The Complex Ways Religion and Place Inform Climate Belief: Lessons from the Global Latter-day Saint (Mormon) Community

Environmental beliefs are informed by an array of influences, well beyond simple scientific facts. Two key influences are religion and place. This research seeks to understand how these two forces interact in forming climate narratives. To study this, I focused my research on three international congregations of the same unusually homogenous religious faith — the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS or Mormon). By interviewing participants from this single, standardised faith tradition in multiple contrasting places, I was able to assess whether shared religious faith creates shared environmental values even across vast distances. These field sites were: Southern Utah; Savai’i, Samoa; and London, England. In each case, I asked about the participants' personal experience with the changing climate, their environmental beliefs, the impact of geography on their life, and their personal ecotheology. Using thematic analysis, I found that environmental beliefs varied widely from one field site to another. Belief in the LDS church did not create a homogenous perception of either the environment or ecotheology. Instead, beliefs were strongly associated with local norms, and informed by their place. Participants then seemed to shape their ecotheology to reflect their environmental beliefs. Altogether, this led me to conclude that in the production of environmental beliefs, religion is merely one ingredient of varying potency depending on their place and the associated key factors comprising climate perception. For the LDS church, these findings mean that future official ecotheological statements may not unite member beliefs. For the wider community, religion’s contingent impact means it should be approached as neither scapegoat nor salvation for future environmental policies.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

Doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of Cambridge

Year dc:date.issued

2025

Author dc:creator

• Hahne, Madeleine

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Hulme, Mike

• Climate
• Religion
• Latter-day Saint
• Mormon
• Environment

Licence

• https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/47742284-7331-46b0-9254-48822578a018/download
• http://purl.org/NET/rdflicense/allrightsreserved

Language dc:language

eng

Author Identifier

0000-0002-8853-6891

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/391114