| OCR Text |
Show 14 with the national conservation movcmcnt. 30 He cites the undcrsranding and concern that early church leaders in Utah had with the natural world. Primarily, they saw the relationship between overgrazing and flood ing, and they believed this and other environmental issues were related to doctrinal teachings of environmental stcwardship.31 He also points to the disconnect, or "c\efl" as he calls it, that came between belief and practice and caused extensive environmental damage in Utah, particularly in the last part of the nineteenth century and early part of the twentieth century: Many of those who ran the grazing herds, lumber mills, and smelters were also Latter-day Saints who forgot or ignored the teachings of ... [church leaders] in their quest for survival or wealth. In resisting environmentally sound proposals, often driven by market opportunities, they valued jobs and wealth more than the sanctity of life, stewardship, and reverence for the earth. In practice they may not have thought of the theological implications of their actions except in terms of personal freedom ('free agency'), which Monnons have often invoked in opposition to community rcgulation. 32 ln the late 1920s and through the 1930s, Alexander noted an emerging environmental concern and action for conservation from the Monnon community. This change was influenced in part by the broader conservation movement in the United States and in response to pollution and overgrazing in the state. "In the long run then, perhaps Some of the earlies! research on cnviroumental thought in Utah and how that thought was shaped by Mormon doctrine was done by Hugh W. Nibley. For example, Hugh W. Nibley, "Subduing the Earth," in Nibley on the Timely and Timeless: Classic Ern:iy.f ofHugh W. Nibley, Religious Studies Monograph Series (l'rovo, UT: Brigham Young University Re ligious Studies Center, 1978), 85-99; Hugh W. Nibley, '"Brigham Young on the Environment," in To the Glory ofGod: Mormon Essays on Great /ss11esEnvironmen1. Commitment. Lo1·e. Peace, Youth, Man, ed. Truman G. Madsen and Charles D. Tate, Jr. (Salt Lake City: Dcscrct Book, 1972), 3-29. Although not focused specifically on Mormonism or Utah, Roderick Nash discusses some of the issues with religion, environmental consciousness, and conceptualizations of wilderness, in Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind, 13-22. See also, Wendell Berry, "Religion and the Environment," in American t:nl'ironmentalism: Readings in Conservation llistory, ed. Roderick Frazier Nash, 3n1 ed., rev. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1990), 275-79. JO 31 Alexander, l2 1bid., 362 "Stewardship and Enterprise," 343. |
