Cold pact

Pope Francis produced a heat wave of responses to this summer’s papal encyclical on the environment, Laudato Si’. No wonder: The encyclical contains a diatribe against that most beloved of modern conveniences, air conditioning. Pope Francis laments “the increasing use and power of air-conditioning,” turning up the heat on “the markets, which immediately benefit from sales.”

Some Protestant denominations warmly welcomed the encyclical, perhaps with an air of been there, done that. The United Methodist Church adopted a resolution on global warming as long ago as 2008, telling its members to “evaluate their own lifestyles” and “call on the nations of the world to require reductions in greenhouse emissions.”

In 2013, Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, Church of Sweden Archbishop Anders Wejryd, and Evangelical Lutheran Church in America Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson jointly pledged to “advocate for national and international policies and regulations” for renewable energy. The Episcopal Church continued its efforts this spring, culminating “30 Days of Action” (“activities, advocacy and education”) on Earth Day, April 22.

The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in its 2008 Power to Change document said, “We implore our nation to accept its moral responsibility to address global warming.” That denomination warmly embraced Laudato Si’.

This backstory includes more than just mainline Protestants, however. In March 2008, a handful of Southern Baptists—but a select handful, including the convention president and two previous ones—issued “A Southern Baptist Declaration on the Environment and Climate Change.” They wrote, “Humans must be proactive and take responsibility for our contributions to climate change—however great or small.”

Al Mohler, president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, didn’t sign that statement in 2008, and, after this year’s encyclical, Mohler noted how some of the pope’s “specific proposals are likely to harm those he seeks to help—the poor.”

The pope’s cautions did not persuade Methodist Mark Tooley, president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, to forego his newest home addition: central air conditioning. “I’m looking forward to my new central air conditioning next week,” Tooley said, “which I will count as a divine blessing.” Tooley issued frosty sentences about the pope’s anti-A/C position: “Air conditioning is not a frivolous luxury. It literally saves lives. Even in wealthy France, over 14,000 died during the infamous 2003 heat wave for lack of air conditioning.”

Churches and guns

The tragic shooting death of nine people at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in Charleston, S.C., raises questions about the relationship between churches and guns. The question isn’t a new one.

“We commend and support the President’s urgent plea to Congress to ‘pass laws to bring the insane traffic in guns to a halt,’” the Southern Baptist Convention said in 1968, “while maintaining the constitutional right to the legitimate possession of arms.” The SBC passed that resolution shortly after the assassination of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy. Two years ago, after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, Richard Land, then-president of the SBC’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, expressed support for some specific gun control laws, while still affirming the Second Amendment.

The AME’s own Bishop C. Garnett Henning Sr. called for “vigorous action in the areas of social justice” in his 2012 episcopal address. He mentioned mass incarceration, hunger in the United States, health care—and “guns in the streets.” —J.B.