RELIGION AND ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERN - CHALLENGING THE DOMINANT ASSUMPTIONS

Using a national sample of Americans we examined the relationships between three measures of religiosity (attendance, born again, personal religion) and three attitudes about the environment (increase federal spending, relax environmental controls for economic growth, and self-identification as an environmentalist). We controlled for education, age, gender, and region. Without controls, we found that religious individuals were less likely than nonreligious individuals to support additional federal spending to protect the environment. Church attendance and being born again predicted willingness to relax environmental controls for the sake of economic growth. None of the religious variables predicted identification as an environmentalist. The addition of controls minimized the effects of the religious variables upon willingness to support environmental protection and to relax environmental regulations. Overall, our interpretation of these findings challenges the dominant view that those in Judeo-Christian traditions-particularly religiously conservative individuals in these traditions-are less concerned about environmental issues than are other individuals.