Varieties of Religious Involvement and Environmental Concerns: Testing the Lynn White

Thesis
Author(s): Douglas Lee Eckberg and T. Jean Blocker
Source: Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 28, No. 4 (Dec., 1989), pp. 509-
517
Published by: Wiley on behalf of Society for the Scientific Study of Religion
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Research Note

Varieties of Religious Involvement

and Environmental Concerns:
Testing the Lynn White Thesis*

DOUGLAS LEE ECKBERGt

T. JEAN BLOCKERt

Lynn White's thesis, that the disenchantment of nature in the first chapter of Genesis led to
reduced concern for the environment in the West, has received little empirical research at the level
of individual differences in religious experience. In this study, we separated the effects of four different
measures of religious experience on four different indexes of concern for the environment. Results
offered substantial support for White's thesis: (a) belief in the Bible, and only belief in the Bible,
predicted scores on all four indexes of environmental concern and did so in the direction expected
by White's thesis; (b) this occurred independently of the effects of background items; (c) standard
regression showed the effects of belief in the Bible to be independent of those of other measures of
religious involvement on two indexes, and on the other two indexes stepwise regression showed the
same thing; and (d) in only two of twelve cases did any other measure of religious experience
significantly predict an index score independently of belief in the Bible.

INTRODUCTION

Since the publication of Lynn White's (1967) now classic article on the historical roots
of the ecological crises, there has been lively debate on the possible role of Judeo-Christian
tenets in environmental degradation in the West. White argued that the injunction in
Genesis 1, for man to have "dominion" over the earth and its contents, legitimated -
even demanded - exploitation of the environment. Genesis 1 "disenchanted" nature, which
then became meaningful only in terms of its use by people. Therefore, the development
of science/technology and the destruction of nature has a peculiarly Occidential -
specifically a Christian - feature.
Responses to White's argument have ranged widely, from agreements that it indeed
explained a particularly Western exploitativeness, to arguments that the account in

*This is a revised version of papers delivered at the annual meetings of the Southern Sociological Society, Atlanta,
April 1987 and Norfolk, April 1989.

1Douglas Eckberg is Associate Professor of Sociology, Winthrop College, Rock Hill; South Carolina. T. Jean
Blocker is Associate Professor of Sociology, The University of Tulsa, Tulsa, Oklahoma.

? Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 1989, 28 (4): 509-517 509

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510 JOURNAL FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION

Genesis 1 meant something dffferent from White's interpretation and/or that later chapters
in Genesis offered a "stewardship" orientation toward nature, to questioning of the relation-
ship between theology and culture, to arguments that culture does not operate in the
straightforward manner that White proposed, to firm denials that the Occident is especially
exploitative of the environment (for an overview, see Barbour 1973; Shaiko 1987: 244-46).
In the current study, we wished to determine if acceptance of the Bible's sacredness
affects the environmental attitudes of individuals in the population, a topic which has
not been explored fully, but which appears closely tied to White's original thesis. Is there a
measurable "disdain" for nature which grows from acceptance of Biblical authority? Even
if this is the case, such disdain could have become part of general Western culture and
have left its religious roots entirely. On the other hand, if the effect were to occur directly
because of belief in the sacredness of scripture, then a religious residue might remain.
There have been two studies of this issue. Shaiko (1987) used a sample of environ-
mentalist social movement organization members to investigate differences in the extent
to which people believe humans should have "mastery over nature." He documented clear
differences between various Christian groups, on the one hand, and Jewish and non-
religious groups, on the other, in orientations (1) toward mastery over nature and (2) toward
three of four items measuring concern for the environment, all of which supported White's
thesis. Although Shaiko's sample suffered severe restriction in range on environmental
attitudes, since it was drawn exclusively from the ranks of environmentalists, he argued
that his evidence supported the existence of both stewardship and domination orienta-
tions toward nature among Judeo-Christians.
In the second study of this issue, Hand and Van Liere (1984) found in a Washington
State survey that Judeo-Christians were generally less likely to be concerned about en-
vironmental issues than were non-Judeo-Christians and were more likely to believe that
humanity should dominate nature. Frequency of religious attendance predicted environ-
mental concern among members of conservative denominations, and the more sectarian the
denomination, the more likely were members to believe that humans should have mastery
over nature. These effects were independent of a series of social background measures.
There are clear limits to the inferences which can be drawn from Hand's and Van
Liere's findings. First, like Shaiko they actually employed no measures of religious beliefs
but relied on denominational affiliation and attendance as indicators. Second, they did
not draw a distinction between abstract concern for the environment and concern for con-
crete issues which reasonably may face individuals in their daily lives. Research has shown
that a general/local distinction is important in this context, since people who are not con-
cerned about environmental issues in the abstract may be concerned about more local
issues (Blocker & Eckberg 1989; Tremblay & Dunlap 1978). Third, a substantial number
of the Hand and Van Liere findings concern the issue of population control, which appears
in the literature to be conceptually separate from other environmental issues (Dunlap &
Van Liere 1984; Van Liere & Dunlap 1981). We will depart from the above studies in ways
which will allow us to address the central feature of White's thesis more directly.

