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Christianity and the environment - The capital question in this article concerns the Christian religion’s influence on nature. Is Christian morality in any measure responsible for the present ecological disaster ? Or are there other factors which may have caused the Western way of life, characterized by the destruction of nature ? The problem advanced above is treated in two ways. First, a global analysis of the relation between Christianity and nature gives us an impression of the hostility against naturalness, typical of Christian ideas. This negative attitude towards all creatures that are not human, is clearly present in the Bible, and even runs like a thread through Christian history. Naturalness, uncontrollable phenomena and processes are considered objectionable. The Renaissance period in a certain sense implies a return to nature, but a renewal of the church’s impact and the rising modern way of scientific thinking enlarged the distance between man and his environment. Moreover, it seems that Christianity itself caused this Cartesian way of thinking, because it created the gap, it divided the natural from the sacred. The Cartesian system reduced nature to an object to be analysed, in which processes are perfectly reversible and controllable. It induced the economic system of the ’homo economicus’, a system that only aims at material profits, without caring about the natural environment : capitalism. The refusal of ’the uncivilized* was put into practice at the confrontation of Christian Western Europe with the non-Christian populations of the New World, at the end of the 15th century. That aspect is discussed in the second part of this text. The conquest of America is an appropriate occasion to examine the real character of Christianity. The Christian attitude towards the natives, who considered nature as the highest good, confirms our hypothesis that nature has suffered, and still suffers, under the pressure of such Christian values as the obligation to work, the interdiction to enjoy without commitment, the virtuousness of collecting material goods as a sign of God’s grace, etc. The destruction of the environment and innumerable native cultures, all over the world, has raised fundamental questions in Western societies. At the same time, there is a tendency among Western populations to revive a philosophy of life based on a new spiritualism and to fill up the emotional void created by materialism. These two processes of growing awareness are complementary, and together, they may form a step forward towards a society based on ecological principles.
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How to Cite: De Bruycker, A. (1992) “Christendom en milieu”, Tijdschrift voor Sociale Wetenschappen. 37(2). doi: https://doi.org/10.21825/tvsw.95105