Document Type
Newsletter
Publication Year
1989
Excerpt
AMERICA'S LARGEST RELIGION IS more often blamed for creating our environmental problems than credited with helping to solve them. Indeed, ever since historian Lynn White, Jr., published "The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis" (Science magazine in 1967), the anti-earth nature of Christianity has become standard doctrine in environmental circles. (Mother Earth News, Nov/Dec issue, repeated this truism in their "Open Road" column.)
The quote above from the first chapter of Genesis forms the backbone of White's-and others'-arguments that Christianity is an anti-ecological religion. And certainly, the notion of subduing the earth and taking dominion over its creatures does sound exploitative. But eco-Christians say that reading past that one verse will reveal a very different picture of humanity's role in the creation.
Recommended Citation
Lutheran Human Relations Association of America, "The Vanguard (Vol. 36, No. 3), May-Jun 1989" (1989). The Vanguard. 283.
https://scholar.valpo.edu/vanguard/283
Included in
Civic and Community Engagement Commons, Inequality and Stratification Commons, Other Religion Commons, Politics and Social Change Commons, Race and Ethnicity Commons, Social History Commons, Social Justice Commons, United States History Commons
