Naturally Ambivalent: Religion’s Role in Shaping Environmental Action

Vaidyanathan, Brandon; Khalsa, Simranjit; Ecklund, Elaine Howard

doi:10.1093/socrel/srx043

Cited by 25 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 50 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…But then what explains the small positive effects of evangelicalism and Pentecostalism on environmental concern in Brazil? Perhaps, as Vaidyanathan, Khalsa, and Ecklund (2018) argue, rather than adherents examining their tradition's doctrines in order to deduce appropriate environmental attitudes, laypeople more often repurpose theological principles to support values they already hold. If this is the case, in the relatively proenvironmental public opinion context of Brazil, evangelicals and Pentecostals may justify environmental values with reference to religious teachings.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Yet decades of subsequent research have yielded mixed support for White's broad generalization. In recent years, this has prompted a “contextual turn.” Rather than conceiving of universal doctrine as driving religious influence, scholars now point to factors that shape attitudes and behavior in local settings: identity or reputational concerns, congregational norms, decision‐process cues (cues from elites about how faith informs environmental advocacy), and habituation (opportunities to practice environmental behaviors in worship settings) (Djupe and Hunt 2009; Djupe and Gwiasda 2010; Vaidyanathan, Khalsa, and Ecklund 2018). This turn helps to explain ambiguous findings: scholars will only find a tight coupling between religious teachings and environmental attitudes/behavior when additional, contextual factors reinforce the implications of those teachings (Chaves, 2010; Vaidyanathan, Khalsa, and Ecklund 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Evangelical Environmentalists? Evidence from Brazil

Smith

Veldman

2020

Scientific Study of Religion

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

While scholarship on the relationship between religions and environmental attitudes has been inconclusive, evangelical Protestants present an exception: they consistently report less environmental concern than other groups. However, prior studies have largely been conducted in the United States. Following a recent “contextual” turn, we revisit the assumption that universal cognitive and doctrinal factors drive the previously documented negative association between evangelicalism and environmental concern. Leveraging qualitative fieldwork, nationally representative surveys, and a survey experiment from Brazil, we find that evangelical and Pentecostal affiliation and church attendance are not associated with reduced environmental concern; that members of these groups simultaneously embrace otherworldly beliefs and advocate for this‐worldly solutions to environmental problems; and that being primed to consider divine intervention increased support for environmental protection. Even in a tradition emphasizing orthodoxy, doctrine appears not to exert a universal influence, a finding we suggest results from different issue frames in the United States and Brazil.

show abstract

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evangelical Environmentalists? Evidence from Brazil

Smith

Veldman

2020

Scientific Study of Religion

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Turning to religion, despite calls in the literature on religion and the environment to focus on a broader set of religious factors (Djupe & Hunt, 2009; Smith & Veldman, 2020; Vaidyanathan, Khalsa, & Ecklund, 2018), most attention has focused on theology. Most prominently, over the past 50 years, a voluminous literature has explored whether the “dominion” reading of Genesis—the idea that God sanctioned human exploitation of the earth's resources (White Jr., 1967)—explains lower levels of concern about the environment among Christians.…”

Section: Explaining Us Evangelical Climate Skepticism and Denialmentioning

confidence: 99%

Who are American evangelical Protestants and why do they matter forUSclimate policy?

Veldman

Wald

Mills

et al. 2020

WIREs Climate Change

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

White evangelical Protestants are the most skeptical major religious group in the United States regarding climate change. While their position of political influence in the Republican coalition is widely recognised, the full range of effects of this position on evangelicals' climate opinions is not. To move research on evangelicals from the margins of climate change opinion research, we review and integrate the interdisciplinary literature on US evangelicals, climate change, and politics. In assessing this literature, we identify three areas in need of further research. First, there is a critical need for more research on the climate attitudes of evangelicals of color, who comprise a growing share of the evangelical tradition in the US. Second, highlighting the Christian Right's active engagement in the climate debate, we identify a need for more experimental work examining how cues from religious elites may shape evangelicals' opinions. Finally, we suggest that to better harness insights across disciplines, researchers must become more explicitly aware of how different disciplines conceptualize temporality. Attending to temporal scale suggests that a new approach is needed to test how dominion beliefs, which are widely thought to be an important theological driver of climate skepticism, operate. We also suggest that two factors that appear to play a weak or limited role in driving climate skepticism over the short term (anti‐science attitudes and evangelical religiosity) may in fact play a significant role in driving skepticism over the medium term. This article is categorized under: Perceptions, Behavior, and Communication of Climate Change > Perceptions of Climate Change Trans‐Disciplinary Perspectives > Humanities and the Creative Arts

