A Tory MEP has accused the Church of England of having "abandoned religious faith entirely and taken up the new religion of climate alarmism instead".
Roger Helmer, who resigned from the Tory frontbench in Europe when the Westminster leadership dumped its promised referendum on the Lisbon treaty, used a magazine article to urge the Church to "get back to the gospel".
Referring approvingly to the work of another writer who said bishops were spending more time "preaching climate change than the gospel of salvation", Helmer wrote: "The recent multi-faith conference at Windsor suggests that other world religions are taking the same line on climate change. This is particularly ironic at a time when the world is cooling and when more and more scientists around the world are breaking cover to challenge the theory of man-made global warming. Perhaps world religions should have more faith in God, and less in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change."
The Bishop of Leicester, Tim Stevens, said Helmer had not aired these views when he debated climate change in Leicester cathedral and asked whether "this was merely courtesy, or was it because the opportunity for a platform meant more to him than exposing his views to scrutiny or challenge from a live audience".
Helmer is one of a growing band of European politicians threatening to cause trouble for the Tory frontbench in the first few months of any government it may form. He and his eurosceptic colleagues insist they will not drop their campaign for a referendum on Lisbon.
Analysis by the leftwing website Next Left has shown that the top 10 Tory bloggers are climate change sceptics. This week Helmer convened a conference of climate change deniers at the European parliament. Speakers included Ross McKitrick, a Canadian professor who has said data indicating global warming has been fiddled; Tom Segalstad, a Norwegian geologist who says human-released CO2 would not have a large effect on the climate; Fred Goldberg, co-author of the polemic The Global Warming Scam; Hans Labohm, a Dutch professor who challenges the existence of global warming; and Professor Fred Singer, who wrote the documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle.