Contributions of Christianity: Environmentalism? Not Yet.

(This is part of a series of posts comparing the contributions to the world made by Christianity and by Atheism. While the tool used for this comparison is the subject of environmentalism, it is not the purpose of this post to criticize the environmental movement and statements about Christianity's perceptions of environmentalism may or may not be justified. Further exploration of any justification will be addressed "someday.")

Among the many contributions of Christianity to be discussed it is appropriate to discuss claims of Christianity's failures. One of these areas is environmentalism. Historically speaking, the environment developed as an issue only recently. Throughout most of the past 2000 years, people lived in comparative harmony with the world, with localized environmental problems requiring localized solutions. It is only since the late 1800s that the the ability to harm the environment began to exceed the ability of the environment to recover on a wide-scale.

There are a number of reasons for Christianity's failure in this area. First, as was mentioned in the preface of this series, this is an area in which Christianity has allowed the world to take the lead. It's not only that Christianity accepted the world's cultural standards for the stewardship of the earth, but since our attention has been drawn to the problem, we have been slow to take leadership in addressing those problems. Secondly, while those who did take early leadership (e.g. John Muir and Gifford Pinchot) were Christians or from a Christian background, Christianity seems to have stood by while the movement as a whole became associated with pantheism and paganism, and with the worship of the creation rather than the transcendent Creator.

Fortunately, this failure is not as complete as some would suggest. Below are a number of websites and articles that reveal a growing Christian voice in the discussion of human responsibility and stewardship of the earth. These sites have not been thoroughly reviewed. They were chosen from among the first 60 sites listed in a search of "Christian Environmentalism." The criteria used for their inclusion in the list of links was that they had to profess a Christian world-view, promote a positive and active involvement with environmental stewardship and at least appear to represent the coordinated efforts of multiple individuals. Their inclusion in the list of links does not constitute an endorsement, but merely provides a place for someone interested in pursuing the matter further to do so.

A similar search was done using "Atheist Environmentalism," with parallel criteria. No parallel organizations were found within the first 60 hits. In fact, to the extent that the sites appeared to actually discuss environmentalism from the Atheist point of view at all, they were generally negative. It is interesting to note that while Christianity is criticized for its lack of involvement in environmental efforts, Atheism's more negative attitude seems to go unnoticed.


Christian Sites and Articles about Care of the Environment:

Tyndale Seminary http://www.tyndale.ca/sem/mtsmodular/viewpage.php?pid=73

Arocha.org http://www.arocha.org/gb-en/index.html

Creationism.org http://www.creationism.org/csshs/v10n3p24.htm

Creation Care http://www.creationcare.org/resources/scripture.php

Christian Ecology http://www.christianecology.org/Stewardship.html

Target Earth http://www.targetearth.org/