RELIGION, ECOLOGY AND THE ANTHROPOCENE DRAFT CONFERENCE CALL (original) (raw)
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The Field of Religion and Ecology: Addressing the Environmental Crisis and Challenging Faiths
This essay is concerned with “religion and ecology,” or religious environmentalism. It analyzes how religious traditions are used to understand and interact with the environment and environmental issues, suggesting wass of relating to these that are different from and possibly less destructive and ecologically harmful than those of the modern secular worldview. It argues that religious traditions may thereby be gaining new private and public relevance, while perhaps also being changed in the process, becoming more envrionmentally friendly and ecumenical. The article ethnographically and qualitatively analyzes a “field of religion and ecology” comprising ecologically minded academics ansd representatives of various religious traditions who promote such ideas, stimulating new eco-spiritualities and theologies, possibly even a new eco-religious movement. It also explores the environmental reintepretation of several religious traditions within the field, highlighting not only some influential images and views but also any commonalities or convergences that may be arising or are being encouraged between them.
Ecospirit: religion and the environment
European journal of literature, culture and the environment, 2011
From time immemorial, nature and the sacred have been deeply intertwined, be it in animist and pantheistic beliefs, in the Christian view that the "Book of Nature" complements the Holy Scriptures, or in Far-Eastern philosophies of compassionate non-duality which envision the divide between S/self and O/other as illusory. Only relatively recently in human history has the link between nature and piety been weakened by the development of post-agrarian, global, and consumerist-driven economies. Even the advent of Western-style empirical science could not completely sever the connection between mysticism and enquiries into nature: Francis Bacon and his heirs may have transformed the Earth into a feminised and exploitable "subaltern"; but, conversely, humans have also been awed by the natural sciences and the glimpse that they offer into the patterns of creativity and communication of natural systems whose complexity continues to surpass our understanding. As rightly pointed out by specialists of "nature spirituality" like Bron Taylor, eco-biological models like James Lovelock's Gaia theory have also given rise to new non-theistic, postmodern "ecopieties" (13-41). Thus, to borrow Taylor's terminology, whether one talks of the current "greening" of institutional world religions or of the emergent forms of "dark green" spirituality sacralising nature and rooted in holistic ethics (Taylor 12), the nonhuman realm of creation, its primacy, mysteries, and elusive "language" continue to inspire spiritualities old and new worldwide. Yet, whether it be of the milder green or more radically dark green variety, "ecospirituality" has unsettled and continues to do so, not just outside the confines of the ecocritical community, but also in its very midst. Whilst ecocritics tend to concur in attributing social, economic, political, and ethical causes to the current environmental crisis, not all would go as far as to see it also in terms of a "spiritual crisis" and to the point of considering that the "religions of the world may have a role to play" in addressing climate change (Sullivan xvi-xvii). The unease with the latter position is probably even more tangible amongst ecocritics in Europe than in North-America, owing to the greater secularisation of European society since World War II and the far more violent history of religion on this side of the Atlantic (including the more bitter struggles
The coalescence between the religion and ecology movements is among the most fascinating trajectories of twenty-first century environmentalism.
Science and Religion in the Face of the Environmental Crisis
2016
BOTH science and religion are challenged by the environmental crisis, both to reevaluate the natural world and to reevaluate their dialogue with each other. Both are thrown into researching fundamental theory and practice in the face of an upheaval unprecedented in human history, indeed in planetary history. Life on Earth is in jeopardy owing to the behavior of one species, the only species that is either scientific or religious, the only species claiming privilege as the "wise spe-cies, " Homo sapiens. Nature and the human relation to nature must be evaluated within cultures, classically by their religions, currently also by the sciences so eminent in Western culture. Ample numbers of theologians and ethicists have become persuaded that religion needs to pay more attention to ecology, and many ecologists recognize religious dimensions to caring for nature and to addressing the ecological crisis. Somewhat ironically, just when humans, with their increasing industry and tec...
This article is concerned with religion, science and ecology: religious and ‘religio-scientific’ perceptions of the environment and the human-environment relationship. It explores how a number of world religions and new science based cosmologies (as represented in a ‘field of religion and ecology’) understand and interact with the environment (particularly in response to the environmental crisis) and in particular analyzes how they use cosmogonic and cosmological, metaphors and myths, to ‘re-imagine’ it, and how in doing so may express and promote different (possibly more environmentally ‘friendly’; bio-centric, organic, spiritual) ways of relating to it than a ‘modern’ worldview (and associated environmentally ‘unfriendly’ – anthropocentric, mechanical, secular - metaphors and myths) that may be causing environmental degradation. The paper qualitatively and ethnographically explores two ‘eastern’ (Buddhism, and Chinese Religions) and two ‘western’ (Judaism and Christianity) religious traditions, as well as two new ‘religio-scientific’ cosmological visions (Deep Ecology and Gaia) (as stressed in the field of religion and ecology). It analyses their distinctive views on ecology, exploring metaphors and myths stressed, as well as commonalities between them and what they may mean for religion, the environment, and the human-environment relationship.
This Sacred Earth At the Nexus of Religion. Ecology and Politics
The principal assumption of this deliberation is that religion is undeniably political. In recent years ecological concerns have become a factor in both revealing the connection and acting as a catalyst for revolutionary development within religions themselves. Religion, ecology and politics inter-connected, and are theoretically illuminated through liberation, political, contextual and critical theologies. This deliberation aims to clarify, and suggest, frameworks of the inter-connections such that religion will be a greater force for social change and ecological sustainability. Of the many ways to bring ecology into the nexus of religions and politics, I first offer an overview of four specific approaches used within Christian ecotheology. Each presents a distinct manner of engaging religions with the ecological crisis. They will be discussed from the least to the most challenging, followed by an example of how each deals with climate change. The second section is a deliberation of two directions that need to be undertaken if religions are to be of significant influence in bringing spiritual resources to, and mitigating further, ecological ruin. The political dimension is discussed throughout.