The following essay is adapted from a peer-reviewed theological paper on Christianity and modern environmental movements. Dr. Michael A. Milton presented the paper at the 64h Annual Meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The paper, read on Wednesday, November 14, 2012, was originally entitled, “The Green Puritan Party: Seventeenth-Century English and American Puritanism and the Pastoral Integration of Theology and Creation.” The paper is © 2012, Michael A. Milton. All rights reserved.
The current cultural climate is a veritable greenhouse for growing ever-mutating myths about Christians, particularly evangelicals, and their concern for the earth.[1] The charge that there is a “huge burden of guilt”[2] to be borne by evangelical Christians concerning environmental abuses goes back several decades to the genesis of a popular concern for the environment as the cultural-political issue that we recognize today. The growth of environmentalism[3] as a political movement,[4] rather than a principled scientific inquiry,[5] embraced by left-wing political groups in Western Europe,[6] Britain[7] and in North America[8] crafted a public narrative based on Lynn White’s (1907 – 1987) 1967 article in Science.[9] This article is often used as a primer to set up Christianity as an enemy to any genuine concern for the planet. Lauren Kearns, in his essay, “Noah’s Ark Goes to Washington: A profile of evangelical environmentalism” (Social compass 44 [1997]: 349-366), framed the debate by linking evangelical suspicion of an environmentalism divorced from a Biblical fidelity and a leftist suspension of a Christian association with Republican and conservative movements that distrusted environmentalism as a major part of a larger Socialist agenda, Considering the growth of the debate, the clash of worldviews, and the resulting lack of any significant voice to speak to the movement, White concluded, “Thus it became common belief that Christians did not care about the environment.”[10]
White went on to say that Christianity is unable to understand to the “sacred grove”[11] of the Redwoods, arguing that Ronald Reagan, as governor of California was a prime example of a Christian who was incapable of such ecological vision,[12] and that “For nearly 2 millennia Christian missionaries have been chopping down sacred groves…” [13] He sees historic, orthodox, and particularly, evangelical Protestant Christianity, as lacking (what he appears to mean) a meaningful, ecological hermeneutic to join the environmental crusade.[14] The classical passages that inform a cogent, coherent framework for teaching a Christian care for the Creation are insufficient or at least insufficiently taught, according to White and others. Those passages often include:
- “And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth” (Genesis 1:28);
- “And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it” (Genesis 2:15);
- “The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine. For you are strangers and sojourners with me” (Leviticus 25:23);
- “The earth is the LORD’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein” (Psalm 24:1); and
- “For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God” (Romans 8:19).
White rejected common interpretations of Creation as unfitting for the deeper appreciation of the ecological crisis and how to find solutions. They were simply too focused on the earth as being made for Man. He believed and argued for modeling any future “democratic” Christian understanding on the life of St. Francis of Assisi.[15] The fact that so much of St. Francis’ life and works is inconclusive because of the apocryphal material about him was not addressed by White. White would thus take enormous leaps from sound scholarship to launch into a vision of his alternative Christian ecology platform.
“Francis tried to depose man from his monarchy over creation and set up a democracy of all God’s creatures. With him the ant is no longer simply a homily for the lazy, flames a sign of the thrust of the soul toward union with God; now they are Brother Ant and Sister Fire, praising the Creator in their own ways as Brother Man does in his.”[16]
Robert Booth Fowler, in his The Greening of Protestant Thought [17]admits the growing embrace of mainline American Protestant denominations to the environmental movement, an interest that is creating eco-theologies, process theologies, and eco-feminist theologies. These imaginative but theological erroneous forays are nevertheless contributing to the debate. Fowler also seeks to establish theological reasons why “Fundamentalists” continue to be hostile to ecological concerns.[18] Fowler defines ‘fundamentalists” as “the minority of evangelicals who normally defend the Bible as inerrant . . .”[19] Thus, the Evangelical Theological Society [where this paper was presented] would be seen by Fowler and others as ‘fundamentalists” and, thus, outside of the progression of ecological progressivism. This view is due, in large part, according to Fowler and others, because those who hold to inerrancy actually embrace “ecological decline” as a welcome sign that the End is near. I could say, “Rubbish,” but there’s nothing green about that. Such misunderstandings are not only absolutely baffling, asserted by those who claim the high ground of objective scholarship, but belie an ideological commitment that transcends scholarship. One would have thought that such stereotypes would have long been jettisoned by the significant contributions of Christians in the teaching of stewardship of Creation. Yet, there, is the continuing rub: there are major disconnects, at the deepest philosophical, theological and existential level, that seem to obstruct any meaningful discourse.
