The Lynn White Controversy
CHRISTIANITY AND THE ENVIRONMENT: THE LYNN WHITE CONTROVERSY Emily Warde “And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitftd and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” (Genesis 1:28) N 1966 the historian Lynn White, Jr. delivered an address to the IAmerican Association for the Advancement of Science in which he bluntly asserted that Christianity “bears a huge burden of guilt for the devastation of nature in which the West has been engaged for centuries.” The address was published as an article in the journal Science in 1967. White’s work was controversial in academic and theological circles, and its impact even extended into popular culture. His ideas inspired a vibrant and long-lasting debate, and many scholars subsequently weighed in — some supporting, some revising, and others rejecting the White thesis. Although White first intro duced his thesis in 1966, the debate surrounding his ideas became most notable in the early 19705, spurred on by the prominence of the environmental question in this era. Scholars faced with a surge in concern for the environment in society at large, in their search for the intellectual roots of the crisis, necessarily encountered the White thesis. Although interest in the White argument extended into the 198os and in fact continues in the present, I am concerned here with this earlier era, especially as exemplified by the publication of Ecology and Religion in History in 1974, a book devoted entirely to a scholarly response to White.
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