There are some that do. One local group called the Earth ministry is all about shepherding and maintenance of the planet. I suspect there are many others like this. However, the more liberal churches are waning in power and influence to the more radical fundamentalists. The radicals actually believe the earth needs to be destroyed for their personal salvation. Religion has, yet again, showed it's dark and evil side.

In the cult I grew up in, The First United Methodist Church. It was believed that the end was near and the members actively WANTED IT TO HAPPEN!

Lets look at it this way If you know that you will throw away leftovers tomorrow and no one will eat the rest tonight. There is no reason to freeze it. If the world will end in the next few years there is no reason to care about species going extinct or the environment. I do not agree with this, I am only stateing the mindset.

This reminds me of a time when I was riding in a car with other people. One man rolled down the window and threw a wadded up piece of paper out of it. I asked why he threw litter on the ground. He replied that Jesus is coming soon, and the world's going to burn up, anyway, so what difference does it make? I was so shocked that I could not respond.

Thinking about it, I wish I had said something like this: Would you be happy if people threw trash on your own lawn? No? Didn't Jesus command you to love your neighbor as yourself? If you don't want people trashing your lawn, why do you trash the property of others? Isn't that disobeying the command of Jesus?

For my fellow Tennesseans who are not religious, I would point out that not only is it unethical to litter (such disrespect causes others to become sad, angry or depressed), it is also against Tennessee law.

There is an obvious illogic in the end times ideology of most fundamentalists, once expressed as. "How can you claim to honour god , and yet despise his creation." If you follow the Abrahamic religious logic, that the children of Adam and Eve were given the task of caring for and tending god's creation. Then it follows that, it is their god given duty to use, even their last breath, in an attempt to protect the very last creature on the planet, even in the final seconds of judgment day as the wall of fire falls upon them.

But of course the religious are not interested in logical theology, because the religious mindset is quite different at its very base from the secular. To the secular mind, truth is something, ideally, to be sought no matter how much it may hurt your desired world view. While to the religious, truth is, that which confirms what I want to believe. It is the very opposite way of thinking, and it is the way of thinking fostered by churches, corporations and governments, who want a vast supply, of permanently immature demanding children who can not wait to buy every new product.

Which justifies every form of cherry picking, ignoring of what your holy book logically has to say, and living, with like minded others, in an echo chamber world where the center of the universe is "me", and the "me" can have everything the "me " wants, regardless of all reason.

I don't find it so hard to discuss with Christians this way of looking at things. We need to convince them in their way of thinking, not ours. If you have to tell them how unicorns, fairies, Santa Claus, angels and demons will become extinct if they don't care for the world, then so be it.

I think one part of it is because they ignore parts of the OT like where 'god' says to plant for 6 years and then in year 7 let the soil regenerate from nature, also that 'god' says all of the land is his (yet they are destroying it), also the book of Numbers says you shouldn't pollute. So, I think christians who now follow the NT and jeebus don't have to follow those things.

As for atheists/agnostics I have read and talked with many scientific ones who struggle with how people can't understand listen to what they have written and said.

I totally disagree. Christians are more concerned about the environment than you left wingers. How do you explain the fact that co2 emissions have decreased since Trump became president.

I disagree with the premise all together. If this were true, China wouldn't be produceing more than twice as much CO2 fossil fuel emissions as the US.

I think it was Stephen Hawking who predicted that the end of the human species will be as a direct result of our greed and stupidity which will lead to the destruction of our eco-system. This is essentially what religion is all about so the band will continue to play on so long as religitards are calling the tune.

In many ways, the natural world has been considered an adversary threatening life; one which God often uses through its extreme such as floods and earthquakes to punish humans for defying God in some way. We still use the phrase "acts of God" in insurance to describe certain incidents with no particular reason for why they occurred. Many aspects of religion would appear (imo) to keep people separated from nature rather than integrated with it. I recall passages from Genesis Christian know granting humans dominion over everything connected twith the earth and that God gave the earth to humans to use for their benefit. These passages have had as much to do with Christians supporting environmental abuses or at least disregarding environmental protections.

One way to go is the story of Noah's Ark. Whether they believe in it literally or symbolically God told Noah to save all the animals in the world. From what I understand there has not been an addendum to that command stating it was so OT and no longer in line with his current mission statement. As I type, we are killing off whole species at a genocidal level. It is incumbent on all of us to do something about it, regardless of our religious views.

"Creation care." WTF is creation care? What is hard to grasp here with environment and issues of our environment involves the Christians. The reason is that our environment does not matter because god is taking care of that and why should we worry because we are not going to remain on the Earth for that much longer. That's right. This last bunch of believers are so special that god is going to remove them so they do not have to go through what all before them have endured. They believe their bible says that.

Then you have people like Bill O'Reilly who says of god "he's still up there, he's still in control." This goes over Fox Noise and is absorbed by so many not to smart people. It means that Koch Industries and those of like mind are setting you up to rape your environment without a single care about you or your healthcare. They are also setting up political action groups to change everything in their favor so as to do this. It is trickery backed up by religion and every bit of it is used against us.

