| Popular conceptions of evangelical attitudes to environmentalism have been shaped by James Watt, who, as Secretary of the Interior during the early 1980s, aroused controversy by using evangelical theology to defend his pro-development stance toward federal lands. Yet evangelical magazines, books, and public statements reveal that Watt's views were atypical of dominant evangelical attitudes.; After Lynn White, Jr. argued in 1967 that the “Historical Roots of the Ecological Crisis” lay in Christianity's doctrine of human dominion over nature, evangelicals began promoting the doctrine of stewardship as a biblical warrant for environmentalism, the most notable example being Francis Schaeffer's 1970 book Pollution and the Death of Man. Like the rest of the country, evangelicals were swept up into the outpouring of environmental concern that attended Earth Day 1970, though they often professed to be more concerned about “moral pollution” and tended to proffer uniquely evangelical solutions, chiefly conversion. Evangelical concern waned when the wider culture moved to other issues. Moreover, conservative evangelicals tended to disregard environmental threats either out of a preoccupation with the Second Coming or a belief that these threats were exaggerated.; During the 1980s a small but influential group of Reformed and academic evangelicals associated with the Au Sable Institute of Environmental Studies began articulating an environmental theology that reinterpreted dominion in terms of service to the earth and posited the ultimate redemption of creation. Yet evangelicals generally remained apathetic or wary (because of environmentalism's association with New Age beliefs).; Earth Day 1990 sparked a flowering of evangelical environmentalism, resulting in the publication of dozens of books and the founding of new organizations (Evangelical Environmental Network, Target Earth, and Green Cross) that promoted Au Sable theology, formed nature preserves, and successfully lobbied Congress, receiving credit for preventing Republicans from weakening the Endangered Species Act in 1996. Although evangelical environmentalists were supported by the mainstream evangelical establishment, they were opposed by pro-development, free-market conservatives who launched the Interfaith Council for Environmental Stewardship in 2000 with the help of the evangelical Religious Right. The differing groups supporting and opposing evangelical environmentalists reflect a fundamental but often unrecognized fissure within evangelicalism. |
