This document discusses competing Christian theologies regarding environmental stewardship and climate change skepticism. It outlines a "dominion" theology that views humans as having authority to exploit nature for their ends, which has been used to oppose environmental regulations. However, it also presents an alternative "stewardship" view based on caring for God's creation. The roles of various organizations in promoting these perspectives are examined, showing how theology and politics can intersect on environmental issues.

1. Faith and Climate Change Scepticism:
Competing Christian theologies of
Environmental Stewardship Rich Harris

2. E-mail, Dec. 12th, 2012
 The Christmas season brings images of many things,
one of the most popular being the North Pole, where jolly
St. Nick wraps presents with his elves. Thanks to the
Coca-Cola Corporation, Santa now hangs out with
sunglass-wearing, Coca-Cola- drinking polar bears
frolicking in their winter wonderland. Slick.
 But it can never be enough simply to laugh at
anthropomorphic, goofy animal antics. These animal
antics have a purpose—to push the environmentalist
agenda, using cuddly polar bears.
 Recently the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) partnered with
Coca-Cola to fund polar bear conservation, though the
bear is already on the Endangered Species List. All this
political grandstanding happens despite the increase
in polar bear populations by a factor of four or five in
the last 60 years.

3.  Behind the false claims about polar endangerment lies the
scientific fallacy of substituting the output of models for real-
world observations. Polar bears are flourishing, but population
models that assume catastrophic melting of Arctic ice
falsely conclude they’re losing hunting grounds—and if
they‘re losing hunting grounds, surely they must be diminishing
in number, right? But they‘re not. Obviously, something is
wrong.
 The greater problem isn‘t the faulty science that the WWF and
a confab of environmental activists use to falsely bemoan the
impending doom of polar bears. The greater problem is using
such faulty science to impose economically harmful
environmental regulations on mankind. Fear mongering is
just another way to break the commandment, ―You shall not
bear false witness.‖
 The Cornwall Alliance fights anti-human policies and anti-
Biblical views of nature, while promoting economic
development, especially for the very poor.

4. Faith, religion and belief matter
 ―What people do about their ecology depends on what
they think about themselves in relation to things around
them. Human ecology is deeply conditioned by beliefs
about our nature and destiny – that is, by religion.‖
 ―Since the roots of our trouble are so largely religious, the
remedy must all be essentially religious, whether we call
it that or not.‖
– The Historic Roots of our Ecologic Crisis (White, 1967)
– A churchman worried by the impact of a particular (presumed
dominant) Christian theology in causing the ecological crisis of the
1960s

5. The argument
 That modern science is an extrapolation of natural theology.
 That (in the Creation story) Christian theology establishes a
dualism of ―man and nature‖ and ―that it is God‘s will that man
exploit nature for his proper ends.‖
 That science and technology have joined ―to give mankind
powers which, to judge by many of the ecologic effects are out
of control.‖
 ―Christianity bears a huge burden of guilt.‖

6. Nevertheless...
 The Creation story is enduring
– If you go to http://www.cornwallalliance.org/ you will get a
video presenting Genesis 1
 Narrative is powerful, story-telling holds our imaginations
and shapes our experiences.
 ―Narratives form our reality. We become their vessels.‖
– Carolyn Merchant, Reinventing Eden (2003)
 Professor of Environmental History, Philosophy and Ethics ad
the University of California, Berkeley.

