The influence of religion on beliefs of stewardship, dominionship and controlling god towards pro-environmental support

ABSTRACT

Studies on the relationship between religious activity and environmental issues are becoming increasingly significant in view of the enormous environmental difficulties confronting modern civilisation. The study of the relationship between religion and nature has produced contradictory results. Some studies found that religion had a significant influence on people’s attitude toward nature, whereas others found the opposite. The goal of this study is to see how the predictor (stewardship, dominion, and belief in a controlling God) mediated the link between religiosity and pro-environmental support. We conducted an online experiment (N = 280) on the Tangkhul Naga in Northeast India. The findings show that stewardship has a direct and substantial association with religiosity, but dominionship and belief in a controlling God do not. Tangkhul Nagas indicate that people or communities with stewardship tendencies are more inclined to support environmental causes. This paper contends that a strong inclination of stewardship and pro-environmental activism stems from their ancestor’s belief system and their way of life in which they embraced animism and worshipped nature prior to accepting Christianity, as evident from literature and folklores. This paper aims to ascertain that such a belief system is critical at a time when global societies are attempting to minimise the present environmental crisis.

KEYWORDS:

• Religiosity
• stewardship
• dominionship
• belief in a controlling god
• pro-environmental support
• Tangkhul Naga

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.