Re: Resource conservation and Christ's return

In a message dated 12/16/2003 11:28:55 AM Mountain Standard Time,
rogero@saintjoe.edu writes:

> Folks,
>
> I don't know whether this topic has been discussed before on this forum,
> but I'd like to see what the experts have to say about it. My good
> friend and colleague is a herpetologist who is especially interested in
> the preservation of wetland ecosystems. The "frog forum" to which he
> belongs had the following excerpt posted (see following message). The
> basic question for me is how we as believers and scientists reconcile
> the doctrine of the imminent corporeal return of Christ with the idea of
> environmental conservation for the long term?
>
> I know the "stewardship of creation" concept is most often given as the
> justification for conservation behaviors, but many of the more
> fundamentalist Christian groups dismiss such behavior as ridiculous if
> the physical Earth will only be around a few more decades. It seems to
> me that this is closely related to the YEC/OE question, and can be as
> nasty a condundrum as explaining Original Sin or the origin of the
> God-conscious soul.
>
> Thanks in advance for your participation. I hope this is an appropriate
> topic for our forum. If this has been discussed in depth before, please
> refer to the appropriate archives.
>
> Roger
>
>

A good summary of the issues relating to environmentalism and conservative
evangelical theologies is provided by Calvin College cultural geographer Janel
Curry-Roper in her "Contemporary Christian eschatologies and their relation to
environmental stewardship" in Professional Geographer, 1990, v. 42, p.
157-169. R. Rushdoony's postmillenial Reconstructionism is perhaps the most bizarre.
 (Curry-Roper has published a number of interesting papers on the attitudes
of various Christian denominations to environmental issues. I think they are
listed at her website at Calvin College).

On James Watt, Susan Power Bratton (Baylor U.) evaluated James Watt in her
"The ecotheology of James Watt" in Environmental Ethics, 1983, v. 5, p. 225-236.
 She concluded that 1) his philosophy of environmental management stems
largely from economic and political considerations, 2) he has a relatively simple
ecotheology based on concepts such as God providing creation as a blessing for
mankind, and mankind having a stewardship responsibility to use resources to
provide for people, 3) his ecotheology does not incorporate any
characteristically charismatic ideas, and 4) his ecotheology does not strongly parallel that
of conservative Christian theologians who have written on envrionmental
issues.

Also, there is a fair amount of research on the effect of "conservative"
Christian theology and environmentalism -- and it is somewhat contradictory. So
we should probably be careful of using broad characterizations. For instance,
Tarakeshwar et al., 2001(Review of Religious Research, v. 42, p. 387-404) used
statistical research to indicate that conservative religious views correspond
with lack of care for the environment. On the other hand, Hayes and
Marangudakis, 2000 (Rev. of Rel. Res., v. 42, p. 159-174) suggest that there is little
difference between Christians and non-Christians in environmental attitudes,
and that overall religious identification is a relatively weak and
inconsistent predictor of such attitudes.

Maybe some qualified person on this list should actually do some sociological
research on the topic!

Karl
***********************
Karl V. Evans
cmekve@aol.com
Received on Tue Dec 16 22:12:10 2003