This is what is behind Trump and his new Executive Order on our environment. In fact, this is also the major group that is behind Trump. Believers do not care about tomorrow if the world is ready to end. In fact, they will do anything to make it hurry up and happen. Look at the rants of Michelle Bachmann and others on this. Look at the many idiotic rants of popular Evangelical preachers today in Trumpland. Koch, Mercer, DeVos, et al. They all want to trick the farmer into leaving the hen house door open. This is what it is all about.

I can't agree with the author of this article . I don't see that Christianity is a cause of not caring about the environment . Two of our presidents set aside great chunks of land to preserve it as parks , laws were passed to develop the Environment Protection Agency ( present idiot excepted ) , effective clean air laws were passed and enacted upon years ago . While it's true , we still have a long ways to go , and we;ve lost ground due to Trump's greed , I don't think that can be blamed upon religion .

While most of them aren't likely to admit it, I suspect what Hitchens said about them is true - they secretly cannot wait for the end times to come. By extension, the end of the earth as we know it. Why worry about the condition of the planet when Gawd is coming soon enough to sort it all out for you?

Also, since they are willing to suspend enough belief in the reality of things in order to chase a mystical sky captain, it's not strange to think they'd be skeptical of the doom and gloom scenarios trumpeted by the more mundane "over-educated, know-it-all" liberal crowd.

I don't know about the environment but they don't care about most of the bullshit they claim to believe. Like sexual purity before marriage. Caring about their neighbors. Caring about poor people. Caring about being being financial stewards.

We are thirty odd years too late. Global climate Change is essentially a large scale, slow acting chem experiment we have been conducting since we discovered fire, on ourselves, in the petri dish we occupy, with no understanding when we began and not much better understanding now.

The chemistry I am mentioning is what drives global warming, and it is measured in geologic time (the age of rocks) not the standard most humans are used to even thinking in. Try this, the changes we have made, to date, if we stopped everything today, would affect our ancestors as far ahead as Sumeria is behind, perhaps more, we only have so much math to work with.

So we need to do all we can, but also need to grasp why the latest IPCC report endlessly repeats the term "ADAPTIVE", technologies, infrastructure, agriculture, we need to adapt to survive.

This is the 6th great extinction event, and we made it. Whether we survive it, evolve through it or become a part of it remains to be seen.

I think Slajov has a very valid point on this here (10 min)

Christians believe that before the earth is destroyed Jesus will return and wisk them off to Heaven. So they don't care about the environment or climate change....they think this will speed up Jesus' return.

One reason I stopped going to a particular church is because I heard so many of the people in it laughing about something scientists had said about climate change, or vaccines or whatever science had to say. This was years before I called myself atheist.
They had the attitude that god would take care of it all, so why make an effort.

I think it's a bit of a guilt trip article aimed at Christians. If it were to work I'm not sure what shape it would take given that most of the worlds environmental problems are directly linked to the side effects of mass production. Perhaps a new Christian crusade/inquisition promoting green values?

Some Christians I know don't care because:

1. God gave humans dominion over the earth and it will last just as long as he needs/wants it to last.

2. Everything is going according to "God's plan." And, this plan involves chaos, war, famine, drought etc. in the end days. To try to "save" the planet is human hubris.

3. Jesus will rapture his followers before it gets really bad. Only the unfaithful will have to endure the tribulation; or, basically "I won't be here so I don't care and the rest of you will get what you deserve."

This verse might discourage Christians from making any personal efforts to save the world. It might even seem to some Christians like a lack of faith in God getting the job done. That said, I'm not sure how many Christians might even know this verse:

*The nations were angry, and Your wrath has come, And the time of the dead, that they should be judged, And that You should reward Your servants the prophets and the saints, And those who fear Your name, small and great, And should destroy those who destroy the earth - Revelation 11:18.

“WHY IS IT DIFFICULT TO GET CHRISTIANS TO CARE ABOUT THE EARTH?”

Most religious groups avoid officially taking sides on political and social issues. Those that do take sides often splinter into sects or erode nearly away. That doesn’t prevent extremists of all sorts from flocking in to hawk their particular agendas.

I suspect that Stephen Mattson has fallen into the current habit of over-generalizing or stereotyping religious groups. It would help his argument if he could produce scientific studies showing that it really is hard to get Christians to care about the earth.

He mentions Evangelism. Evangelicals are used by some as a scapegoat for all sorts of perceived evils, yet they are only a quarter of the population, spread all around the country, and hold almost every conceivable opinion on various issues. His question is almost as ridiculous as asking why it’s so hard to get the YMCA to take up extreme environmentalism. Counter-questions: “Why do you want them to and why should they take focus off their mission and divert off into partisanship and disunity?”

The most religious people I personally know are specifically hoping for the end of the world. It's right in their group name -- 'Latter Day Saints'. I've heard them invoke it in blessings -- they mention 'these latter days'. They are literally praying for the end of humanity.

Besides being selfish to the point of being very sick, it's also extremely foolish. I don't know how any rational person could believe that sort of garbage or especially try to nurture it.

It's not hard to grasp at all; use biblical language to appeal to the religious. The problem is, as far as I'm concerned, I'm extremely cynical about such an approach working. Fundamentalist Christians are unlikely to listen to anyone outside their own constricted viewpoint, and the official viewpoint is that God is in control and therefore it doesn't matter what we humans do.