Religion and the Origins of American Environmentalism

Ever since Lynn White’s 1967 essay on “The Historical Roots of
Our Ecologic Crisis”, it is common to read in many publications
that Christianity is both too anthropocentric and not much
concerned with the protection of nature and the environment.
Subsequently the environmental movement has developed along very
secular lines using science to underpin their arguments for the
protection of nature and the environment. For religion there
seems no place amongst modern environmentalists. But in the
late 19th century and early 20th century this was quite different
and early American conservationists were often deeply religious
but had no difficulties in combining this with new scientific
ideas about nature. A recent book entitled Inherit the Holy
Mountain: Religion and the Rise of American Environmentalism
shows that religion provided early environmentalists both with
deeply embedded moral and cultural ways of viewing the natural
world which provided them with the direction, and tone for the
environmental causes they advocated. It reveals how religious
upbringing left its distinctive imprint on the life, work, and
activism of a wide range of environmental figures such as George
Perkins Marsh, John Muir, Theodore Roosevelt, Rachel Carson, E.
O. Wilson, and others.


This podcast episode explores the history of conservation and
religion in America with Mark Stoll, Associate Professor of
History at Texas Tech University, in Lubbock, Texas. He is the
author of Inherit the Holy Mountain.