Back in 2006 a few environmentalists produced the Evangelical Climate Initiative, which with the help of the media, portrayed the mainstream of Evangelicalism as onboard with global warming alarmism. It was a wholeheartedly deceptive document, with the names of about 190 Christian leaders — mostly proponents of a liberal “social gospel” message rather than a literal interpretation of the Bible — collected secretly as signatories, without consultation from what most people properly recognize as conservative mainstream of Evangelicalism. I wrote about the effort at the time for American Spectator Online.

The same few activists, led by Rusty Pritchard and Jim Jewell (now with an Earth ministry called Flourish), are at it again with a new declaration titled “Caretakers of Creation.” They are taking the same approach, circulating the document to the same types of people while keeping it from conservative Evangelical theologians and leaders. Flourish went to such lengths as to include a proviso on the new statement on their Web site which said, “Please do not publicize this link except to potential signatories.” But after The Washington Times published my commentary this morning about Flourish’s underhanded and blatantly political maneuverings with the statement, they removed the proviso. Fortunately we saved a picture of the page, with the proviso, in a screen capture.

Clearly Flourish wanted to again ambush Evangelicals by getting the media to present a formal proclamation that pressures them into adopting environmental extremism in the cloak of “Creation care.” This time they were caught before they had a chance to go public. Shame on them.

Originally posted at American Spectator.

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