7. A Recovery of Eden narrative
 Take a Christian theology of
– Eden (paradise), the Fall (Adam and Eve), salvation
(Christ), paradise (Heaven)
– and Genesis 1: 28
 And God blessed them: and God said unto them, Be fruitful,
and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have
dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the
heavens, and over every living thing that moveth upon the
earth. (emphasis added)

8. A first Recovery of Eden narrative
 Linking with
– New World explorations, the Scientific Revolution and
European Enlightenment
 Becomes
– a narrative of redemption, of recreation, of taming nature, of
a new Eden on Earth
– A moral and ethical imperative to do so
 Manifest Destiny

9. A first Recovery of Eden narrative
 ―This story has propelled countless efforts by humans to
recover Eden by turning wilderness into garden, ―female‖
nature into civilised society, and indigenous folkways into
modern culture. Science, technology, and capitalism have
provided the tools, male agency the power and impetus.
Today‘s incarnations of Eden are the suburbs, the mall, the
clone, and the World Wide Web.‖

10. Other Perspectives
 Kearns (1996), for example, identifies three main
―ecotheological ethics‖
– Christian Stewardship ethic
– Eco-justice ethic
– Christian spirituality ethic
 Kearns, L., 1996. Saving the Christian Creation: Christian
Environmentalism in the United States

11. The stewardship ethic of Genesis 2
 Merchant recognises the stewardship ethic of Genesis 2: 15
– And Jehovah God took the man, and put him into the garden of
Eden to dress it and to keep it.
 And without this,
– ―Dominion theology simply doesn‘t grasp the vision and purpose
of the Genesis story and, in fact, contradicts it. It is a false
theology used for the malicious interests of environmental
destruction in the name of so-called progress.‖
 Wallis (2008)

12. The stewardship ethic of Genesis 2
 Unfortunately, Genesis 2 has tended to be subsumed by
Genesis 1.
 And the meaning of ―stewardship‖ is easily contested (/
subverted).

13. Cornwall Alliance – ‗For the Stewardship of Creation‘
 www.cornwallalliance.org
 Read the Cornwall
Declaration (2000)
– http://www.cornwallalliance.
org/articles/read/the-
cornwall-declaration-on-
environmental-stewardship/
 See:
– http://www.resistingthegree
ndragon.com/

14. The Cornwall Declaration (2010)
 Many people mistakenly view humans as principally
consumers and polluters rather than producers and
stewards. Consequently, they ignore our potential, as
bearers of God‘s image, to add to the earth‘s abundance.
 Many people believe that ―nature knows best,‖ or that the
earth — untouched by human hands — is the ideal. Such
romanticism leads some to deify nature or oppose human
dominion over creation.
 While some environmental concerns are well founded and
serious, […] Some unfounded or undue concerns include
fears of destructive man-made global warming,
overpopulation, and rampant species loss.
 Public policies to combat exaggerated risks can dangerously
delay or reverse the economic development necessary to
improve not only human life but also human stewardship of
the environment.

15. E-mail, Sep. 13th, 2012
 Here are a few specific activities you can pray for […]
 Statewide Christian Leaders‘ Advisory Councils: A forum
for pastors and other Christian leaders to cooperate to
guard their flocks from the spiritual and material threats
posed by radical environmentalism while promoting
Biblical Earth stewardship.
 Cornwall Media Outreach: […] to communicate our
message of Biblical Earth stewardship, economic
development for the poor, and the proclamation and
defense of the gospel of Christ. This, of course, is in a
world permeated by an environmental movement
whose worldview, theology, and ethics are generally
anti-Christian, whose science and economics are often
very poor, and whose policies typically are of little real
help to the natural world but harm the world’s poor
while reducing prosperity for everyone.

16.  Acton media
– www.effectivestewardship.com
Effective Stewardship DVD  Published by the Action
Institute
– ―for the study of religion and
liberty‖
– www.acton.org
 Online trailer
– http://www.effectivestewardshi
p.com/stewardship-of-the-
environment
 What are the themes and
ideologies underlying this
presentation?

