Evangelical Christians, especially the political conservatives among them who have made up the majority of the religious right over the past decades, are associated with environmental skepticism and denial instead of pro-environmental attitudes and action. But contrary to public and scholarly perception, as environmental historian Neall W. Pogue claims, the religious right has not always held its present-day anti-environmentalist views. Moreover, such views “were not preordained” fifty years ago (4, 110), but rather became dominant in the 1990s, and may change again in the future.
Largely based on archival documents, two case studies, and k-12 educational material disseminated for the Christian school movement by Bob Jones University Press and A Beka Book, The Nature of the Religious Right tells an intellectual history of America's largest and most controversial religiopolitical movement through the lens of the religious right's views on nature and environmental protection. In addition, it “explains how and why the religious right's conception of the natural world contributed to the movement becoming an important political barrier against nature protection initiatives, including solutions to global warming” (3). The book succeeds at bringing an extensive array of new sources to the interdisciplinary debate on the intersection of American Evangelicalism and environmentalism. To those familiar with both movements, however, it provides few new insights and raises questions about historiography instead.
Like historian David Larsen, who was the first to trace evangelical environmental thinking from 1967 until 2000, Pogue, a senior lecturer in Interdisciplinary Studies at UT Dallas, begins his “story of missed opportunities” (2) shortly before the first Earth Day in 1970. It was then when modern environmentalism erupted into the public discourse as a mass movement with compelling policy demands and a rather accusatory understanding of Christianity's ecologic culpability, the latter adopted from Lynn White Jr.'s seminal article “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis” (1967). Initially open to environmental protection but put on the defensive by White, as Pogue argues, conservative evangelicals nevertheless developed “an eco-friendly view that Christians could help save the Earth” (37).
The idea of Christian environmental stewardship was first succinctly articulated by future religious right leader Francis Schaeffer in his book Pollution and the Death of Man (1970). As others have pointed out before, Schaeffer did not dispute the reality of eco-crisis, nor the Christian responsibility for creation in this direct response to White (e.g., Gish, 37f). According to Pogue, the Christian environmental stewardship that began to develop in the late 1960s was similar to the secular stances of Theodore Roosevelt and other conservationists—except for evangelicals' understanding of nature's intrinsic value as creation and the exalted role reserved for humans within the God-created order. This view of nature and humanity's proper place in it resonated with the dominion theology of philosopher-theologian Rousas John Rushdooney as well, who propagated the reconstruction of society according to God's laws.
Christian environmental stewardship remained accepted among religious right leaders such as Pat Robertson and in evangelical k-12 textbooks throughout the 1970s and 80s, Pogue goes on to argue. But it also became gradually sidelined when issues such as abortion and homosexuality became more pressing. Grappling with these, conservative evangelicals employed additional concepts of nature and condemned what they considered deviations from “God's original design” (45) as “unnatural” (53). In the 1980s, they also turned to early American history and romanticized human-nature relationships in order to create a Christian American nationalist identity for their political and socially conservative movement. At the same time, an espousal of free enterprise and capitalism became more prominent, along with anti-environmentalist views.
When environmentalists celebrated the twentieth anniversary of Earth Day in 1990, conservative evangelicals joined them in their advocacy efforts at the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), and even at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University, among others. But again, they missed the opportunity: Fueled by “conspiracy theories” and misinformation about environmentalists and their scientific claims, shortly thereafter, “anti-environmentalism” became “a new political position among conservative evangelicals” (109–110), and has remained dominant since then.
The main reason for this development were economic arguments, according to Pogue, but also peer pressure and the “threat of social ridicule” (178). While these may be valid points derived from his two case studies, I found myself wanting more context and more information as to how the evolution Pogue traces is related to the larger conservative reversal which fellow environmental historians James Turner and Andrew Isenberg analyze in The Republican Reversal (Reference Turner and Isenberg2018)—especially since Pogue conflates the religious right with politically conservative evangelicals and mostly ignores evangelical environmental activists and their organizations because he deems them too socially progressive/moderate.
While Pogue acknowledges that the religious right never fully adopted Rushdooney's more extreme theo-political views, I also found myself wondering on what basis he claims that the founding of the reconstructionist “Coalition for [sic] Revival” in 1984 was “[p]erhaps the strongest evidence of the religious right choosing to sacrifice the environment for a strong economy,” especially since the group's “resolution on economics only indirectly rejected eco-friendly views” (97). There are other parts in the book where the argument seems forced and/or rather speculative, for example regarding Pat Robertson's alleged environmental philosophies and the religious right's reaction to James Watt. And there are some factual errors as well, for instance on pages 163 and 171, where “A Southern Baptist Declaration on the Environment and Climate Change” (2008) is confused with the Evangelical Climate Initiative of 2006.
Overall, Pogue's narrative flows together quite well, and the book brings some fascinating new primary sources to the debate. Ultimately, however, it does not deliver a convincing analysis of “the nature” of the religious right.
