I am a Bible-believing creationist Christian. I am also an environmentalist and an organic farmer. I see no conflict between the two. But for most of my life, I have felt like I am living simultaneously in two different worlds.
Growing up in the evangelical church, I was told that environmentalists were lawbreaking, anti-Christian, nature-worshiping, misanthropic terrorists. As an example, the conservative Christian media focused on radical environmental groups like the Earth Liberation Front, who burned down a ski resort and a luxury housing development and attempted other acts of terrorism.
On the other hand, the liberal environmental circles I interacted with in graduate school portrayed evangelical Christians as selfish, greedy, exploitative capitalists who thought they had a God-given mandate to dominate and destroy nature. Their favorite example of this stereotype was Reagan’s Secretary of the Interior James Watt, who infamously said that it was unnecessary to protect the environment because Jesus was going to return soon and burn it all up anyways.
This divide is of recent origin. As recently as the New Deal conservation movement of the 1930s and 1940s, Christian leaders of all denominations were at the forefront when it came to protecting the environment and reining in destructive corporate interests. The allegation that Christianity was to blame for environmental destruction didn’t appear until medieval historian Lynn White, Jr. published a provocative article in the March 10, 1967 issue of Science titled “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis.”
Using no citations or quotations, White claimed that “Christianity is the most anthropocentric religion the world has seen.” “Christianity, in absolute contrast to ancient paganism and Asia’s religions,” he argued, “not only established a dualism of man and nature but also insisted that it is God’s will that man exploit nature for his proper ends.” Further, “no item in the physical creation had any purpose save to serve man’s purposes.” Finally, he concluded that “our science and technology have grown out of Christian attitudes toward man’s relation to nature” and that “we shall continue to have a worsening ecologic crisis until we reject the Christian axiom that nature has no reason for existence save to serve man.”
The biggest flaw in White’s argument is his claim that modern science and technology (which he acknowledges didn’t become a major force in shaping the environment until after 1850) is inherently Christian. Christianity has been around for 2000 years and wasn’t excessively destructive of the environment until the modern scientific age. I think White accurately identified a modern scientific, utilitarian view of nature as a major cause of environmental destruction—but I and many historians, theologians, and scholars disagree when he equates those scientific ideas with Christianity. They certainly weren’t held by the majority of Christians historically. And much of the modern divide between evangelical Christians and environmentalists comes from both sides mistakenly equating Christianity with ideas that, at their core, are actually anti-Christian.
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