Despite the growing concern among Christians committed to Biblical authority and supernaturalism in Creation, whether Catholic or Evangelical, to address the reality of “stewardship of Creation,” or “Caring for Creation,” as the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society theme puts it, it is unlikely that the Secularists will pay attention. To listen to others would require one to differentiate between competing worldview “starting points”[20] which lead to distortions of language, meaning, and goals in naming the crisis and engaging it. Such an effort in dialogue would be out of the question for those who believe the Evangelical and Catholic positions to be absurd. The resounding response of secularist points of view is to continue to believe that an evangelical and/or Biblical response is simply not genuine.[21] This is the case in the Drew University dissertation by James Ball, re-worked as an essay in “Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith as “Evangelical Protestants and the Ecological Crisis.”[22]
“Ball divides evangelical eco-theology into four sub-strata―wise use, anthropocentric stewardship, caring management, and servanthood stewardship―of which three are genuinely pro-ecology, and one, the wise-use movement, masquerades as environmentalism but is more appropriately seen as private property rights advocacy.”[23][24]
Although Evangelical and Catholic responses to the movement range from earlier works by Francis Schaeffer, Pollution and the Death of Man[25], to declarations by Pope John Paul II that the “ecological crisis is a moral issue,”[26] to editorial decisions at Christianity Today that “It’s Not Easy Being Green, the case has not been bought by the larger environmental movement. But the Time has Come for Evangelicals to Confront the Environmental Crisis,”[27] the evangelical voices that seek to enter into conversation with the environmental movements have not won any praise from the intelligentsia of the non-Christian movements. Secular worldviews distrust Bible-believing Christians as “Fundamentalists,” and “Creationists” who simply are mired in a primordial supernaturalism that leaves them, necessarily, out of the more important evolutionary discoveries and dialogue in the larger world, including global warming, and other eco sensitivities. Others are entrenched in sullied, politicized parties with a more Machiavellian approach. These clever climate-warriors seek to become more eco-sensitive to build a consensus. This cynical response to a recognition of Biblical stewardship of God’s creation is the exact response that Frazier-Crawford Boerl, and Christopher Wayne advance in their research work at St. Antony’s College,[28] Oxford.[29] Joseph Bulbulia summed up the attitudes of many, no doubt when he wrote,
“In Darwin’s traditional statement religion serves no adaptive function. But if Darwin wasn’t tempted to Darwinize religion, why should we? Starting in the 1990s cognitive psychologists began to explore specific features of religious cognition seriously. Following in Darwin’s footsteps, they argued that the aspects of religious cognition are most fruitfully understood not as parts to a globally adaptive system but as spandrels of other systems. Once we understand how these other integrated, modular, information processors work, we’ll understand how they wind up accidentally generating supernatural thought as noise.”[30]
Evangelical Christianity’s voice in the environmental movement is just “noise” to the pseudo-Illuminati-elite of the self-proclaimed, genuine, earth care groups. The voices of Christian environmentalists are mostly unwanted “noise;” a veritable grating on the ears of the environmental Proletariat. And thus attempts by Christian environmentalists, like the Christian Society of the Green Cross, the Evangelical Environmental Network, and the Christian Environmentalist Association. As worthy as these ministries might be, such Christian ecological initiatives are mostly not taken seriously. Likewise, there are excellent Christian books available for further reading on this vital subject. I recommend Redeeming Creation,[31] Saving God’s Green Earth,[32] and An Earth-Careful Way of Life: Christian Stewardship and the Environmental Crisis,[33] Cherishing the Earth,[34] There are other theological reflections on Biblical understandings of the destiny of the earth itself (“the end” is often cited by critics as one reason why genuine environmental movements cannot take “Fundamentalist” voices seriously), including Dr. Michael William’s Far as the Curse is Found.[35] Oftentimes, it does seem to be only more of the “noise” of evangelical Christian theology. This attitude of the larger academic community not only distorts the voices of well-meaning Christian ecologists but often causes an effect, not unlike the child putting his hands over his ears so that he cannot hear the opposing views of the kid next door. Simply put, the environmental movement’s ground-of-being is incompatible with Biblical Christianity. Lynn White sees a debate with Christians who are seen ecology through the lens of the creation mandate, as unworthy of his time. This might remind the believer of the incompatibility that John Gresham Machen referred to in his title Christianity and Liberalism.