Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt is famously critical of climate change; Niina Heikkinen of Environment & Energy News recently exploredwhether Pruitt's religious beliefs might help shape his attitude toward his work. She spoke with his pastor, Nick Garland, of the First Baptist Church in Pruitt’s home of Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. Garland said that Pruitt, a deacon who taught Sunday School, had “very, very strong religious convictions” and was a trustee of a Southern Baptist Convention seminary.
The denomination places great importance on the virtues of both human beings' stewardship of the earth and their dominion over it, Heikkinen says, which may conflict sometimes on a political level. It’s a rights vs. responsibility issue at heart. Stewardship is the idea that God wants people to take care of the earth and be responsible for what is done to it. Dominion emphasizes that God has granted man control over the earth and everything on it. “And so that gives a little bit more leeway, in a way, to act differently, to, for example, maybe engage in hydraulic fracturing because you are using the resources of the earth to benefit people,” she says.
Pruitt attended a Bible study as recently as this spring that was run by Capitol Ministries, whose president issued a supplemental reading that strongly stressed a dominionist attitude. Heikkinen, interviewed in an E&E News video, shies away from saying that this admittedly circumstantial evidence describes Pruitt's feelings. "Well, you know, I have to say that I haven't spoken to Mr. Pruitt about his beliefs, and so I'd be hesitant to say exactly how his religion may play into it. But people who I spoke to for this article were saying that, you know, if someone really strongly holds this idea of dominion, then you might have this idea that you have authority to use the earth for your — for the advantage, as I mentioned, of maybe doing hydraulic fracturing or mining, instead of focusing on more of the stewardship side. There's also this idea that if God is in control and has a divine plan for the planet, that there isn't really a need to act as a person because God has already preordained what will happen."
The denomination places great importance on the virtues of both human beings' stewardship of the earth and their dominion over it, Heikkinen says, which may conflict sometimes on a political level. It’s a rights vs. responsibility issue at heart. Stewardship is the idea that God wants people to take care of the earth and be responsible for what is done to it. Dominion emphasizes that God has granted man control over the earth and everything on it. “And so that gives a little bit more leeway, in a way, to act differently, to, for example, maybe engage in hydraulic fracturing because you are using the resources of the earth to benefit people,” she says.
Pruitt attended a Bible study as recently as this spring that was run by Capitol Ministries, whose president issued a supplemental reading that strongly stressed a dominionist attitude. Heikkinen, interviewed in an E&E News video, shies away from saying that this admittedly circumstantial evidence describes Pruitt's feelings. "Well, you know, I have to say that I haven't spoken to Mr. Pruitt about his beliefs, and so I'd be hesitant to say exactly how his religion may play into it. But people who I spoke to for this article were saying that, you know, if someone really strongly holds this idea of dominion, then you might have this idea that you have authority to use the earth for your — for the advantage, as I mentioned, of maybe doing hydraulic fracturing or mining, instead of focusing on more of the stewardship side. There's also this idea that if God is in control and has a divine plan for the planet, that there isn't really a need to act as a person because God has already preordained what will happen."
from The Rural Blog http://ift.tt/2tqqnH9 Pruitt's religious beliefs could shape EPA's direction - Entrepreneur Generations
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