Article April 13, 1998 Issue

How green is the Bible?

A former ecologist invites you to discover your role as one of earth's stewards.

By Robert D. Wright

These days green means friendly to the environment. There are world conferences and local campaigns, political parties, advocacy groups, even businesses and products, all directed toward solving ecological problems.

Early in my career as an ecologist back in the 1960s, some historians and others voiced their opinions that Christians, specifically, had a policy of exploiting the earth. They pointed to a particular passage in the book of Genesis as authority for this view. Their claims surprised me and made me ask myself if the Bible could in fact share the blame for the way Western civilization abuses the environment.

When I looked at the Bible text itself, I got a somewhat different message from the one these individuals presented. Genesis 1:28 states of man, "And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, 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."

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