A Growing Pro-environment Power: U.S. Evangelicals' Efforts In Environmental Protection During The Last Decade

Being the world's second biggest greenhouse,U.S.plays a decisive role in global pro-environmental actions.Preceding administrations had switched back and forth between positive and negative attitudes over environment issues.Apart from economic,political and societal factors,evangelicals,Catholics and other denominations are forces to be reckoned with.The United States is a severely religious country,a thorough understanding of its present and future environmental policy formulation and direction is based on a clear idea of the influences of Christianity.The academic circle has considered that,with mainline Protestants and Roman Catholics solidly in the environmental camp,the evolution of attitudes among evangelicals is likely to be crucial in the coming years.A brewing sea change in the traditional political engagement among this “unlikely” group-evangelical Christians--perhaps represents America's greatest hope for instituting climate change legislation.Chapter One reviews the shifted focus of evangelical denominations in the United States over the past decade from traditional topics for discussion like feticide,homosexuality,stem-cell research to environmental protection,religious prosecution,poverty and AIDS,it also summarized clashes over environment policies among evangelicals.Chapter Two illustrates evangelicals' own initiatives in the field of environmental protection in response to environmental policies carried out by Obama administration.YECA is cited as an example to further explain young evangelicals' pro-activity in advocating “green value”.Chapter Three performs an analysis of the changing attitudes in terms of Evangelical Advisory Committee before and after Donald Trump took office.Exclaimat against retreat from Paris Climate Accord from evangelical denominations demonstrates its back-up position behind pro-environment actions.Research concerning evangelicals' attitudes towards environmental issues suggests that they have already turned into active advocate with the release of a brief statement called Environment and Ecology rather than previous ambiguity and inactivity.Through lobbying the government,maximizing its influence,evangelicals strive to propagate “green concept”.A proper interpretation of the current and future formulation and development of U.S.environmental protection policies requires a careful study of the impact of Christianity.How will the evangelicals,as Trump presidential campaign,exert influence on environmental-protection policies and its future commitment to fulfill global eco-responsibility is another value that this paper needs to explore.