[36] From the environmental movement perspective, it appears clear that Christians who see the earth as made for man and in a fallen state due to Man’s sin and crying out for redemption, as St. Paul taught, in Romans 8:19-22,[37] are simply ignorant with a theological conception that can never sync with the globalism[38], socialism,[39] feminism,[40] redistribution,[41] and even (loosely) confederated groups, including religious ones, like pagans[42] and Wiccans. [43] The leftist confederation opposes Biblical revelation in explaining the problem and any solutions for the environment, or more preferably put, Creation. Governmental policies, international, multi-national agreements, as well as private and nonprofit efforts at addressing and solving true ecological problems are forever bogged down in the incompatibility of worldviews, or, as some see it, the inescapable conclusion that “…religion [is] the primary cause of an ecological crisis.”[44] It is no wonder that some Christians, like H. Paul Santmire, in his The Travail of Nature, speak about “ambiguity” within distinctive Christian theology of ecology. Thus, the publishers described his work:
“The travail of Nature shows that the theological tradition in the West is neither ecologically bankrupt, as some of its popular and scholarly critics have maintained, nor replete with immediately accessible, albeit long-forgotten, ecological riches are hidden everywhere in its deeper vaults, as some contemporary Christians, who are profoundly troubled by the environmental crisis and other related concerns, might wistfully hope to find. This is why it is appropriate to speak of the vague ecological promises of Christian theology.”[45]
We do not propose to solve the ambiguity of a Christian theology of ecology. We do not seek to reverse the intractable positions of those who see Christian concerns for the stewardship of Creation as mere Machiavellian moves to appease popular environmentalism at work in the pew. We do seek to show that a Scripturally strong Christian worldview has long drawn from the clear streams of Biblical revelation to describe a theology of Creation. Instead, we will seek to establish a priority for “Caring for Creation” from the Biblical worldview of the stewardship of Creation.
A Biblical Worldview
To begin to understand the vast chasm between secular environmentalism and biblical Christianity’s understanding of stewardship of the earth, one must start with a clear Weltanschauung.[46] [47] Likely,[48]the German philosopher Immanuel Kant first introduced the word in 1906 to describe what Albert Walters calls “the comprehensive framework of one’s basic beliefs about things.”[49] historical, biblical Christianity must always begin with the special revelation of God through the Scriptures. If Jesus Christ is really who he says he is (and over 500 people [while still alive and subject to interrogation] testified that Jesus lived after he was crucified and entombed), then, the Holy Scriptures are inerrant and infallible. And Jesus of Nazareth is, in fact, Almighty God. This Almighty God revealed “in time,” as Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield put it that he exists in perfect, eternal, communal tri-unity—three persons within the Godhead and yet one God. A biblical worldview begins with this special revelation and understands that there is threefold progress to the grand metanarrative. There was a supernatural creation by this Almighty God. The pinnacle of that creation was not the earth, but was, in fact, mankind — male and female. The first two chapters of Genesis are clearly not poetic material or mythology. Moses was a great sacred writer composing among other things Psalm 90. However, any honest reading of the first two chapters of Genesis cannot escape the fact that Moses was recording history from a supernatural perspective, that is he was not interested in conveying scientific facts to the people, he was involved in describing the miraculous activity of Almighty God in creating. This gives us an anchor. We are not purposeless. The children of God were made for the garden. They were made far for ha Eretz—the land. Furthermore, the pinnacle of God’s creation, humankind, was placed in a special relationship with Almighty God. While calling it a covenant in theological terms, we are merely describing what we read in the Scriptures from beginning to end — what is being called a scarlet thread that runs through all the metanarrative of the Bible. God made a covenant with man, and in that covenant he required that man be obedient. The reward for obedience was life. The reward for such obedience was an Eden without end. There is a great emphasis in Genesis placed upon ha Eretz— the land. Ha Eretz was be tended, to be cared for. Man’s highest achievement was to cultivate the land. And all of this interaction with the Land was before the fall. After the fall there is also the emphasis upon the earth. The ground becomes an unwilling collaborator with Mankind. It is no longer a hospitable habitat. Thorns and pain now form a ruling motif within this East-of-Eden habitat.
