“After us, the Deluge” - A quantitative analysis of the relationship between Christian denominations and climate change scepticism in the Netherlands

Besides the fact that the role of religion in contemporary literature regarding climate change sceptic attitudes is contested, little research has focused on the association between levels of biblical literacy and these sceptic beliefs. Where most research treats religion as a one-dimensional dichotomous variable, this study expands on research conducted by Morrison et al. (2015) and Arbuckle and Konisky (2015) to examine whether levels of biblical literalness of Christian denominations account for variance in climate change sceptic viewpoints. In addition, the effect of moral traditionalism on these denominations is examined to review whether living in highly concentrated Christian environments reaffirms existing environmental beliefs. Using the dataset of the 2016 European Social Study, 406 Dutch adherers of three Christian affiliations (Roman-Catholics, Protestants and Reformed) were examined. The analyses showed that there were no substantial significant differences in climate change sceptic attitudes between the denominations. This absence could be due to the relatively small sample size or the general lack of strong conservative viewpoints among Christian affiliations in the Netherlands. Furthermore, no differences between groups were observed for the interactional effect of moral traditionalism, which indicates that higher levels of moral traditionalism do not account for more climate change sceptic attitudes. Hence, to better understand the connection between moral traditionalism and collective religiosity in certain regions, high-quality area-driven data is needed to provide conclusive evidence concerning this outcome.