The recent New York Times Magazine entitled “The Money Issue,” covers topics ranging from how good works are measured, to why people give, microfinancing, and the relationship between celebrity and philanthropy.

But what struck me off the bat is the chart illustrating how Americans allocated their contributions to charitable causes in 2006. The research was gathered by Giving USA, which also noted that U.S. charitable giving reached a new record in 2006 of an estimated $295.02 billion.

Americans allocated their charitable contributions as follows:

Photo:Gini, Creative Commons, Flickr

I can understand how Education, Health and even International Affairs might take priority over Environmental causes, but it’s interesting that contributions to religious institutions are more than double that of anything else. It’s interesting because religion depends on outrageous beliefs, and for some, so does environmental awareness.

The most difficult hurdle the environmentalists face is getting the masses to take global warming seriously, but these same masses are willing to spend $96.8 billion on religious causes that they take very seriously. In a sense, the environmentalists are evangelists, nonbelievers are atheists, and those of us who aren’t sure what to think are agnostics. Clearly Americans have the potential to listen, believe and open their wallets for less empirical incentives than global warming, but somehow the environmental evangelists haven’t been able to capitalize on this.

This all reminds me of something Richard Reiss once said about the environment being the new religion, which I emailed him about recently. He couldn’t remember our conversation but mentioned that he’s always had the opposing viewpoint too — “that most people can’t do anything for the environment, because to do so would involve a loss of status and meaning for the masses (where status is granted by consumer goods, meaning granted by religious literalism). This explains why Leonardo DiCaprio (at the apex of American status) lectures the masses (a.k.a. people who bought tickets to Titanic, for instance) about the environment, rather than the other way around.”

Reiss also directed me to Breakthrough: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility, written by Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, who believe environmentalism doesn’t work unless it is made into job opportunities (i.e. – make it status-positive for more people than Leonardo DiCaprio).

In turns out there is hope for environmental non-believers, however. The New York Times reports that “44 Southern Baptist leaders have decided to back a declaration calling for more action on climate change, saying its previous position on the issue was ‘too timid.'” The document encourages open-mindedness and may result in greater action taken towards environmental policy.

Perhaps this move by the Southern Baptists is a small step to the greater revelation that the evangelization of god and nature are essentially the same thing.

Photo:Scott Ableman, Creative Commons, Flickr