So, a biblical worldview begins with a special revelation that describes a threefold meta-narrative. We have advanced two of those: unique creation and the fall of mankind. But the third component in this biblical worldview, so necessary for us to understand the differences between environmentalism and a biblical caring for creation, is redemption. The redemption that Almighty God promised and has brought about and yet will bring about in an even more excellent way — in what George Eldon Ladd called the “cataclysmic in-breaking” of the kingdom of God[50]—was that God would provide what God required (thank you, Augustine). Thus, in Genesis 3:15 we have a promise of One who will come to crush the head of the evil one, the serpent who led mankind astray through his temptations of the woman and the abrogation of the man. Though the heel of that one will be bruised, we are told, yet the head of the serpent will be crushed. This begins to work its way out as what theologians call a covenant of grace. The covenant of works remains in effect. So, the issue is just this: either mankind will find redemption or be given redemption. The Bible teaches that God sent redemption to the fallen world, through His Son our Savior Jesus Christ. Christ, by his life and sacrificial death on the cross, rectify the expulsion from Eden, and create a new Eden without the help of anyone — that is, clearly, without the help of Almighty God — or, else, there is a redemption promised by God and fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ.
This Redeemer said, Come unto to me, and you will have life. This is the One who also said if you believe in me you are passed from death unto life. This is also the Lord of glory who said that if you know me you will see the truth and the truth will set you free. This is also the God-Man who said that no one will come to God unless the Father draws him. This is also the Savior who was stapled to a timber (from a tree He created), never denying that he was God Almighty, the supposed blasphemy which placed him upon that cross. Jesus looked down from the cross upon the very creatures he had created and said, “Father forgive them, they know not what they do.” Jesus of Nazareth, the adopted Son of a carpenter and the Son of the Virgin Mary, anointed at age thirty for the priesthood by John, his cousin, the son of the priest, Zacharias. Jesus of Nazareth lived in open sight of all who could write and testify to his being. Jesus taught others that he would die, of necessity, but be raised the dead on the third day. Christ Jesus promised that he would rise again in his own death. The Scriptures testify to the resurrection from beginning to end. We have eyewitness testimony of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. In fact, the Apostle Paul says more than 500 people saw him alive after he had been entombed. He also said that many of those who saw him were living as if to say, “if you doubt my words go check it out with those many who saw it and who can corroborate this true story of resurrection.” It is important to understand that the centering point of the metanarrative of Scripture is the resurrection of Jesus Christ, his rising from the dead on the third day after he was entombed. Another central event is curiously overlooked in a biblical worldview: the ascension of Jesus Christ to the very dwelling place of Almighty God. “From thence he shall come again to judge the quick and the dead,” says the Apostle’s Creed. This single chapter in the narrative has an enormous impact and import not only for the believer but also for the world. Jesus Christ lived the life that we could never live, and he died the death which should have been ours, and this essential purpose of the coming of Jesus Christ, according to Paul in Romans Chapter 8, 1-11, forms a necessary link from a biblical worldview to caring for creation.
