Using the green movement to get green[backs] from evangelicals, organizations pressing the progressive agenda have been hard at work selling clean initiatives to the Christian Right.

“The Christian Coalition of America, once a $26 million political bastion of the Christian Right, has fallen upon hard times … Its budget has shrunk to about $1 million, including income from a companion 501(c)(3),” WORLD News Service reports. “It might not have survived at all but for environmentalist cash; from 2007 to 2014, it collected at least $3.4 million from groups identified with environmentalism or Leftist politics: the Green Tech Action Fund, the National Wildlife Federation Action Fund, and the Energy, Hewlett, Marisla and Rockefeller foundations.”

Good stewardship = environmental extremism?

Many are shocked at the Christian Coalition’s embrace of the progressive environmentalist agenda to stay financially afloat, but many are also surprised to see that it is still championing some if its original conservative and biblical values.

“Tax documents say the grants to Christian Coalition were approved for such purposes as educating conservatives and churches on ‘clean energy and climate issues;’ to support the Christian Coalition’s energy platform, which embraces renewable power and efficiency standards in vehicles and appliances; and to promote energy reform among young conservatives,” WORLD News Service’s Daniel James Devine points out. “There’s nothing illegal or unethical in the Christian Coalition’s transition, and the group still supports religious liberty, human life, budget balancing, and Israel—but a green Christian Coalition is a surprise.”

Also sounding the siren for environmental alarmism to cash in on the green movement via younger generations is another widely known organization in Christian circles — the Evangelical Environmental Network.

“The group finances and oversees Young Evangelicals for Climate Action (YECA), one of several recent efforts to reach young evangelicals with a message of creation care and carbon cuts,” Devine informs. “Launched in 2012, YECA has trained and paid stipends of $1,000 to a handful of ‘Climate Leadership Fellows’ at college campuses.”

In fact, the group goes out of its way to tie in biblical themes with its Leftist call for climate action on college campuses across America.

“At Greenville College in Greenville, Ill., for example, a YECA fellow has organized a ‘Green Team’ to promote ‘creation care and climate action,” the Christian journalist notes. “The team has planted milkweed, participated in cleanup projects, and placed recycling bins in dorms. At Grace College in Winona Lake, Ind., a YECA fellow has started a campus recycling program and is spreading awareness of climate change. Last September he recruited 13 fellow Grace students to participate in the People’s Climate March in New York City. The group carpooled to New York in a van and purchased carbon credits to offset the 11-hour drive.”

Just like the movement spearheaded by Democratic environmental activists, these Christian organizations are recruiting believers to jump on board the clean energy bandwagon.

“Last year YECA’s national organizer, Ben Lowe, spoke about global warming to students at about 40 college campuses,” Devine continued. “His recent engagements include Cedarville University in Ohio, Grove City College in Pennsylvania and Whitworth University in Spokane, Wash., where students have gathered over 450 signatures in a petition drive asking the Whitworth president and trustees to divest the school of fossil fuel investments.”

And these Christian groups are going far beyond exhorting believers to drive hybrid cars and recycle water bottles.

“The president of the Evangelical Environmental Network (EEN), Mitchell Hescox, [said] his organization has promoted mercury regulations, chemical safety testing and carbon dioxide emissions reductions, whether by regulation or market-based approaches,” Devine asserts.

Hexcox goes even further by saying Christians are responsible for lowing greenhouse gases to curb “global warming” as a means of helping to eliminate poverty.

“Climate change is a moral question,” Hexcox contends. “It’s about the majority of scientific facts and a biblical call to care for the least of these.”

Green not mixing with red

Even though environmentalism resonates well with the younger generations of Christians who have grown up in America’s progressive public education system, believers leaning more on the Right are much less likely to jump on board.

“Of course, fighting climate change is also a top policy objective of the secular environmental Left, where scientists and activists have long warned Western prolificacy is harming the planet,” Devine points out. “Many conservative Christians, and evangelicals in particular, have resisted that message as antithetical to biblical ideas of stewardship.”

Despite the Left claiming that going green is synonymous with being a good biblical steward of the Earth, a greater proportion of Christians reject the movement.

“A poll last year found that white evangelical Protestants are more likely than any other religious group to disbelieve global warming is occurring (39 percent are skeptics, versus 26 percent of all Americans),” the Christian publication reports. “That skepticism may help explain why environmental foundations are investing large amounts of cash into organizations that preach a message of climate stewardship to an unreached people group: young evangelicals.”

Big green bucks

Going green might be promoted as clamping down on big profit-making corporations, but the green movement is a huge money-maker itself, especially when it comes to the big business of environmental grant-making.

“In 2012, 673 U.S. foundations gave thousands of grants worth $1.59 billion for advocacy and programs involving animals, wildlife and the environment, according to the Foundation Center,” Devine informs. “The top environmental donor that year was the liberal William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, a major funder of Planned Parenthood and the pro-abortion Population Council. Other mega-donors include The Rockefeller Foundation, which gives matching gifts to Planned Parenthood; Rockefeller Brothers Fund; the Energy Foundation, which seeks to promote ‘a new energy future’ and to ‘put a price on carbon;’ and the Marisla Foundation, which has supported Greenpeace Fund, Planned Parenthood and perhaps admirable efforts to save dolphins, turtles and birds.”

Christian-themed groups don’t shy away from cashing in on major green cash, either.

“Although no hard rules exist against evangelical organizations accepting Left-wing financial support, such funds could raise questions about who is influencing their agenda,” the Christian media outlet maintains. “According to WORLD’s review of publicly available tax records, between 2008 and 2013 the Marisla Foundation, Rockefeller Brothers Fund and Energy Foundation gave $1.25 million to EEN. In 2008 the Alliance for Climate Protection, founded by former Vice President Al Gore, gave $375,000.”

In fact, progressive-pushing corporations provide major financial backing to Christian-targeting groups, and many believe that it would be difficult for them not be lean Left with them on other issues of the day.

“Those environmental donors — along with the Hewlett Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, The Wyss Foundation and the Surdna Foundation — have also given at least $9.2 million since 2002 to EEN’s parent organization, the National Religious Partnership for the Environment, which funds EEN as well,” Devine explains.

And they do not shy away from using Christianity to sell their product.

“EEN became well-known in 2002 for its ‘What Would Jesus Drive’ campaign that promoted fuel-efficient cars — the implication being Jesus would shun a gas-guzzler,” he adds. “Its new youth-centered movement, YECA, two years ago started a website called Climate Prayer U.S. to promote prayer ‘for those impacted by climate disruption.’”

YECA effort to lead evangelicals in a “Prayer of Repentance” for their lack of biblical stewardship of the Earth starts off like this:

“We have turned from your will, often abusing Creation for greedy and selfish purposes,” YCEA’s prayer reads. “Now we are facing global climate disruption and other crises as a result of our rebellion.”

Devine isn’t so sure about the Christian groups’ proclaimed moral obligations to invest their devotion — and wallets — into the green movement.

“Promoting wise stewardship and repenting of abuses is well and good, but is reducing American output of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide— an essential plant nutrient — a moral imperative for Christians?” he ponders.