Ecospirit: religion and the environment (original) (raw)

2011, European journal of literature, culture and the environment

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