In a biblical worldview, while mankind is the pinnacle of God’s creation and the earth is created for him, as a habitat for him, the land became subject to sin as a consequence of man’s own sin. We surely know what it means for the earth to become infected with the corruption and evil of mankind. We understand what it means, whatever our political views are our understanding of scientific data, that man can pollute the very planet on which he dwells (whether this one variable is sufficient to change the outcome, given the enormous number of other variables remains unproven). Thus, it is not that far reached at all, though it is supernatural and must not be explained away in naturalistic terms, that the earth was wounded by the very sinfulness of mankind. Similarly, as the land was corrupted in all of its parts, so Humanity became subject to the injured Creation. Floods, earthquakes, cancer, and tragedies of all kind, including wars and rumors of wars, is the legacy of the Fall embedded within our habitat. Yet man and his environment, the earth, ha Eretz, together with hope for redemption. Indeed, the Apostle Paul lays forth a clear presentation of the state of things concerning the environment, i.e., the Creation. The Apostle Paul tells us that Creation is groaning underneath the weight of sin brought by mankind. Yet creation is eagerly groaning for redemption. That redemption which was brought forward through Jesus Christ is a comprehensive plan. Jesus Came, not only to redeem man but also to redeem the God-given habitat, that beautiful blue and green planet correctly set in place by God. That world, that good earth, is, ha Eretz, the land. Thus the blind visionary and Puritan poet, John Milton (1608-1674) not only dictated Paradise Lost to his daughters, published in twelve volumes in 1667, but returned to the epic of all epics, and wrote Paradise Regained (in four volumes) in 1671. There is a yearning inside of Creation itself. This does not infer a pantheistic understanding of Creation but instead means that there is a systematic, deep drawing forth of the flower toward the sun. There is a mystery in this anticipation of a new heaven and new earth by the lower forms of Creation. Thus, redemption is not only personal but cosmic. There is going to be in Eden restored. This is what the believer looks forward to and, in some way, creation itself strains toward.
Caring for Creation
Thus, a biblical understanding of our habitat confesses a supernatural creation, a meta-fall that impacted not only humanity but also the earth, but that in Jesus Christ there is redemption— there is a new heaven and a new earth on its way (consummation). The transformation, by fire, says Peter, could be a radical destruction of this earth and remaking of it. Alternatively, the text leaves room for the interpretation of Albert Wolters and Michael Williams. They propose that the New Heaven and the New Earth is a fiery reordering of the present earth yet with some continuity (as was before in Noah’s flood) with Eden and the world we presently know is another matter within the larger narrative and worldview to consider. The Christian worldview establishes that the earth will be redeemed. While we live in that theological tension of “the already in the not yet”[51] — which is the theological tension filled not only by mankind but, again, according to St. Paul in Romans chapter 8, at work within creation — we live with the teleological perspective that brings us hope and brings us a renewed Christian activism within creation. “Creation is teleological.”[52] We are not ready to return to Eden just yet, and eaten is not fully restored, but it is on its way. That is enough to pick up the cultivating tools once again and to enter the earth with the vision of caring for God’s creation. Therefore this essay posits that a biblical worldview calls for the believer to respond to the redemptive acts of God by caring for creation. Whether that is puttering in the garden as he did—and, by the way, that would be an excellent way for one to be working when Jesus Christ came again—or whether that is a full-fledged Christian activist-steward spearheading a project to clean up a polluted river.
