RELIGION AND ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERN - CHALLENGING THE DOMINANT ASSUMPTIONS

Using a national sample of Americans we examined the relationships bet ween three measures of religiosity (attendance, born again, personal r eligion) and three attitudes about the environment (increase federal s pending, relax environmental controls for economic growth, and self-id entification as an environmentalist). We controlled for education, age , gender, and region. Without controls, we found that religious indivi duals were less likely than nonreligious individuals to support additi onal federal spending to protect the environment. Church attendance an d being born again predicted willingness to relax environmental contro ls for the sake of economic growth. None of the religious variables pr edicted identification as an environmentalist. The addition of control s minimized the effects of the religious variables upon willingness to support environmental protection and to relax environmental regulatio ns. Overall, our interpretation of these findings challenges the domin ant view that those in Judeo-Christian traditions-particularly religio usly conservative individuals in these traditions-are less concerned a bout environmental issues than are other individuals.