Michael McClymond summarizes Jonathan Edwards’s theology of conscience. Edwards concedes that everyone has a conscience. Everyone’s “natural conscience” can perceive right and wrong, but only the converted conscience can fully apprehend God’s moral excellence and beauty. Further, the conscience operates on the principle of “reversibility”: the empathetic orientation of one’s actions considering their effects on others. However, the person with the converted conscience is constantly aware of his propensity to sin and that God’s moral demands are forever correct. Conscience gets stronger and more refined the more it is heeded; conversely, it gets duller the more it is resisted. The faith of true believers removes the stain of a guilty conscience. Even if not redeemed, however, that self-same natural conscience will agree entirely with the justness of God’s righteous punishment for him at the Last Judgment.

While the sociology of morality continues a reemergence as an important subfield, with few exceptions (Bell, 1994; 2018), environmental sociology continues to avoid a dialogue with the sociology of morality. Farrell’s (2015) work on conflicting moral orders and moral devaluation in the US West opens a door to further establishing a sociology of environmental morality. A sociology of environmental morality that brings Bell, Farrell, and others in dialogue aims to open up various environmental conflicts, disagreements, policies, worldviews, and their attendant consequences to sociological examination. After an overview of the basis of a sociology of environmental morality, this entry concludes with two examples from agri-food studies.