Cynicism aside, however, the eleventh hour entry in to the green movement by evangelicals is a welcome turn of events if only because it sends the message to politicians and their bosom buddies, the special interest thugs, that the religious right no longer intends to turn the other cheek at actions and legislation detrimental to the planet’s tenuous balance. So I guess with this as a net gain, their motives are not all that important. Besides what’s a little fear of hell among true believers?

Still, however, I must admit to being wary of this newfound support, as history, since the time of the civil rights movement that is, has shown evangelicals to have a less than respectable record when it comes to protecting the rights of persons or groups who, for whatever reason, do not share their limited philosophical outlook.

This and the fact that it was evangelical’s blind support of the Republican Party, against their best interests, I might add, that has enabled the recent assault on the middle class to the point where we are now a nation of haves and have-nots, with precious little in between.

But the banished middle class is not the only segment of America to suffer as a result of evangelical’s selling their collective soul to the party of the rich.

Illegal immigrants, senior citizens, the sick, the poor, and gay and lesbian Americans have also suffered discrimination from a crueler, more heartless America made possible by this blind allegiance, as have many of our mentally challenged brothers and sisters.

Who among us can forget that it was the support of evangelical Christians for revisionist saint, Ronald Reagan, that made it possible for many of those least able to cope to be dumped out of the mental hospitals and on to the streets where without medication and adequate care their craziness affected society as a whole and continues to do so to this day.

Or that it was evangelical Christians with their blind allegiance to George Dubya Bush, that facilitated many of the recent end-runs around the constitution that not only violate many of the values on which our country was founded but seem to be at odds with the teachings of Jesus Christ as well.

But perhaps the most relevant to today’s discussion, and the one we will focus on for the remainder of this rant, is their support, again without question, of some of the most insane attacks on our living planet ever recorded in the annals of man.

Offenses so heinous that we now find ourselves, at the dawn of the twenty- first century, with polluted oceans, lakes, rivers, and streams, many so bad that they are incapable of supporting life, because it was easier and more profitable for corporate America to dump industrial wastes there then to spend the money necessary to treat and dispose of it properly.

This seriousness of this condition will become better know in the months and years to come when we are unable to find adequate sources of potable drinking water, and discover, as many scientists now predict, that it will take decades, if not centuries, for many of these polluted water bodies to recover sufficiently to be potable.

A similar caviler attitude for the part played by our national forests in the filtering of carbon dioxide, has allowed for the destruction by a greedy corporate America of these precious, centuries old assets at a time when they are needed more than ever to reverse the effects of man’s carbon spewing ways.

Here too, the motive was greed. Otherwise corporations would have been forced to find other ways to fill their need for building supplies, ways far more cost intensive then plundering magnificent national forests.

But no round up of evangelical sins against the environment and America would be complete without noting that since their political renaissance three decades back, untold incursions have been made by corrupt bedmates, the fossil fuel industry, that have resulted in the destruction of countless mountains believed to shelter coal, and virtually any spot of land whether above or under water, which was believed to contain any sizable amount of oil.

What’s worse, none of these actions show any signing of ceasing, at least not until a new administration takes office in January 2009.

In true Christian spirit, I guess I should be willing to applaud the evangelicals for their green awakening and forgive their previous sins against nature and Planet Earth, whether said offenses were actually conscious or the result of ignorance.

But, truth be told, I guess I am not all that good of a Christian as I am unwilling to blindly grant absolution, until I see what the evangelicals intend to bring to the table.