Laurel Kearns' Religious Ecology article summary

By Stuart Ross

Laurel Kearns’ article, “Saving the Creation: Christian Environmentalism in the United States”, explores the issue of environmentalism from the Christian perspective and in doing so details the three main faculties of religion that have emerged as addressing the issue. Before Kearns details these three Christian approaches she cites Lynn White’s 1966 address to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences as presenting the idea that prior to the emergence of these three modes of religious ecology there existed no religion voice on the issue of the environment, rendering it a secular issue to most people. This lack of action leads White to lay the blame on religion for the environmental crisis and declare that seeing as the problem was caused by religion, the solution must also involve religion.

This leads Kearns’ to present the three models of religious ecology that have emerged since White’s argument - Christian stewardship, eco-justice and creation spirituality. Each group is built on a foundation of slightly different motivations and teachings, and thus approaches ecology in a slightly different manor.
Christian stewardship is based on an evangelistic reinterpreted Biblical passage, now taken to be an order to take care of the earth and be a good steward. The more people who accept this new belief the better off the environment will be.
Eco-justice presents the environmental problems of the world as injustices and employs the use of the existing religious social justice framework in approaching these issues, striving to rectify them by motivating institutional change.
Creation spirituality is based on the concept of a new creation story, one presenting the idea that we are all one together as a relatively small part of the greater universe, and as such we should care for the earth as its humble inhabitants.

Kearns’ recognises that Christian stewardship and creation spirituality share the focus of changing fundamental ideas and injecting their existing religious frameworks with a greater knowledge of science to prompt greater ecological action, though White concedes that no amount of science or technology will solve the ecological crisis until there exists a new religion, or the old one is significantly revamped. This sentiment is coupled with the idea that a culture shift is occurring, with the popularity of materialism decreasing in favour of quality of life issues like ecology. This results in the basic argument being conveyed that the importance of the environment is ever growing in the world and religious thought is evolving to aid the successful management of the issue, using various approaches, even if it has a way to go yet.