THE ECO CRISIS IS A RELIGIOUS CRISIS

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Here is a simple question for people of faith.

If you love God, then should you love what he made?

In theory the answer to this question should be yes. But in reality, we Christians recite the words of scripture more easily than we live them. The statistics are sobering: 17.3% of Kentuckians live in poverty. Of the 221,000 children among them, 13% are homeless. The United States has approximately 4.5% of the global population, but consumes 43% of the all the gasoline refined in the world, produces 25% of all greenhouse gas emissions, and consumes a third of all the electricity. In fact, we in the U.S. consume 25% of every single thing made in the world.
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The heavens declare the glory of God;
 the skies proclaim the work of his hands.

(Psalms 19:1)
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.Yet we fill these skies with 123 million tons of carbon monoxide, lead, nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds, particular matter and sulfur dioxide every year. Global climate change is upon us, as the temperature has risen 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit since 1880 and is increasing at an unprecedented rate.
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.You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands.

(Isaiah 55:10)
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..Yet we blow up these mountains for cheap coal,impacting a land area the size of Rhode Island. Each year a land base about the size of Panama is deforested.
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The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world,
and all who live in it
(Psalms 24:1)
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But species are becoming endangered at a rate approximately 1000 times higher than in previous history. Locally, humans activity will cost Kentucky its hemlocks, ashes, walnuts, and a host of other species.
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.It is obvious that God’s creation is sick and dying,

and that human beings are largely responsible. What role does religion or Church have in creating this situation? A reasonable question, since many people who read scripture base their treatment of creation on Genesis 1. They take this scripture to mean that humans are permitted unfettered dominion over all creation.
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This question is not new.

It was first raised in the late 1960’s at the birth
 of one of the greatest environmental awakenings this country has ever seen. It was Lynn White Jr.’s publication of, “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis” in Science that started much of the current frenzy. He stated that “We are superior to nature, contemptuous of it, willing to use it for our slightest whim … Both our present science and our present technology are so tinctured with orthodox Christian arrogance towards nature that no solution can be expected from them alone.”
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 This was followed in 1969 by an even stronger statement
 by Ian McHarg in his book Design With Nature: ”’have dominion’”
over all living things (Genesis 1:26,28) is one text of compounded horror which will guarantee that the relationship of man to nature can only be destruction, which will atrophy any creative skill … this will explain all of the despoliation accomplished by western man for at least these 2000 years … The Genesis story in its insistence upon dominion and subjugation of nature, encourages the most exploitative and destructive instincts in man, rather than those that are deferential and creative … God’s affirmation about man’s dominion was a declaration of war on nature.”
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.So, is religion in fact responsible

for our current eco-crisis?

The answer might surprise you.

The first study to really examine this question, although it was not explicitly designed to do so, was performed by Yale biologists Steve Kellert and Joyce Berry. This was one of the largest social science studies ever conducted, with a sample size in the thousands. They found that those with the highest attendance at religious services had the lowest concern for the environment, and those who attend religious services the most frequently had the most dominionistic and utilitarian attitudes about Creation. This was the first pivotal study that provided evidence in support of Lynn White Jr.’s thesis that religion or church is largely responsible for our present eco-crisis.
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In the past two decades, a number of scholars have begun to examine this question in more detail. They found that religion is in fact a big part of the problem. Papers published in social science, religion, and political science report general support for the thesis. A closer examination of the evidence, however, shows that this tendency of religious people to exploit nature is more nuanced than was originally thought. In fact, when various faith traditions are examined side by side, it appears that those interpreting scripture more literally generally hold a more dominionistic concept of the environment and nature.
Those who interpret scripture as the inspired word of God,
 but less literally, have more moderate views. However, in all the
 reported literature, people of faith always fall far short in their concerns for the environment compared to people who practice or profess no faith.
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James Watt, Interior Secretary under President Ronald Reagan, illustrates the fundamentalist view and its impact on environmental stewardship. Mr. Watt was an avowed fundamentalist Christian, and also a strict free-market capitalist. His record on environmental conservation was absolutely abysmal. What was his thinking? He believed that since earth will pass away shortly, it matters little what destruction we cause in this short time before we are taken up in the rapture. Therefore it made sense to him that environmental regulations should be removed, lest they constrict individual freedom to participate in the market.
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Dr. Thomas Barnes
Professor of Forestry
University of Kentucky.
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