Is Religion Why We are Still Struggling with our Environmental Crisis

Pew Research recently released an analysis of religious people's attiudes towards the environment and Climate Change,. How Religion Intersects With Americans’ Views on the Environment Findings consistently showed that religious Americans were less concerned about the environment, than other Americans. Sad.

This is not that surprising because scripture in the Abrahamic faiths says that humankind had dominion over Nature,Genesis 1.28-30 to do with Her as they saw fit.

God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the Earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the Earth.” God said, “See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the Earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. And to every beast of the Earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the Earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food. Genesis 1. 228-30

Here are some of the findings from the Pew Study;

--Compared with religious “nones” (28%), more Christians (44%) – and especially evangelical Protestants (56%) – say that in the next 30 years it is extremely or very likely that the U.S. will overreact to global climate change by creating many unnecessary environmental regulations. And religiously affiliated adults also are more likely than the unaffiliated to anticipate a gradual loss of individual freedoms in the coming decades because of environmental regulations.

--Religious ‘nones’ among most likely to say when we make decisions as a country, we should consider things previous generations did not.

--Upward of half (54%) of all Americans (including two-thirds of religiously affiliated adults) say this description of dominionism mostly or entirely reflects their opinions. This is most commonly expressed by evangelical Protestants (80%) and adults who belong to the historically Black Protestant tradition (79%), while roughly six-in-ten Catholics (60%) and mainline Protestants (59%) feel this way. 

==Most Americans try to do things in their daily lives to protect the environment, but the religiously affiliated are less likely to be civically involved in activities addressing climate change