Tradition as Benefit or Barrier? The Case of Christian Religion in the Formation of Environmental Ethics in the United States

Abstract

The interaction between ecosystem science and religion should ideally operate as a two-way conversation. Religious tradition has historically served as reservoir for ecological information, and informed environmental regulation. For Christians, tradition, including sacred texts, can generate ethical focus, such as emphases on food, agriculture and land ethics. Christians, however, largely delayed response to climate change until it began to generate public scientific controversy. Although, since the release of the film An Inconvenient Truth, ultra-conservatives have acted as detractors, Christians have tackled climate change across a range of theological positions, from feminist and liberation-oriented to Evangelical. Churches have served as bases for grassroots programs extending from institutional green energy generation, to taking simple individual steps to mitigate greenhouse gas release. While able to motivate every-day people and generate “natural saints”, the Christian response to ecological issues is too dependent on conflict and media attention, restates common place strategies rather than exercising ethical or social imagination, and has frequently limited its vision to its traditional ethical strengths. Ecologists, in turn, confine religion to generating respect for nature rather than allowing it to mandate action, overlook the subtle interfaces between humanity, landscape and nature in religious myth, and too easily assume more conservative or tradition bound communities are less willing to accept ecological thinking. Religious ethicists can improve their response to global environmental issues by developing a better understanding of how ecologists discern regional and global biotic change. Ecologists can improve their communication with religion by understanding it more holistically and pursuing cooperative strategies.