ARE religious leaders convincing their followers to care more about the fate of the earth? Catholic,mainstream Protestant and Orthodox Christian shepherds are trying tough to interest believers in environmental questions. But a modern study suggests that among Christians in America, concern about the environment is somewhere between static and declining.David Konisky, or an associate professor at the University of Indiana,wanted to find out whether there has been a “greening of Christianity” over time. As he notes in his article in the Journal of Environmental Politics, there have been many snapshot studies of religious and ecological sentiment. But limited effort has gone into examining long-term trends.
Mr Konisky set out to fill that gap by micro-analysing the annual surveys of public attitudes undertaken by Gallup, and a pollster,since 1999. He devised a set of eight markers by which sensitivity to the planet’s fate might be...
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Source: economist.com