METHODS

Data were gathered from a general telephone survey of the adult residents of the

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 RESEARCH NOTE 511

Tulsa, Oklahoma, metropolitan area in the Spring of 1985. The sample was gathered by
trained interviewers who used random-digit dialing to represent proportionately all the
exchanges in the Greater Tulsa telephone directory (Frey 1982). Use of call-back procedures
gained cooperation from approximately 55% of those contacted and yielded a final sample
of 300. The sample closely approximated the demographic characteristics of the Tulsa
metropolitan adult population.

Religion

The questionnaire included three questions about religious orientation, which generated
four measures of religion. From the first item, religious affiliation, we generated two
dummy variables: "Judeo-Christian" (JC) and "Conservative Protestant" (CP). The former
distinguished Jewish or Christian respondents from those few others who indicated affil-
iation with a non-Judeo-Christian religion, or who had no affiliation. To obtain the latter
variable (CP), we used a modification of Stark's and Glock's (1965) typology to contrast
members of fundamentalist, charismatic, and evangelical Protestant groups with all other
Christians. Non-Christians were coded with the item mean.'
The subjective significance of religion to respondents (hereafter called "Importance")
was assessed by asking, "How important would you say religion is in your life?." Responses
were scaled in a Likert format from "extremely important" (5) to "not important" (1).
Finally, respondents were asked to describe their beliefs about the Bible (called "Bible")
by choosing one of three statements as most like their own beliefs: "The Bible is the actual
word of God and it should be taken literally, word for word" (3); "the Bible is the inspired
word of God, but it was written by men and contains some human errors" (2); and "the
Bible is an ancient book of history and legends; God had nothing to do with it" (1).

Environmental Concern

Twelve items were used to measure concern with environmental issues (see Table 1
for wording). Eight of these were measures of "general environmental concern" in that
they did not deal with specific local issues; the other four items dealt with issues specific
to the Tulsa area. Six of the general concern items were drawn from the Pollution and
Natural Resources Scales developed by Van Liere and Dunlap (1981); the other two were
taken from Klineberg's (1984) Houston Survey. Responses to all these questions were
scored on five-point Likert-type scales, ranging from (1) "strongly agree" to (5) "strongly
disagree." Questions concerning Tulsa-area issues were constructed by the authors. These
were three-point Likert-type items, with possible responses ranging from (1) "not very
serious" to (3) "very serious."

1. The CP category was dominated by Southern Baptists in Tulsa but also included Jehovah's Witnesses,
Pentecostalists, Adventists, Nazarene and Prophecy churches, etc. Non-conservatives were principally Catholics
and the so-called "mainline" Protestant denominations. Presbyterians and Lutherans were difficult to place
on a conservative / liberal continuum, but previous research in Tulsa has found the social attitudes of members
of these denominations to be similar to those of the non-conservative church members (Eckberg & Nesterenko
1985), so we included them there.

