For a group of people who believe the most outrageous things — the Great Flood, Moses parted the Red Sea, Mary was a virgin and Jesus arose from the dead — they sure seem averse to believing in something that seems damned obvious: global warming. A recent study by God’s statistician George Barna found that evangelical Christians are less likely to believe — despite photographic evidence — that the icecaps are melting.

Only 33 percent of evangelical Christians view global warming as a “major” problem facing the country compared to people of other faiths or nonbelievers, more than half of whom say the threat to the environment is severe:

Among non-evangelical born-again Christians, 55 percent say global warming is a major problem and 59 percent of notional Christians agree. Overall, 51 percent of the nation’s Christian community views global warming as severe while 42 percent assigns the largely debated issue less importance.

Meanwhile, 62 percent of those associated with a faith other than Christianity and 69 percent of atheists and agnostics describe global warming as a major problem.

Catholics (59 percent) showed more concern about global warming than Protestants (52 percent). And mainline Protestants (59 percent) also expressed greater alarm than did non-mainline Protestants (49 percent).

The Barna stooge who directed the study insightfully interpreted his findings this way:

“The survey confirms that Americans disagree about climate change,” said David Kinnaman, who directed the study. “Each faith audience interacts with the concept of global warming in distinct ways. Evangelicals would rather think about other things. Non-evangelicals say the environment is important to them, yet they are far from convinced that global warming is as important as everyone says. By contrast, many non-Christians view global climate alterations as the central element of their environmental engagement.”

Duh. What Kinnaman fails to note is that evangelical and born-again Christians are more likely to view global warming in the context of millennialism — you know, Armageddon, the Rapture, the end of the world as we know it. Your basic Bible thumper has a difficult time getting worked up enough to reduce, reuse or recycle because he knows that Jesus is liable to show up any day now.

Well I for one am working on reducing my carbon imprint, planting trees and hunkering down for some rough weather ahead. I’m betting that global climate change will get here a lot sooner than Jesus.