The issue of environmental consciousness cannot be
framed around the issue of whether you are or are not LDS (HCN,
12/22/03: Being Green in the Land of the Saints). It’s
certainly an interesting slant for the article, but whether your
religion is LDS is no more an indication of your environmental
slant than is race, sex or national identity.
Your map,
which is attached to the article, proves my point. Can Nevada be
any more conservative than Utah, and they only have 7.2 percent
church members? Or Montana, with 4.5 percent? The hypothesis
connecting the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and
anti-environmentalism doesn’t wash. Utahns are as
conservative as those in Nevada and Montana.
I am in a
LDS bishopric, yet am president of Friends of Westwater Canyon, a
group trying to preserve Westwater from development, overuse,
mining, etc. My environmental position has no connection whatsoever
with my religious beliefs (only to the fact that my mother took me
every week to the outside, and that was where I was happiest).
However, there are some very good “revelations,” so to
speak, in the article, about the Creation in LDS belief. The earth
is one of God’s creations, and we are part of it.
Greg Trainor
Grand Junction,
Colorado
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline What does Mormonism have to do with it.
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