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The year 2006 has seen a major division among evangelicals over a strange, multifaceted issue: whether human action is causing potentially catastrophic global warming and what, if anything, should be done about it. That division quite possibly had enormous political consequences in the mid-term elections just completed, contributing to both diminished voter turnout among evangelicals and a decline in their support for Republican candidates from 75 percent in 2000 and 2004 to about 50 percent in 2006. Regardless whether one considers that outcome good, bad, or indifferent, it is certainly significant, and the likelihood that many involved would not have wished it illustrates how political action on such matters can bring about unintended consequences.

 

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