Between Father God and Mother Earth: Whiteness, Masculinity, and First World Privilege in Evangelicals' Anti-Environmentalism

• In Event: Race, Religions, and Religious Racism

Abstract

Focusing on public declarations regarding the environment issued by Southern Baptist leaders in the 2000s, I argue that evangelical views on climate change and the environment hinge on intersectional relationships to structural power and hierarchical understandings of women, queer people, people of color, and the so-called Third World. I explore what tenets proposed by queer-of-color and ecofeminist scholars evangelicals might employ to reformulate environmental justice and imagine futurity for evangelical environmentalism and suggest that only by rejecting hierarchical understanding of value can evangelicals begin to construct an ethic of creation care that does not instill oppression in its foundations.

Presenter

• Samantha Vandermeade, Arizona State University