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512 JOURNAL FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION

Dimensions of Environmental Concern

To reduce complexity, we subjected the environmental concern items to principal com-

ponents factor analysis with varimax rotation. As shown in Table 1, we elicited four fac-
tors which accounted for 53.2% of variance. All items were employed; none loaded on
more than one factor.
It is clear that the sample perceived the various enviroinmental issues as substan-
tially separate. First, items were divided between those which concerned, respectively,
"general" and "local" issues. The two general factors were divided between one defined

TABLE 1

ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERN ROTATED FACTORS AND ITEMS (n = 300)1

Loadings % Variance

Use the Environment for the Economy

We should relax our effort to control .67
pollution in order to improve the economy

There has been too much emphasis on conserving .71 15.4%

natural resources, and not enough on using
them, in recent years

Pollution control measures have created .68

unfair burdens on industry

Where natural resources are privately owned, .45

society should have no control over what the
owner does with them

Protect the Environment

We should maintain our efforts to control .49
pollution, even if this slows down the economy
and increases unemployment

If an industry cannot control its pollution, .74 14.1%

the industry should be shut down

Managers of polluting industries should be .78

punished by fines or imprisonment

Natural resources must be preserved for the .41

future, even if people must do without

Concern About Tulsa Air and Water

How serious is pollution in Tulsa's air? .78

How serious is pollution in Tulsa's .75 12.0%

rivers and streams?

Concern About Tulsa Waste Disposal

How serious a problem is injecting chemical .71
wastes into deep underground wells?

How serious is the Chandler Park landfill .77 11.6%

that has been burning underground?

"'Unsure" was coded as a middle option, and missing values were replaced with item means.

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 RESEARCH NOTE 513

by items which advocated using nature for economic purposes, or which expressed concern
that environmental protection would harm the economy ("Use"), and one defined by items
which called for "toughness" in the implementation of environmental protection, even
at the expense of the economy ("Protect"). The two local factors were divided between
one defined by items broadly assessing the quality of Tulsa's air and water ("Air & Water"),
and one defined by items focusing on the potential impact of specific solid and liquid waste-
disposal facilities ("Wastes"). To some extent, these divisions respectively appeared to
represent "mastery" and "stewardship" orientations toward nature. We formed factor
indexes by summing item scores, reversing the scoring where appropriate. High-index
scores indicated affirmation of statements which describe the factors.

Background Variables

To separate the effects of religious orientation from those of social background, we

controlled for effects of a number of social background variables, some drawn from past
research on the correlates of concern over general or local environmental issues (Hamilton
1985; Van Liere & Dunlap 1980). We included in all regression runs 10 items whose scores
were significantly correlated with scores on any factor index.2

Analytic Strategy

The strongest version of White's thesis would lead us to expect Judeo-Christian

theology independently to predict individual attitudes toward a variety of environmental
issues. Nothing about the thesis would lead us to expect a differentiation of effects for
different issues. Separated from one another, each indicator of religion should predict atti-
tudes toward environmental issues independently of the effects of background variables:
(1) those who are Judeo-Christian should be less concerned about the environment, in each
case, than should non-Judeo-Christians; (2) conservative Protestants should be less con-
cerned than should other Christians, because in general they take a more literalistic
approach to the Bible; (3) since most Americans are Christians, those who are "more
religious" should show less concern than should others, because of their greater commit-
ment to religious norms; and (4) those who are most literal in their beliefs about the Bible
should have the least concern about the environment.
All of this should change when the four variables are entered into regression simul-
taneously. Belief in the Bible is the key variable, so its inclusion should obliterate the
effects of the other religion measures, while retaining its own significant effect.

RESULTS

Zero-Order Correlations

There were no dramatic correlations between scores on our measures of religion and
those on the factor indexes, but a number of correlations were significant. As shown in

2. The 10 items were educational attainment, occupational prestige, income, female, age, white ethnicity, how
one's economic situation has changed in the past three years, time lived in the Tulsa area, moved to Tulsa from
the South, and working full time.

