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The researchers of this article talk about a few different issues with how environmental data and religious data are collected, saying that there are more complex views than can be captured in surveys and thus some results may not be as accurate because of that.
They also bring up a point that many articles focusing on religion and the environment have missed, and that is the role of politics with religion or the environment. Sometimes it is said that an individual’s political views determine what their environmental views are. However, in this article they talk about how religion is very important in political views. So there is some sort of relationship between the three that is still being explored.
Despite the researchers’ belief that politics are important in the analysis of the relationship between environmental views and religious views, in this study they focused once again on environmental views and their relationship to religious views, specifically three factors in religious views: beliefs, traditions, and commitments. They focus on biblical literalism and End Times Thinking (Eschatology), mostly in the conservative Protestant Christian belief. They do, however, take into account political factors.
The researchers used four data sets that focused on a variety of things, but had appropriate religious and environmental variables. The results were varied, but they indicate strong correlations with political-identity variables. In fact it seems as though politics and eschatology were very important controlling variables (since this was a regression test).
As usual, this research left as many questions as it did answers. It has significant correlation information on conservative eschatology, religious tradition, and religious commitment, but notes that there is a lot of questions unanswered on what determines the religious views that are seen in this research.