Climate and the church

The Climate Realism podcast begins with some crazy climate news items.

On 7 February 2025 the third news item was “Going to climate church”. This was based on a WCC news story, “The World Council of Churches (WCC), with churches in the Caribbean and North America debuts training on climate litigation”.  “The WCC has offered the first in what will be a series of training workshops on climate litigation. In partnership with the Caribbean and North America Council for Mission (CANACOM), the WCC led the training through a lens of child protection and our future generations.” … “It was the children from our churches who asked us to take this new route of climate litigation, which is new for the WCC and is the only way that really gives solid hope for children in the face of what science tells us about the climate emergency.”

Jim Lakely asked, “God created the heavens and earth (Gen. 1:1), so what’s wrong with churches leading His flock to spread the good word of climate justice and even taking it into the courts of law?” Here is the discussion that followed.

Mission creep

Sterling Burnett. It is clear from the Bible that humans were to “give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s” (Mt. 22:21; Mk. 12:17; Lk. 20:25NIV) [pay tax to Caesar, and honor God as well]. Climate policy and energy use is Caesar’s, not God’s or the church’s. The church is supposed to save souls. It’s concerned about life beyond life on earth. The Bible admonishes people to live well and sets out guidelines for them to do so. We were given dominion (rule) over the earth (Gen. 1:26, 28) – they’ve changed that to stewardship. But we aren’t to waste the resource. We were to use them for our enhancement and God’s glory. There is no climate crisis regardless of what the WCC says – but there may be increasing awareness because of the media. The church is straying far from its mission [core business] and it wants to go into lawfare. The church is supposed to bring salvation [peace with God], not war in the courts.

In the US courts these cases are losing. I wonder how much of the USAID money has the WCC received? I bet a lot. This taxpayers money is being misspent by suing over climate change – that shouldn’t be in their mission. According to the Bible, it’s nowhere in any church’s mission. The money should be used instead to help feed, clothe and educate needy people. The hubris [exaggerated pride or self-confidence] is that humans control the climate as opposed to God – setting it in motion and letting it operate. Is there any evidence that we are making it worse with CO2? Is there any evidence that God thinks CO2 is a pollutant? None whatsoever! This is mission creep for the church. Trying to be relevant in earthly matters as opposed to its mission of spiritual matters.

The Bible clearly warns about false prophets. And one of the things it warns about is those who would worship the creation and not the Creator (Rom. 1:25). And churches today more and more are not preaching the word of God accurately and leading the children down the wrong path. They’re worshipping the earth (creation) above God who created all this. Instead of focusing on God, they are focusing on the earth – and it doesn’t get much more unbiblical than that.

Earth is robust

Tom Harris (Appendix). God made the earth to be very robust. The idea of a fragile earth system would not be “very good” (as described in Genesis 1:31). The only way it would be very good is if it was robust. If it was able to compensate for high levels of CO2 and not run away into a boiling planet like Venus. The earth is a very robust system – it was designed very well. Thanks to God.

Exploitation of children

Jim Lakely. I just don’t believe that “we would never have gotten involved with this if the children of our churches didn’t come to us and ask us if we could help stop climate change”. There is double exploitation here – exploitation of the fears of children and exploitation of the church for political purposes.

Tom Harris. If you scare the children to death, then of course they’re going to speak out. So, the fact that the children are speaking out is because the parents and the church scared them to death. It’s not them who are driving it.

Linnea Lukin. Another option too is that there are a couple of organizations that coordinate those children’s lawsuits against States that have weak legislation. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if it was an organization like that that approached the progressive WCC and got them on board with the litigation effort. But I think that they’re going to have a lot harder time in the courts than they have had in the last couple of years, and they have been mostly losing in a lot of those cases. I think they’re going to continue to lose in those cases. So, if they want to waste money on it, it’s a shame. It should be going to causes that the church should be focused on like the poor or cleaning up their local environment if they want to be good stewards.

Sterling Burnett. Those groups are also in favor of population control. They don’t want people to “be fruitful and increase in number” (Gen. 2:26). They want to reduce the population of the earth. They embrace China’s one child forced policy (and promote abortion). So, they are off the rails in so many ways.

Child abuse

Tom Harris. I think we should blame the parents and blame the church because it’s a form of child abuse to only tell them the bad news and to scare them. That’s a form of child abuse. So, they’re not doing their job as good stewards of children, that’s for sure.

Anthony Watts. They are mixing religion and pseudo-science. The whole idea of climate church is just ludicrous.

Conclusion

Climate litigation is an example of idolatry – worshipping the creation instead of the Creator (Rom. 1:25). It is not part of the mission of the church, which is to spread the good news about Jesus. This climate litigation is exploitation of the church for political purposes and exploitation of the fears of children.

The earth is a very robust system – when it was created, it was “very good”. God designed it very well so that increasing concentrations of CO2 will not result in dangerous global warming. There is no climate emergency.

Appendix

Comments by Tom Harris on historical proxy temperature and proxy CO2 data have been omitted here as they rely on deep time, which is a non-biblical assumption. Also, such proxy data is more unreliable than real-time measured observations.

Reference

“The Trump Effect on the Global Climate Agenda” – The Climate Realism Show #144, The Heartland Institute, 7 February 2025.

Posted, February 2025