Religion: A Theology of Ecology

There they go, brandishing Bible verses, preaching of doomsday, urging man to repent. A new fundamentalist sect? No, a small but growing band of church scholars on an "eco-trip"—seeking theological underpinning for the ecology crusade.

The eco-theologians argue that man's despoliation of nature has drawn encouragement in part from mistaken or misapplied Christian concepts. By correcting those concepts, they hope to bolster environmental concern with something that goes beyond moral fervor or social awareness. The God of Genesis, say these thinkers, did not give man a blank check when he said: "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it,...

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