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Christian views on environmentalism vary among different Christians and Christian denominations.
Major Christian denominations endorse the Biblical calling for stewardship of God's creation and responsibility for its care. Some of this church policy is relatively recent and may not be followed by some parishioners. According to some social science research, conservative Christians and members of the Christian right are typically less concerned about issues of environmentalism than the general public, and some fundamentalist Christians deny global warming and climate change.[1][2][3] Many Christians are environmental activists who promote awareness and action at the church, community, and national levels.
Green Christianity is a broad field that encompasses Christian theological reflection on nature, liturgy, and spiritual practices centered on environmental issues, as well as Christian-based activism in the environmental movement. Within the activism arena, green Christianity refers to a diverse group of Christians who emphasize the biblical or theological basis for protecting and celebrating the environment. The term indicates not a particular denomination but a shared territory of concern.
The status of nature in Christianity has been hotly debated, primarily since historian Lynn White published the now classic The historical roots of present-day ecologic crisis in 1967 in which he blames Christianity for the modern environmental crisis. His conclusion is primarily due to the dominance of the Christian worldview in the West, which is exploitative of nature in an unsustainable manner.[4] He asserts that Judeo-Christians are anti-ecological, hostile towards nature, imposed a break between humans and soul with an attitude to exploit nature in an unsustainable way where people stopped thinking of themselves as part of the nature. This exploitative attitude, combined with the new technology and industrial revolution, wreaked havoc on the ecology. The colonial forestry is a prime example of this destruction of ecology and native faiths.[5] Lynn White's argument was made in a 1966 lecture before the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, subsequently published in the journal Science, that Western Christianity, having de-sacralized and instrumentalized nature to human ends, bears a substantial "burden of guilt" for the contemporary environmental crisis. White's essay stimulated a flurry of responses, ranging from defenses of Christianity to qualified admissions to complete agreement with his analysis.
- ^ Sherkat, D. E., and C. G. Ellison. 2007. Structuring the religion-environment connection: identifying religious influences on environmental concern and activism. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 46:71–85.
- ^ Peterson, M. N., and J. Liu. 2008. Impacts of religion on environmental worldviews: the Teton Valley case. Society and Natural Resources 21:704–718.
- ^ Mann, Marcus; Schleifer, Clyde (2019). "Love the Science, Hate the Scientists: Conservative Identity Protects Belief in Science and Undermines Trust in Scientists". Social Forces. 99: 305–332. doi:10.1093/sf/soz156.
- ^ Gary Steiner, 2004, Descartes as a Moral Thinker: Christianity, Technology, Nihilism], Humanity Books, 219.
- ^ Gregory Allen Barton, 2002, Empire Forestry and the Origins of Environmentalism, Page 165.
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