now an assistant professor at Arizona State University.

“But if you tell Christians that there is actually a strong consensus on this issue on religious leaders, they can infer that beliefs about climate change are more common in their churches, feeling that taking climate action is consistent with the values ​​of their churches, and feeling that voting for a political candidate for a failure to take climate action is inconsistent with the values ​​of the church.”

In a second survey of nearly 1,000 American Christians representing major denominations, respondents underestimated the epidemic of their leaders who denied that humans drive climate change about five times, and about half of them did not believe that humans would affect climate change, when in fact only about 10% of them affected climate change. Instead, there is a religious leader talking about climate change that heralds a greater willingness to discuss with other church participants and participate in climate events.

The third group of survey results came from nearly 1,000 American Christians, including about half of respondents, who learned that 90% of Christian leaders believed in artificial climate change. The experiment found that awareness of this fact reduced the misunderstanding of religious leaders by allies, increased their perceptions of other church members’ belief and willingness to discuss climate change, and led Christians to believe that climate action is consistent with the values ​​of the church, while votes against politicians are politicians who do not.

According to a 2023 Gallup survey, Christianity is a common religion in the United States, accounting for 224 million people, or 67% of the population.

Earlier studies have examined the impact of informing people and consensus among scientists on climate change. But until now, it is unclear whether there is a strong consensus among religious leaders, although this group is very influential to many Americans, especially those who may be skeptical of climate science.

Sparkman said it was expected that a large percentage of Christian leaders would be embraced by climate change and were driven by human activities, but it was surprising to learn that nine out of 10 leaders were accepted by scientific consensus.

“We think most religious leaders will believe it,” Sparkman said. “But we didn’t expect how high it would be. For example, over 80% of evangelical or fundamentalist Christian leaders believe in climate change, and humanity contributes to it. We also believe that religious leaders are more conservative in the House of Representatives, in their case, they are more conservative than people they are unwilling to swing, rather than people who are religious, and not self-promoting, and their attitude is self-promoting leaders.”

Syropoulos and Sparkman agreed that the important next step was to engage in larger research efforts, emphasizing that the U.S. focus on climate change is high among the religious groups in the United States, with a focus on improving and spreading this consensus belief to church members across the country.

“We found that informing Christians that most religious leaders believe that artificial climate change makes them aware that climate action is consistent with their morality, and that politicians who vote for denying climate change may contradict their beliefs,” Sparkman said. “Every year we see more droughts, fires, floods and famines. Nine out of 10 Christian leaders have believed that we can do something about climate change. If this truth disappears and they break the silence, it will help Christian Americans believe in this terrible problem.”