Confronting Religious Skepticism Among American Evangelicals: Using Cultural Intelligence to Influence Change in Conservative Christian College Students’ Views of Climate Change

Is a climate change intervention effective across a range of evangelical Christian colleges in confronting religious skepticism? To study this, students in the US northeast, US mid-south, and eastern Canada answered pre-post surveys before and after watching a video by an evangelical climate scientist. Participants were mostly non-science majors. Initial acceptance of global warming was lowest in the mid-south. We observed significant pre-post gains at all three colleges, although results were mixed as to its causes. On a delayed post-survey, gains decreased slightly. We also found significant correlations between initial acceptance of global warming and political, religious, and economic beliefs in the US, but not in Canada. We conducted a follow-up study at the mid-south college to examine the effect of the video’s Christian frame. One group of students watched the original video, the other a video without the Christian frame. Surprisingly, this did not decrease the effectiveness of the video, except for one item on Christian responsibility.