"Here, God tells Adam and Eve: 'Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and all the living things that crawl on the earth.' This single verse has been held accountable for creating a permission structure that's allowed generations of humans to hunt and fish and kill and maim and pollute; to strip field and forest of vegetation, to mine, drill and frack."
"'Christianity is the most anthropocentric religion the world has seen,' he writes; 'in absolute contrast to ancient paganism and Asia's religions,' Christianity 'not only established a dualism of man and nature but also insisted that it is God's will that man exploit nature for his proper ends.' White casts the Church as a covert actor in the brutalisation of our planet, one that 'bears a huge burden of guilt'."
"Over the same period, there's been a notable shift - largely associated with the evangelical movement - that's seen Christians turn inwards, increasingly fixating on their own moral arc. According to the theologian Terrence Ehrman at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, 'Christian belief in God the Creator has been eclipsed' by 'belief in Jesus Christ the Redeemer'. With that comes a near-fanatical focus on sin, repentance and a striving for personal redemption."
Christianity is commonly associated with anthropocentrism, grounding human dominion over nature through Genesis 1:28 and enabling exploitation of ecosystems. That verse has functioned as a permission structure allowing hunting, fishing, pollution, deforestation, mining, drilling and fracking. Historical analysis argues that Christianity established a dualism of man and nature and insisted that human exploitation aligns with God's will, assigning substantial culpability for ecological harm. A later shift, tied to evangelicalism, redirected attention inward toward sin, repentance and personal salvation, eclipsing belief in God as Creator. The inward focus reduced institutional engagement with environmental stewardship and weakened theological incentives to protect the natural world.
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