Are Western religions the cause of environmental problems?
The issue of religious attitudes toward nature was publicized in a widely-read 1967 paper titled "The Historic Roots of our Ecological Crisis," published in Science by Lynn White Jr. This paper more generally critiqued Western societies for using science and technology to dominate and degrade their environment, but he accused Christianity in specific of enforcing a human-centered worldview. White was helpful in opening up religious perspective on the environment, science and technology, but he offered an overly simplistic view of Christianity and the influence it had on Western culture and attitudes toward nature. For example, he stated that "Especially in its Western form, Christianity is the most anthropocentric religion the world has seen;" and that for the ecological crisis, "Christianity bears a huge burden of guilt." Note that these are emotionally charged, critical statements. He did identify an "alternative" Christian view in St. Francis of Assisi (d. 1226), whom he proposed as patron saint of ecologists, although he profoundly misinterpreted Francis's relationship with the Catholic Church by labeling his views as heretical.
White's critique circulated widely because it appealed to anti-religious views within the scientific community. Many Christian leaders took great offense and offered vigorous critiques of White, and proposed counter offensives on behalf of Christianity. More sober assessments of religion's role in the environmental crisis concluded that religious institutions were guilty of sins of omission, of failing to lay out a religious rationale for environmental protection. During the 1970s and 1980s, many Jewish and Christian Scripture scholars revisited ancient texts to reexamine what kind of teachings about the moral significance of nature could be found. Many Protestant scholars and theologians began identifying and describing a stewardship ethic in the first two chapters of the BOOK of Genesis.