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514 JOURNAL FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION

the first column of Table 2, scores on each of the religion measures were significantly
correlated with scores on at least one of the factor indexes, all in the expected directions.
No religion-item scores were correlated significantly with scores on all the indexes.
The number of significant correlations decreased as we moved from general to local indexes.
All four measures predicted scores on Use, and all but CP predicted scores on Protect.
However, only JC and Importance predicted scores on Air & Water, and no measure
predicted scores on Wastes. Correlations of Bible with the indexes of local concerns bare-
ly failed to reach significance, but Bible scores were significantly correlated with scores
on some local concern items (r =-.11, p < .05, with concern both for local air pollution
and for the burning landfill).

TABLE 2

ZERO-ORDER AND PARTIAL CORRELATIONS OF RELIGION ITEM SCORES WITH

ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERN FACTOR INDEX SCORES (n = 300)'

Net of Net of
Zero-Order Background All Other
Correlations Items2 Items3 Stepwise4

Use the Environment for the Economy

Judeo-Christian .14* .07 .05 5
Conservative Protestant .24*** .19** .15* .15*
Religion is Important .13* .04 -.08 6
Believes in Bible .25*** .21*** .18** .17**

Protect the Environment

Judeo-Christian -.21*** -.18** -.12* -.14*
Conservative Protestant -.03 -.02 .01 6
Religion is Important -.16** -.16** -.04 6
Believes in Bible -.16** -.18** -.11 -.13*

Concern About Tulsa Air and Water

Judeo-Christian -.13* -.11 -.05 5
Conservative
Protestant -.02 -.06 -.03 5
Religion is Important -.13* -.14* -.07 6
Believes in Bible -.09 -.14* -.07 -.14*

Concern About Tulsa Waste Disposal

Judeo-Christian -.10 -.10 -.06 6
Conservative Protestant -.01 -.06 -.02 5
Religion is Important -.03 -.09 .02 5
Believes in Bible -.10 -.18** -.14* -.18**

*p < .05 **p < .01 ***p < .001

'Coefficients were generated by multiple regression, and are presented as partial correlations for ease of
comparison.
2Background items are shown in Footnote 2.
3These equations include background items and all religion items.
4p levels are .99 to enter the equation and .10 to remain in the equation. All significant background items
are included.

5p-to-enter is too high.

6p-to-remain is too high.

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 RESEARCH NOTE 515

Partialling Out Effects through Regression

In succeeding columns of Table 2, we present the results of three types of regression

analysis. In column 2, we show the effect of each religion item on each index, removing
only effects of the background items. This column represents the results of 16 separate
regression equations (one for each measure of religion on each index). In column 3, we
show results of simultaneously entering all religion and background items into an equa-
tion for each index. Thus, the column represents the results of four regressions, and the
coefficients measure effects which were independent of background and of other religion
items. In column 4, we performed regressions for each index, again entering the background
items, but entering the religion items stepwise.
The most important change to occur in the second column was that Bible - and only
Bible - became a significant predictor of scores on all factor indexes. JC lost significance
on Use and Air & Water, while Importance lost significance on Use alone. Bible apparently
had been suppressed as a correlate of concern over local issues. The most important (but
not the only) suppressor variable appeared to be Southern background. Southerners in
our sample showed more concern about local environmental issues than did others, but
they also believed more in the Bible than did others, and the two diminished each other's
effects when included simultaneously.

Removing Effects of Other Religion Items

When we entered the four religion items simultaneously (column 3), the effects of each
diminished, although Bible remained significantly associated with scores on Use and
Wastes. This decline was especially striking with respect to Air & Water (toward which
no item maintained significance), but it occurred in all cases. Of course, the problem was
that the religion measures were robbing one another of explained variance. Several cor-
relations among them were in the range of .1 to .3, but two were noteworthy: Scores on
Importance were correlated .41 with scores on JC and .49 with Bible. This has relevance
for the effect of Bible on Protect and on Air & Water. Indeed, if we merely removed Im-
portance, then Bible would be a significant predictor of Protect (rp = -.13, p < .03) and
would almost be a significant predictor of Air & Water (rp =-.11, p < .07), even if the
other religion items were left in the equation.3

Selective Removal of Religion Items Using Stepwise Regression

To disentangle the effects of the different religion items, we employed stepwise regres-
sion in the last column of Table 4, setting the significance levels to include an item at
p < .99, and to remove an item at p > .10. Results were straightforward. Bible again
became significant on all four indexes, once more the only religion item to do so.

