ABSTRACT
Over thirty years ago, the historian Lynn White Jr. wrote, “Especially in its Western form, Christianity is the most anthropocentric religion the world has seen” (White, 1967: 1206). Since White’s influential essay was published, a number of Christian theologians and ethicists, as well as many non-Christians, have debated his claims. Some have supported and even extended his critique. Others have argued that White’s claims were too sweeping and that Christianity has, or at least can have, an ecologically positive message. A number have pointed to an ambivalence within the tradition itself, which White himself suggested with his tribute to St Francis as the “patron saint of ecology” (1967: 1207). Others have sought to defend Christianity not as a mixed bag but as powerfully, perhaps uniquely, able to gen erate a compelling environmental ethic in the modern West.
