Ms. Harper was one of about 20 interfaith activists who quietly sang “Hallelujah” and Jewish spirituals in a prayer circle outside the environmental agency’s 12th Street entrance here on Tuesday. Mr. Yearwood and three other faith leaders spoke at the hearings on Tuesday, and about 20 others did on Wednesday.

Although many of the faith leaders came from traditionally progressive congregations, like black churches, synagogues and mainstream Protestant denominations, others were more conservative Christians who reflect a growing embrace of environmentalism by parts of the religious right. This week’s hearings on the new E.P.A. rule gave them an opportunity to make their argument that climate change hurts the world’s poor through natural disasters, droughts and rising sea levels, and that it is part of their faith to protect the planet.

“I have been called by God to speak out on these issues and believe it is my conviction as an evangelical Christian that we must be stewards of God’s creation,” the Rev. Richard Cizik, a former top lobbyist for the National Association of Evangelicals and now president of the New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good, said in prepared remarks on Wednesday.

The agency is also holding hearings this week in Atlanta, Denver and Pittsburgh.

Five years ago, only 34 percent of white evangelical Protestants agreed that solid evidence existed that the earth was warming because of human activity, according to a poll by the Pew Research Center. An additional 31 percent said that no evidence existed proving global warming whatsoever. Recent polling shows that many evangelicals are still skeptics.

“For the most part, people in the climate advocacy movement are ignoring a number of various biblical texts that are more specifically relevant to the issue,” said E. Calvin Beisner, spokesman for the Cornwall Alliance, an evangelical organization opposed to the E.P.A. rule. “They’re quoting broad general texts that everyone would agree with.”