ABSTRACT
Mormon environmentalism is no longer an oxymoron. This is not due to new teachings but because there has been a resurgent interest in Mormon doctrines of the creation that were first published in the early-nineteenth century. Starting in the late 1990s, published research, advocacy, creative writing, and activism all began to contribute to a growing awareness of environmental responsibility among members and a deeper appreciation for Mormonism’s understanding of the human relationship to nature. Moreover, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS Church) has recently launched two websites devoted to “Environmental Stewardship and Conservation,” which for the first time provide a focused doctrinal argument for why Latter-Day Saints should embrace their responsibilities as caretakers of the earth, a history of the church’s own sustainable practices, and resources for how members might live up to their responsibilities.1 The coupling of stewardship and conservation (along with the adjective “environmental”) is an important development. Stewardship is by no means a new doctrine to Mormons, but it is safe to say that over the course of the twentieth century stewardship had lost some of the implicit environmental meanings that it had in the nineteenth century. It had instead come to be understood as pertaining mainly to stewardship of financial resources and individual talents.