show abstract

“…Gegenwärtige Untersuchungen zeigen, dass das »Greening« der traditionellen Religionen kaum auf die Ebene der lokalen Religionsgemeinschaften vordringt. Auch wenn religiöse Dachverbände starke Anstrengungen in diese Richtung unternehmen, werden deren ökologischen Aktivitäten bisher nur wenig durch lokale Gemeinschaften übernommen und somit auch nicht an die Mitglieder der Gemeinschaften weitergetragen (Huber und Koehrsen 2020;Vaidyanathan et al 2018). Damit wird das besondere Potential von Religion, das entsprechend der Debatte in der Verbreitung umweltfreundlicher Weltanschauungen und Wertvorstellungen liegt, nicht umgesetzt.…”

Section: Fazit: Ein (Dunkel)grünes Religionsszeitalter?unclassified

Soziologie der Nachhaltigkeit

Henkel¹

2021

Soziologie Der Nachhaltigkeit

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Nachhaltigkeit ist ein gesamtgesellschaftliches Transformationsprojekt. Eine intensivere soziologische Analyse ist daher unverzichtbar für das Verständnis von Veränderungsprozessen, zugleich werden hiermit Grundlagenfragen der Disziplin aufgeworfen. Die Reihe »Soziologie der Nachhaltigkeit« versammelt Publikationen, die Themen nachhaltiger Gesellschaftsentwicklung aus einer spezifisch soziologischen Blickrichtung untersuchen. Das inhaltliche Spektrum reicht von konkreten Untersuchungsgegenständen (wie etwa nachhaltiger Stadtentwicklung) über nachhaltigkeitsbezogene Grundfragen (wie etwa Zukunft, Wissen oder Macht) bis hin zur Reflektion und Verortung von Nachhaltigkeit selbst. Eine soziologische Blickrichtung wird in dieser Reihe weit verstanden -sie umfasst interaktions-, praxis-sowie gesellschaftstheoretische Ansätze und reicht von empirischer Sozialforschung bis hin zu sozialpsychologischen Perspektiven. Nachhaltigkeit und Normativität, sozialer Wandel und Gestaltung sowie schließlich Reflexivität zweiter Ordnung sind zentrale übergreifende Elemente einer solchen Soziologie der Nachhaltigkeit. Die Reihe versteht sich als Rahmen für disziplinär-soziologische Publikationen, um aus dieser Disziplinarität heraus in inter-und transdisziplinären Dialog zu treten und so das Spektrum soziologischer Analyse für das Verstehen, Erklären und Gestalten von Nachhaltigkeit zu nutzen. Die Reihe wird vom Netzwerk »Soziologie der Nachhaltigkeit« (SONA) herausgegeben.2 »Environmental Sociology« ist eine im Jahr 2015 gegründete soziologische Zeitschrift mit spezifisch umweltsoziologischem Fokus. Im gleichen Jahr wurde mit dem Open-Access-Journal »Soziologie und Nachhaltigkeit -Beiträge zur sozial-ökologischen Transformationsforschung« das erste Publikationsorgan mit einer nachhaltigkeitssoziologischen Ausrichtung im deutschsprachigen Raum gegründet und somit neben dem SONA-Netzwerk eine zweite Institutionalisierungsdimension etabliert. Literatur

show abstract

Naturally Ambivalent: Religion’s Role in Shaping Environmental Action

Cited by 25 publications

References 50 publications

Evangelical Environmentalists? Evidence from Brazil

Evangelical Environmentalists? Evidence from Brazil

Who are American evangelical Protestants and why do they matter forUSclimate policy?

Soziologie der Nachhaltigkeit

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About