17. The Acton Institute
 ―For the study of religion and liberty‖
 274,497 likes on Facebook!
 Core Principles: ―Integrating Judeo-Christian Truths with
Free Market Principles‖
 Publications include: Journal of Markets and Morality
(peer reviewed)
 2011 Faith and Freedom Award Honoree: Lady Margaret
Thatcher
 Acton University: ―an ecumenical conference of pastors,
seminarians, educators, non-profit managers, business
people and philanthropists from more than 50 countries.‖
– Sessions include: Property Rights in the Old Testament,
Market Economics and the Family, Why Adam Smith
matters, Stewardship 101, …

18. Money, Greed and God (Jay Richards, 2009)
1) Is the planet warming?
– Probably. [But] there‘s plenty of debate, no consensus.
We‘re actually cooler than in the year 1000.
2) If warming, is human activity causing it?
– An increase in carbon dioxide leads to more plant growth.
Recent data suggest that it‘s also gotten warmer of Mars.
ExxonMobil [et al.] didn‘t cause that. Predictions of global
warming is done by assumptions plugged into computer
models, not direct evidence. The prudential answer is ―we
don‘t know‖

19. Money, Greed and God (Jay Richards, 2009)
3) If warming, and we‘re causing it, is it bad?
– No, it‘s not. The total might be a net gain. Little reason to
assume some warming would be bad [cites Lomborg]
4) If warming, we‘re causing it and bad, would policies
advocated make a difference?
– Unless we are interested in practicing random acts of piety
that don‘t do anything except squander money … we
should be skeptical of the Kyoto Protocol and other similar
attempts to restrict carbon emissions by fiat.

20. Contested words and meanings
 Is ―Stewardship‖ the new ―Wise Use‖?

21. A Broad History of Wise Use
 The phrase is attributed to Gifford Pinochet who became
chief forester of the nation under (Teddy) Roosevelt‘s
Presidency.
 Pinochet believed in the ―wise use‖ of resources to be
utilised to meet people‘s needs but was also a
conservationist believing government control of forests
was required to stop the destructive practices of big
logging companies.

22. A Broad History of Wise Use
 But counter to Pinochet the Wise Use movement
campaigned on:
– Resource production on federal lands
– Property rights
 ―takings‖
– Environmental (de)regulations

23. Wise Use, GOP and the Christian Right
 ―There are increasingly close ties between those who
subscribe to the ideas of Wise Use and members of
fundamentalist Christian churches and organizations.‖
– Divine Destruction (Hendricks, 2005)
 ―[Pat] Robertson helped make anti-environmentalism
acceptable within the ranks of the fundamentalist clergy and
the mainstream of the Republican Party. Beginning in 1991,
Robertson and the Christian Coalition‘s then executive
director Ralph Reed, now an official with the Bush
campaign, put their media and organisational clout at the
disposal of the Wise Use agenda.‖
– Crimes Against Nature (Kennedy Jr., 2004)

24. But, Shifting Sands…
 Read the statement at
http://christiansandclimate.org/s
tatement/
 Claim 1: Human-Induced Climate
Change is Real
– Claim 2: The Consequences of
Climate Change: An Climate Change Will Be
Evangelical Call to Action Significant, and Will Hit the
Poor the Hardest
– Claim 3: Christian Moral
Convictions Demand Our
Response to the Climate
Change Problem
– Claim 4: The need to act now
is urgent. Governments,
businesses, churches, and
individuals all have a role to
play in addressing climate
change—starting now.

25.  A project of The Alliance
for Climate Protection,
founded by Al Gore.
wecansolveit.org  It has the support of Pat
Robertson (cf. Christian
Coalition)
– Watch the short
YouTube video at
http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=NhmpsUMdTH
8
 Now superseded by
http://climaterealityproject
.org

26. Some Conclusions
 There are overlapping interests between the Christian
Right and a neoconservative political agenda.
 Their environmental policies may be influenced by a
―dominion‖ reading of Genesis 1 (and possibly even an
end times eschatology), though there are other more
compelling explanations for their actions.

27. Neoconservatism and Nature
 Whilst theologies of the environment are still contested
(see, for example, www.we-get-it.org or The Action
Institute), the increasingly dominant narrative is based on
the partnership ethic of Genesis 1 and 2 and linked to
social justice
 But there is more to be studied on the influence of
economically rightwing religious organisations and
networks on ethics and the environment.