White evangelicals read natural disasters as end-times signs and resist climate action

Evidence

The reorientation of religious faithfulness, with its radical contraction of human social responsibility, has been a hallmark of white evangelical theology ever since, influencing white evangelical thought not just on race but on other social problems as well. In a 2014 PRRI survey focused on climate change, for example, this correlation between this premillennial end-time thinking and lower support for human intervention in social problems was striking. More than three-quarters of white evangelicals, compared with less than half of Americans overall, agreed that the severity of recent natural disasters was a sign that we were living in “the end times.” And while approximately six in ten Americans overall believed climate change was a major problem or a crisis to be addressed, only 44 percent of white evangelicals agreed. — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long, 266

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: This shows how an otherworldly eschatology suppresses willingness to intervene on social/environmental problems — a mechanism parallel to the tree/air-conditioner infra arguments about what societies choose to build.
• XREF: connects to: End-times doctrine correlates with lower climate change concern — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long: The Legacy of White…, 266

Broader Connections

• End-times doctrine correlates with lower climate change concern #corroborates (0.88) — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long, 266