This writer has witnessed how local government and private enterprise can collaborate to bring about a case for “Caring for Creation.” Chattanooga, Tennessee was once known as one of the dirtiest places in America.[53] The causes of the polluted river and the neglected downtown community could be attributed to many things, yet the observant believer, sensitive and adherent to a biblical worldview, could point to a lack of care for creation. Yet, the same worldview which brought the introspection and practical repentance also fueled the efforts of local government and local businesses, of philanthropist and educators, and, indeed, in some sense, the entire community, to “roll up their sleeves” and go to work and “cultivate the land.” Today Chattanooga has been cited as a model of what a “downtown river city” revitalization should look like.[54][55][56] This is also an example of the response of a believer, grounded in a biblical worldview of creation – fall – redemption. Such a one necessarily looks upon Creation and sees the crisis of the Fall. He sees the evidence of sin in the world in a disease-infested white pine forest or a cancerous cell in the human body. Christians recognize the woundedness of the Fall and are repulsed. Responding to the redemptive work of Jesus Christ in his own life, the believer then becomes an ecological activist, not out of the pantheistic environmentalist movement, but out of gratitude to the Creator God. She seeks to apply, in some measure, in some way, the redemption she has received in her life to the brokenness she witnesses in Creation.
One will note that the writer has not sought to engage issues such as population controversies, deforestation controversies, climate change, destruction or possible destruction of the Earth’s ozone, the question of fossil fuels and carbon emissions, nuclear energy, or a host of other environmental issues before us. There are those who are experts in respective fields associated with these questions. There are those who have much more data to discern whether these ecological questions are populist political movements or observable, scientific issues which demand a biblical worldview response. I have no input for those individual topics and watch, with others, to see the debate unfold. My concern has only been to propose that biblical Christianity is not an enemy to the earth. Evangelical Christianity is, in fact, a friend of the planet. A new heaven and new earth are not here, but it has been, in Christ Jesus our Lord, inaugurated. And we who are not fully restored to Eden have also experienced the inaugural saving work of Jesus Christ. In this, therefore, rather than in any pagan concept of the unity of mankind and earth, we all are, in fact, united with creation.
A Biblical Christian worldview is, therefore, most concerned about caring for God’s creation because of his faith, not less so. The charge that Christians do not care for the earth is offensive on its face and categorically, historically, and theologically wrong at its core. A Biblical worldview of caring for Creation is, however, a far cry from a pantheistic green movement. Moreover, it is not a response to populist movements within congregations or dishonest attempts to appease the people who are demanding the clergy and church become more involved in ecology. It is, and it has always been, not a mythological story grounded in St. Francis, but a compelling personal conviction out of a personal encounter with the Redeemer Jesus Christ that compels believers to care for the earth. This movement is not just green. This movement has a view that new heaven and a new universe is coming. It’s on its way. And we are to get to work.
We are to become activists in caring for creation. But ours is not a green movement. No, this movement is better. Christian care for the Creation is evergreen.
Endnotes
[1] Johnson, James JS. “Misreading Earth’s Groanings: Why Evolutionists and Intelligent Design Proponents Fail Ecology 101.” Acts & Facts 39.8 (2010): 8-9.
[2] Lynn White is quoted on page 365 in Kearns, Laurel. “Noah’s ark goes to Washington: A profile of evangelical environmentalism.” Social compass 44 (1997): 349-366.
[3] Grove, Richard H. “Origins of Western Environmentalism.” Scientific American 267.1 (1992): 42-47. Also see the more global historiographical theories of environmentalism in Guha, Ramachandra, and Juan Martinez-Alier. Varieties of Environmentalism: Essays North and South. Earthscan Publications Ltd, 1997
[4] Dryzek, John S et al. Green States and Social Movements: Environmentalism in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, and Norway: Environmentalism in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, and Norway. OUP Oxford, 2003.
[5] Jamison, Andrew. The making of green knowledge: Environmental politics and cultural transformation. Cambridge University Press, 2001.
[6] Rüdig, Wolfgang. “Peace and ecology movements in Western Europe.” West European Politics 11.1 (1988): 26-39.
[7] Carter, Neil. “Party politicization of the environment in Britain.” Party Politics 12.6 (2006): 747-767.
[8] Devall, Bill. “Deep ecology and radical environmentalism.” American Environmentalism (1992): 51-76.
[9] White Lynn, T. “The historical roots of our ecologic crisis.” Science 155.3767 (1967): 1203-1207.
