By Lena Babaeva Coradini

"Religion comes slowly to environmentalism" is a headline that I was surprised to read, because for awhile there seemed to be numerous articles highlighting how in other parts of the nation churches lead the environmental movement in green building practices and sustainability.  Additionally, Dodd Galbreath, a leader from Lipscomb University, consistently tie in religion with environmental stewardship has also led me to believe that such sentiment was frequent.  The other headlines may have been misleading, however, as it appears that religion is slow to support the environmental movement:

While only 21 percent of Americans report being active in the environmental movement, a 2008 survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that nearly 90 percent of Americans described themselves as religious.

"Simply based on the numbers, the faith community could be critically important to the environmental dialogue," said Jerry Lawson, national manager of the Environmental Protection Agency's Energy Star Small Business and Congregations Network, a division of EPA that helps congregations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Energy Star estimates that if each of the more than 300,000 houses of worship in the United States cut energy consumption by 10 percent, congregations would save
$200 million and would eliminate greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to 400,000 cars.

Because of their large numbers, American evangelicals could be a critical component of the burgeoning eco-religious movement. About 59 million Americans identify as evangelical Protestants, according to the 2008 Pew study.

What is interesting is the history of why there is not a larger group of supporters in the evangelical movement:

Evangelical attitudes toward environmentalism are complex. As early as 1970, the National Association of Evangelicals equated preservation of natural resources and ecological balance with preservation of God's creation.

Around that time, evangelicals began to clash ideologically with scientists and leaders of the early environmental movement over issues of population control and evolution, Wilson said. Environmentalists advocated abortion as a solution to population control, while evangelicals opposed abortion. Meanwhile, political conservatism began to dominate evangelical thought, and environmentalists became associated with liberalism.

Executive Pastor Don Bromley of the Vineyard Church of Ann Arbor counts himself a former skeptic of the environmental movement.

"I used to believe stereotypes that environmentalists didn't care about human beings as much as they did the natural world," Bromley said. "They were anti-progress."

Today, those divisions still hold.