I did some digging this morning because it bugged me that I couldn't remember what I had heard as the justification for anti-environmentalism. What I had actually heard on Jesus Camp wasn't anti-environmentalism in general, but complete disbelief in global warming in particular. What amazed me wasn't that some people don't believe in global warming, because it is a difficult issue to accept because of the moral responsibility that accompanies it, but that they seemed to view the refusal to believe in global warming (as a result of human activity) as part of their
religious dogma. That is what completely befuddled me. WTF? How does global warming become part of religious dogma?
Here's what I found to explain it, and it turns out bond is correct, and I was also correct in my vague memory:
http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2004 ... christian/
Many Christian fundamentalists feel that concern for the future of our planet is irrelevant, because it has no future. They believe we are living in the End Time, when the son of God will return, the righteous will enter heaven, and sinners will be condemned to eternal hellfire. They may also believe, along with millions of other Christian fundamentalists, that environmental destruction is not only to be disregarded but actually welcomed -- even hastened -- as a sign of the coming Apocalypse.
Many End-Timers believe that until Jesus' return, the Lord will provide. In America's Providential History, a popular reconstructionist high-school history textbook, authors Mark Beliles and Stephen McDowell tell us that: "The secular or socialist has a limited resource mentality and views the world as a pie ... that needs to be cut up so everyone can get a piece." However, "the Christian knows that the potential in God is unlimited and that there is no shortage of resources in God's Earth. The resources are waiting to be tapped." In another passage, the writers explain: "While many secularists view the world as overpopulated, Christians know that God has made the earth sufficiently large with plenty of resources to accommodate all of the people."
Natural-resource depletion and overpopulation, then, are not concerns for End-Timers -- and nor are other ecological catastrophes, which are viewed by dispensationalists as presaging the Great Tribulation. Support for this view comes from an 11-word passage in Matthew 24:7: "[T]here shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places." Other End-Timers see suggestions of ecological meltdown in Revelation's four horsemen of the Apocalypse -- War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death -- and they cite a verse mentioning costly wheat, barley, and oil as foretelling food and fossil-fuel shortages. During the End Time, the four horsemen shall be "given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth." Some End-Timers note that Revelation 8:8-11 predicts a fiery mountain falling into the sea and causing great destruction, followed by a blazing star plummeting from the sky. This star is called "Wormwood," which dispensationalists say translates loosely in Ukrainian as "Chernobyl."
And from another site:
Now, however, there is the emerging Christian anti-environmentalism I have documented in this paper. The presumed biblical support for this position is currently found primarily in Beisner's work; Burkett does not offer biblical support for his views. For example, Beisner cites biblical passages that encourage procreation opposing those Christians who might claim that continued population growth is a problem, and concludes that "no state ought to discourage fertility," and that Christians are those "who count it a blessing to be fruitful and multiply."34
Beisner also offers presumed biblical support for his views on resources, deriving many theological and moral standards to be applied to the management of resources. From those principles, Beisner reasons that: (1) " man, not the environment, is primary." If the environment is to be protected, such protection is "for the sake of man, not for its own sake. Anything else is idolatry of nature."35 (2) "no entity, private or public, has proper authority to restrict others' use of property." Thus, "Planning and control of resource use should be left to the owners of the resources."36 Beisner favors a minimization of state ownership of resources, and a maximization of private ownership and therefore liberty to make use of God's good provision of the earth's bounty.
http://www.asa3.org/aSA/PSCF/1995/PSCF6-95Wright.htmlHere we see the anti-environmentalism in action:
"I am today raising a flag of opposition to this alarmism about global warming and urging all believers to refuse to be duped by these 'earthism' worshippers," the Rev. Jerry Falwell said in a Feb. 25 sermon on "The Myth of Global Warming" at his Lynchburg, Va., church.
So it's a combination of a couple of things: the view that changing human action for the sole purpose of preserving the environment is a form of "nature idolatry", the view that Jesus is coming anyway and it won't matter, and the view that the results of environmental destruction may actually be predicted in the Bible and hence should not be stopped.
Scary, indeed. I have often thought what a cruel trick of fate it has been that, at the time when we need to become aggressive and proactive in regards to global warming to avoid the tipping point, we had a religious extremist as a president who deliberately fought against such needed action. It may end up being the worse, most lethal part about Bush's presidency.