[10] Kearns, Laurel. “Noah’s ark goes to Washington: A profile of evangelical environmentalism.” Social compass 44 (1997): 350.
[11] This article, appearing in Science (1967) was also published as White, Lynn, “The Historical Roots of our Ecological Crisis,” in Santos, Miguel A. Readings in Biology and Man. Irvington Pub, 1974, 273.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Ibid., 273.
[14] White believed that the Creation mandate in Genesis 2:15 (15 The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.) needed an alternative worldview than the anthropocentric view that historic Christianity offered. See his “Historical Roots,”
[15] This article, appearing in Science (1967) was also published as White, Lynn, “The Historical Roots of our Ecological Crisis,” in Santos, Miguel A. Readings in Biology and Man. Irvington Pub, 1974, 273, 274.
[16] White, Lynn. “Natural science and naturalistic art in the Middle Ages.” The American Historical Review 52.3 (1947): 433.
[17] Fowler, Robert Booth. The greening of Protestant thought. University of North Carolina Press, 1995.
[18] A deeper understanding of evangelical Christians who embrace the Bible as inerrant and infallible would be enough to understand that the very advocacy of ecofeminism is plenty enough to cause hesitancy or outright refusal to become engaged in meaningful discourse about what we would prefer to call “Caring for Creation.”
[19] Ibid: 45.
[20] Kearns, Laurel. “Noah’s ark goes to Washington: A profile of evangelical environmentalism.” Social compass 44 (1997): 352.
[21] Angela Smith, in her outstanding Brown University Masters of Arts in Environmental Studies dissertation on “Faith-based environmental groups” points to a lack of a common language as a problem in finding greater influence.” Of course, every social movement has its weaknesses, and this is true for the faith-based environmental movement as well. The inability to agree on a common language is one area of difficulty for religious-environmental groups”, See Smith, Angela M. “Faith-based environmental groups in the United States and their strategies for change.” May. 200:, 261.
[22] Ball, Jim. “The Use of Ecology in the Evangelical Protestant Response to the Ecological Crisis.” Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 50 (1998): 32-40.
[23] Kearns, Laurel. “Noah’s ark goes to Washington: A profile of evangelical environmentalism.” Social compass 44 (1997): 362.
[24] Kearns, Laurel. “Noah’s ark goes to Washington: A profile of evangelical environmentalism.” Social compass 44 (1997): 362.
[25] Schaeffer, Francis A, and Udo W Middelmann. Pollution and the Death of Man. Crossway Books, 1992.
[26] Paul II, Pope John. “The ecological crisis: A common responsibility.” This sacred earth: Religion, nature, environment. New York, NY: Routledge (1990): 202-209.
[27] “It’s Not Easy Being Green.” Christianity Today. 18 May 1992: 14.
“St Antony’s College is the most cosmopolitan of the seven graduate colleges of the University of Oxford, specializing in international relations, economics, politics, and history of particular parts of the world” (“St Antony’s College – the University of Oxford.” 19 Oct. 2012 <http://www.sant.ox.ac.uk/>).
[28]The issue of theology, environmental science as a political movement, and international relations seems to be a broad subject to arrive at such firm theological conclusions. One might suggest that the work might have benefited from more collaboration with researchers from Wycliffe Hall (http://www.wycliffehall.org.uk/content.asp?id=14).
[29] Frazier-Crawford Boerl, Christopher Wayne. “American Evangelicals and the Politics of Climate Change.” St Antony’s International Review 5.2 (2010): 147-163.
[30] Bulbulia, Joseph. “The cognitive and evolutionary psychology of religion.” Biology and Philosophy 19.5 (2004): 655-686.
[31] Van Dyke, Fred H et al. Redeeming creation: the biblical basis for environmental stewardship. IVP Academic, 1996.
[32] Robinson, Tri, and Jason Chatraw. Saving God’s Green Earth: Rediscovering the Church’s Responsibility to Environmental Stewardship. Ampelon Pub Llc, 2006.
[33] Basney, Lionel. An Earth-Careful Way of Life: Christian Stewardship and the Environmental Crisis. Regent College Pub, 2000.