3. Indeed, these two items, Importance and Bible, basically cancelled each other's effects. On Protect, almost
the entire drop in the partial correlation of Bible from the previous column (from -.18, p < .01, to -.11, p
< .08, n.s.), occurred when Importance entered the equation (to -.12, p < .05), which item itself became non-
significant (to -.08, p < .16, n.s.). On Air & Water, these two were the only items significant in the previous
column. Even entered without the other religion items, they cancelled one another (each becomes -.09, p <
.15, n.s.).

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516 JOURNAL FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION

Still, two points require discussion. First, Bible was not the only religion item to main-
tain significance: CP still positively predicted scores on Use, and JC still negatively
predicted scores on Protect. Second, Bible remained in the equation for Air & Water by
only a very slim margin.4

DISCUSSION

Within the limits of our data, White's thesis received firm support from our results.
First, belief in the Bible - and only belief in the Bible - predicted stances on each of
a variety of environmental concern indexes, always in the expected direction. The effect
was never very strong (rp = .1 to .2) but it occurred consistently in a sample drawn from
a society which as a society long-since disenchanted nature and set about the process
of rationally employing it for practical ends. Second, this effect was independent of the
effects of various social background variables. Third, in two cases the effect was indepen-
dent of effects of other measures of religion, and in the two remaining cases, stepwise
regression selected Bible as a major predictor. Fourth, in most cases other measures of
religion retained no effect, after Bible was placed in the equation.
The power of Importance almost to knock Bible out of the stepwise equation for Air
& Water appeared to occur because to some extent Importance already measures belief
in the Bible. If, as we believe, the item measures one's commitment to religious norms,
then in an overwhelmingly "Christian" society it will measure belief in the primary religious
document of Christianity. The substantial correlation between scores on the two items
supports this contention.
The cases of the continued significance of two other religion items, while not very
important here, have clear explanations which fit the empirical literature. First, it should
not be surprising that conservative Protestants would show an overwhelming concern
for the economy, even at the expense of the environment. It has long been considered
(correctly enough) that evangelical, charismatic, and fundamentalist churches are home
to the nation's dispossessed, marginal, and isolated (Hunter 1983, 53-55). These people
are more likely than others to believe in "free enterprise," and to be very conservative
on a series of "litmus test" issues like sexual expression and evolution (Hunter 1983;
Eckberg & Nesterenko 1985; Nelkin 1982; Page & Clelland 1978; Wood & Hughes 1984).
Given a reference community's great affection for "free enterprise," affiliation with such
a community would predispose one to regard environmental controls as onerous, regardless
of one's Biblical beliefs. Such an attitude would not generalize to feelings on Protect, for
example, because there is nothing about conservative Protestantism which would allow
that which is perceived as profligate behavior.
That Judeo-Christians scored lower on Protect than did non-Judeo-Christians, in-
dependently of Bible, may have occurred because the variable JC primarily distinguished
those who are religious from those who are in some sense "secularists." The environmental
concerns of the latter are understandable, because they may lack any "otherwordly" orien-
tations which could divert attention from here-and-now issues. National evidence shows

4. Only Bible and Importance entered the equation and neither maintained a "p" below the exclusion criterion
(.10). However, p for Importance was marginally higher than p for Bible: .148 to .146. Stepwise removed it from
the equation, and Bible regained significance.

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 RESEARCH NOTE 517

that "secularists" are particularly adamant that environmental controls not be relaxed
(Times Mirror 1988).
We have not looked at the effects of specific theological beliefs, or recognition of specific
Biblical accounts, on attitudes toward the environment; nor has anyone investigated a
possible role for scripture in Jewish environmental beliefs (we and others find their attitudes
similar to those of secularists). We suggest these as topics of future research.

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