LET THEM HAVE DOMINION OVER ALL THE EARTH: ARE CHRISTIANS ANTI-ENVIRONMENTAL?

ABSTRACT: A common assumption is that the Christian religion is an obstacle to the environmental cause, and Christians have been seen as unsympathetic to environmental issues. This may be due in part to Lynn White's now-famous article, "The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis, " published in Science magazine in 1967. White's paper posits that the Western paradigm, heavily influenced by traditional Christian theology, sets humans apart as masters of nature. Thus Christianity, from its injunction in Genesis to dominate all the earth, must be responsible for a large share of the extensive ecological destruction that began with the Industrial Revolution. A number of researchers have attempted to test White's hypothesis through survey data, comparing numerous measures of environmental sensitivity between Christians and non-Christians. This paper analyzes the findings of 14 such studies conducted between 1984 and 2007. It concludes that while these studies provide valuable insights into the environmental attitudes of different religious traditions, they do not achieve a consensus, nor do they adequately test White's thesis