[34] Hodson, Martin J, and Margot R Hodson. Cherishing the Earth: How to Care for God’s Creation. Monarch Books, 2008.
[35] Williams, Michael D. Far as the curse is found: the covenant story of redemption. Presbyterian & Reformed Pub Co, 2005.
[36] Machen, J Gresham. Christianity and liberalism. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2009.
[37] “For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in the hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now” Romans 8:19-22 (New King James Version) – Bible Gateway.” 2009. 20 Oct. 2012 <http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans+8%3A19-22&version=NKJV>.
[38] Rootes, Christopher. Environmental Movements: local, national and global. London: Frank Cass, 1999.
[39] McCormick, John. Reclaiming paradise: the global environmental movement. Indiana University Press, 1991.
[40] Plevin, Arlene. “” The World Is Our Home”: Environmental Justice, Feminisms, and Student Ideology.” Feminist Teacher 16.2 (2006): 110-123.
[41] Schlosberg, David. “The justice of environmental justice: reconciling equity, recognition, and participation in a political movement.” Moral and political reasoning in environmental practice (2003): 77-106.
[42] Harvey, Graham. “The roots of pagan ecology.” Journal of Contemporary Religion 9.3 (1994): 38-41.
[43] Wood, Gail. “Review of Wiccan Roots: Gerald Gardner and the Modern Pagan Revival by Philip Heselton.” Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies 6.1 (2007): 144-146.
[44] Oelschlaeger, Max. Caring for creation: An ecumenical approach to the environmental crisis. Yale University Press, 1996: 1-2.
[45] Santmire, H Paul. The travail of nature: The ambiguous ecological promise of Christian theology. Fortress Pr, 1985. The quote is taken from the Publisher’s description of the book. See http://store.augsburgfortress.org/store/product/1690/9780800618063-The-Travail-of-Nature-The-Ambiguous-Ecological-Promise-of-Christian-Theology-?notFound=true.
[46] Scheler, Max, et al. Philosophische Weltanschauung. F. Cohen, 1929.
[47] Mannheim, Karl. “On the interpretation of Weltanschauung.” Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge (1952): 33-83.
[48] Naugle, David K. Worldview: The history of a concept. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2002: 58.
[49] Wolters, Albert M. Creation Regained: Biblical basics for a Reformational worldview. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2005: 2.
[50] Ladd, George Eldon. The Presence of the Future: The Eschatology of Biblical Realism. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1996. See also Lunde, Jonathan M. “A Summons to Covenantal Discipleship.” “The C.S. Lewis Institute,” in Knowing and Doing. Summer, 2011: 5.
[51] An interesting relationship of this theological phrase and worship and creation is found in Harbert, Bruce. “Paradise and the Liturgy.” New Blackfriars 83.971 (2002): 30-41.
[52] Jones, W. Paul (1963) “EVIL AND CREATIVITY: THEODICY RE-EXAMINED. Religion in Life 32:521–533.
[53] Rogge, Mary E., et al. “Leveraging Environmental, Social, and Economic Justice at Chattanooga Creek.” Journal of Community Practice 13.3 (2006): 33-53.
[54] Rogge, Mary E. “Toxic risk, community resilience, and social justice in Chattanooga, Tennessee.” Sustainable Community Development: Studies in Economic, Environmental, and Cultural Revitalization, edited by Marie D. Hoff. Boston: Lewis Publishers (1998): 105-121.
[55] Rogge, Mary E. “Toxic risk, community resilience, and social justice in Chattanooga, Tennessee.” Sustainable Community Development: Studies in Economic, Environmental, and Cultural Revitalization, edited by Marie D. Hoff. Boston: Lewis Publishers (1998): 105-121.
[56] Rogge, Mary E. “Toxic risk, community resilience, and social justice in Chattanooga, Tennessee.” Sustainable Community Development: Studies in Economic, Environmental, and Cultural Revitalization, edited by Marie D. Hoff. Boston: Lewis Publishers (1998): 105-121.
