I documented here and here, the fact that the quotation attributed to Watt ("We don't have to protect the environment. The Second Coming is at hand") was of dubious origins.
The trail has been followed to its source now, I believe.
The latter half of the following quotation seems to have come from author Austin Miles, who left Christianity temporarily in frustration after his involvement with Jim Bakker's PTL Ministries.
My responsibility is to follow the Scriptures which call upon us to occupy the land until Jesus returns. We don't have to protect the environment, the Second Coming is at hand.
(North Texas Skeptics, claiming the March 24, 1981 Washington Post as their source--scroll almost to the bottom)
(bold emphasis added)
The portion in bold does not occur in the Washington Post story containing the former portion of the quotation.
In an earlier post, I noted that the blog Hellena Handbasket attributed the quotation to a book by Austin Miles. A portion of that blog is worth quoting here (it is a quotation in turn, but HH does not source the quotation):
"We don't have to protect the environment, the Second Coming is at hand." -- interpretation of the above testimony by Austin Miles, Setting the Captives Free
(Hellena Handbasket)
Fantastically, another dubious quotation of Watt also appears to lead to the same book by Austin Miles. Glen Scherer, in an article for Grist magazine, wrote the following:
Odds are it was in 1981, when President Reagan's first secretary of the interior, James Watt, told the U.S. Congress that protecting natural resources was unimportant in light of the imminent return of Jesus Christ. "God gave us these things to use. After the last tree is felled, Christ will come back," Watt said in public testimony that helped get him fired.
(Grist)
Grist responded to criticism of the article, thus the quotation is now found in the midst of a correction notice. The quotation could not be appropriately substantiated. Scherer claimed that he got the quotation from "Setting the Captives Free" by Austin Miles. Where Scherer got the idea that the quotation was said in public testimony is anybody's guess, since Miles apparently never hinted at it.
In fact, Watt did not make such a statement to Congress. The quotation is attributed to Watt in the book Setting the Captives Free by Austin Miles, but Miles does not write that it was made before Congress.
(Grist)
I'm still on the lookout for the book by Miles (I've got one of his books in my collection of skeptical works), but the book probably doesn't sufficiently address the issue. Wikipedia, which has a fairly good account of the quotation controversy, says the quotation is given with no particular context.
Contacting Austin Miles was the next reasonable step, and apparently that's been done (Hat tip to Bartholomew at "Bartholomew's notes on religion" relating information from "Christianity Today").
In a phone interview last week, Miles said the statement was made on televangelist Jim Bakker’s “PTL Club” program in Charlotte, N.C. at some point in the 1970s or 1980s.
(Christianity Today, via Bartholomew's notes on religion)
From Brian Carnell, who looked into the matter:
First, it turns out that August Miles, who is the original source for this quote attributed to Watt, is also extremely careless about attribution. Theron Mann notes,
First, Loren emails to say that he has written to Austin Miles, the earliest published source of Watt's alleged "last tree" quote, and Miles told Loren that he personally remembered Watt making the statement on a PTL broadcast. (Miles was unable to remember the date of the broadcast). I'm still sceptical, but it's hard to prove or disprove without Watt, Bakker or someone else coming forward.
Obviously its difficult to obtain certainty, but we have another clue about whether the quote is genuine or not. Miles claims that, Watt "is a born-again evangelical who sat on the board of directors of the scandalous PTL Club ministry while serving as our Secretary of Interior." That also turns out to be false. Watt was added to the PTL Club board of directors in 1987, about four years after he was forced out as Secretary of the Interior.
Original post in the series.
I'm surprised to see this quote redacted all around the internet. I first heard this quote--maybe from Watt himself--on TV back when he was secretary of the interior. I was shocked and remembered it very distinctly, and it wasn't until decades later that I looked it up on the internet. Given the evidence that he's a dishonest dirtbag and that there's plenty of evidence he's a wacko, I'll stick with the quote as I remember it--"We don't have to protect the environment, the Second Coming is at hand."
ReplyDeleteIt'd be ideal if you could remember the entire transcript of the program and when it was aired.
ReplyDeleteContext would be nice in addition to your memory of the supposed quotation, in other words.
Let's not even hint that it's okay to misrepresent somebody's words just because of "dirtbag" status.