Strident Religious Left Campaign Aimed at Religious Right, or How NOT to Change Hearts and Minds

The American Values Network aims to give the religious right a taste of their own medicine. With overreaching prooftexting and finger-pointing and radio-ad-buying, they seek to “preserv[e] our values and heighten[] awareness of the key ingredients required for a prosperous society.” It’s a curious campaign: overtly political, angry, strident, and spearheaded by Burns Strider, who formerly led the faith outreach work for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. Their radio spots are airing on Christian radio stations in conservative political districts in the South.

One of the radio ads, voiced by Obama advisor and mega-church pastor Joel Hunter, has a solid message that it is not too late to make a difference on climate change and that those who care about justice for the poor and vulnerable should be involved.

The other ad is a political attack ad, so outrageous as to be almost a caricature of itself. Opening with “The Gospel of John teaches that evildoers operate in dark places, hiding their deeds. But those who do what is right, do so in the light,” it goes on (with scary music) to point the finger at the Southern Company, a major electrical utility that has been one of the primary opponents of climate legislation. Give it a listen.

Their “Guide to Scripture and Policy” is sloppy and one-sided, gives no quarter to those who might reach different interpretations, and is relentless in its attack on a faceless “religious right”. It's not written to persuade; it's written to vent.

This is not the way to win converts (especially from the ranks of conservatives) to the cause of solving climate change. This is the way to score political points. I’m certainly sympathetic to some of the policy positions recommended by the American Values Network. But the ends don’t justify the means. How we argue is as important as what we argue.

[For a great counterexample, the Evangelicals for Social Action has always worked very diligently to create a culture of careful Scriptural interpretation, rigorous theological inquiry, and gracious argumentation, leaving room for disagreement. The result has been a sea change in the place of social justice concerns among evangelicals, especially younger ones.]

We dare not, at this point, give in to the temptation to vilify political opponents, to caricature our enemies, and to judge those who reach different conclusions than we do. When we put politics first, when we see everything through the lens of political debate, polarization seems to be the inevitable result.

A few things to note about the American Values Network:

• It is a 501(c)(4) and not a 501(c)(3), meaning that donations are NOT tax-deductible, and that they they can engage in unlimited lobbying.
• Their list of “supporters” raises questions about the accuracy of the rest of the website—the first supporter listed is the Evangelical Climate Initiative, which I’m pretty sure would not endorse the negative advertising in the radio spots, or the blatantly political anti-religious-right rhetoric of the website.
• The second supporter listed is the Southern Baptist Environment and Climate Initiative, which I am sure is NOT a supporter—I just asked Jonathan Merritt, the director and spokesperson for the SBECI, who is in Africa on a missions trip but took the time to answer my email. The SBECI is a very diverse set of Southern Baptists who propose taking creation care seriously and who encourage their constituents to take the climate debate seriously, but I know they don’t take any position on climate change legislation. What are we to make of the other supporters listed?
• The list of supporting quotes under “What Religious, Military and Congressional Leaders are Saying” includes a 1983 quote from Billy Graham’s book Approaching Hoofbeats, written long before human-induced climate change was a credible threat to mainstream Americans. Yet its position on the web site makes it appear that Billy Graham is endorsing the current legislation! So what are we to make of the other quotes?

We can do better than this. Is it one of the rules of politics that things always get out of hand, that people are tempted to overplay what is already a very strong position dictated by prudential values? This campaign seems to be out to exact a pound of flesh from its ideological and political opponents.

Part of me (my old self) sees this campaign and figures that actors like the Southern Company are just reaping what they’ve sown. It has put its wealth (my wealth, really, since I'm a customer!) to work fighting prudent energy legislation for many years, making only halting steps to invest in a 21st-century power-supply system that leans increasingly on renewables rather than deadly coal.

Yet the company’s fate will likely be determined by the market, not by a negative ad campaign (just as GM, which fought fuel-efficiency standards instead of producing cars for the new energy economy, has now been dealt a death blow by the market). It’s not too late for the Southern Company to redeem its business strategy, but the current ad campaign is likely only to drive it and it's "army of lobbyists" into a corner, just as it drives my most skeptical friends to try to defend their positions on global warming rather than engage in conversation.

You get the feeling that the folks behind the American Values Network are fed up, and they just aren't going to take it anymore. I've been to that point, and I've lashed out in anger, too frequently. It's when I know I need a Sabbath.

Read more about the American Values Network at their website and at

• the Huffington Post,
• the Associated Baptist Press,
• and the Washington Post.