Key figures in the history of the environmental movement such as John Muir, Henry David Thoreau, and other early environmental voices understood this. Even today, many environmental advocates employ religious language, or adopt a rhetorical tone recalling the ancient Hebrew prophets, while being careful to remain appropriately secular.

For a variety of reasons, most environmentalism tends to distance itself from its religious roots. In fact, many in the environmental movement actually blame the current crisis on the Judeo-Christian tradition. As a result, religious voices have been largely shut out of meaningful discussions. How did this happen?

At the root of the Judeo-Christian tradition is the Book of Genesis from the Hebrew Scriptures. Many environmental thinkers today view this book with suspicion largely because of a deeply flawed essay by Lynn White, Jr. that appeared in Science magazine in 1967. This essay laid the blame for the environmental crisis mainly on alleged teachings found in Genesis, particularly the false claim that God had made the earth for humans to exploit. In addition, Genesis creation accounts have been wrenched from their original context and pressed into service as ancient treatises on cosmology, further obscuring these texts. However, a closer reading of Genesis, and its creation stories in particular, reveals some interesting, often overlooked insights into how humans are to live within the created order.

To grasp these insights, one must understand the purpose of creation stories in antiquity. Creation accounts or cosmogonies served as a framework by which a nation defined itself. They defined key values and basic institutions. By grounding these values and institutions at the foundation of a divinely-created cosmos, they were divinely sanctioned. Cosmogonies were was a way of laying out how the world was supposed to work.

It’s instructive to compare Genesis with, for instance, the creation story of the ancient Babylonians, called the Enuma Elish. These two creation myths express radically different worldviews. For the Babylonians, the defining institution is a palace sustained by raw political power and the use of systemic violence, whereas in Genesis, instead of building a palace at the conclusion of creation, God plants a garden. Where Babylonian myth creates humans to do all the hard, dirty work that the gods would rather avoid, Genesis institutes the Sabbath, in which by divine decree, everyone gets a day off once a week.

These are just a few of the insights found in Genesis that can and should have a larger place in our discussions of environmental problems. We will discuss these and other ideas on what the Book of Genesis has to say about the role of humanity in the created world.