Sociology of Reli~on!996, 57:1 55-70 Saving the Creation " Christian Environmentalism in the United States*

In the mid 1980s, reli~ou.s environmental ctivism in the United States increased ramatically. Based on field study of this emergjng movement, his paper proposes three models or ethics of Chris-tian-related eco-theology: Christian stewardship, eco-justice, and creation spirituality. Asa portrait of the boundaries of this movement, he paper focuses in detail on Christian stewardship ancl creation spirituality. It then examines reli~ous environmentalism through the cultural shiftlchange frameworks of McL,ughlin, Swidler, Inglehart, Beckford, an Robertson "Christianity bears a huge burden of guilt " for the ecological crisis, historian Lynn White charged in an infamous (at least to religious ecologists) 1966 ad-dress to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1967:1206). The response to this crisis, White went on to argue, must have a religious grounding since its roots were religious. Despite the scholarly controversy over the validity of White's thesis (e.g., Dubos 1973), to many observers, White's verdict seemed to be empirically con-firmed. In a period both of church declarations on social issues and of growing secular environmental concern, religious ecological voices were few. Thus it be-came common wisdom that the environment was a secular concern. The little sociological survey literature that exists on the subject seems to agree, arguing that the more "Christian " or biblically oriented one is, the less one is concerne