Seyyed Hossein Nasr, a pioneering figure in the field of ecotheology,[2][3] was among the early thinkers "to draw attention to the spiritual dimensions of the environmental crisis" He first presented his insight in a 1965 essay, expanding it in a series of lectures given at the University of Chicago the following year, in May 1966, several months before Lynn White, Jr. gave his famous lecture before the American Academy of Arts and Sciences on December 26, 1966 (published in Science in 1967 as "The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis").
[2] Anna M. Gade states that the "short and often credited" article by Lynn White contained "similar arguments" made by Nasr in his "influential" Rockefeller Series Lectures at the University of Chicago Divinity School, about a year ago.
In this work, White puts forward a theory that the Christian model of human dominion over nature has led to environmental devastation, providing a voice for "The Ecological Complaint".
Systems of Traditional Ecological Knowledge, in combination with modern scientific methods of ecosystem management, are steadily gaining interest as environmental activists realize the importance of locally invested groups.
It is well represented in Protestantism by John B. Cobb, Jr., Jürgen Moltmann, and Michael Dowd; in ecofeminism by feminist theologians Rosemary Radford Ruether, Catherine Keller, and Sallie McFague; in ecowomanism by Melanie Harris and Karen Baker-Fletcher; in liberation theology by Leonardo Boff and Tink Tinker; in Roman Catholicism by John F. Haught and Pope Francis; and in Orthodoxy by Elizabeth Theokritoff and George Nalunnakkal (currently Bishop Geevarghese Mor Coorilose of the Jacobite Syrian Christian Church).
Elisabet Sahtouris is an evolutionary biologist and futurist who promotes a vision she believes will result in the sustainable health and well-being of humanity within the larger living systems of Earth and the cosmos.
Annie Dillard, Pulitzer Prize-winning American author, also combined observations on nature and philosophical explorations in several ecotheological writings, including Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.
Mark I. Wallace is a self-described Christian animist; his research argues that when God appears in the Bible as a dove, a snake, or the burning bush, that this is a literal transformation rather than a metaphorical one.