Environment & Religion studies

This article is concerned with science, spirituality, and ecology. It analyses how certain scientific based metaphors, myths, and visions are being used as new cosmologies or ‘sacred stories’; new worldviews reassessing the relationship of humanity to the environment, expressing different (possibly more spiritual, possibly more environmentally friendly) ways of relating to it than the ‘modern’ ‘secular’ worldview that may be causing environmental degradation. The paper ethnographically and qualitatively analyses three such visions - ‘Deep Ecology’, ‘Gaia’, and the ‘Epic of Evolution’ - assessing their views and arguing for them as centres of ecological dialogue, challenging dominant modern views through stimulating a re-imagining and re-evaluating of the environment based on its interconnectedness, mutuality, and sacredness, thereby (possibly) encouraging (spiritual) re-connection to it and human responsibility towards it.

The book seeks to ethnographically analyse and explore what could be termed religious ecotopias, different religious visions of nature (and humanity and the human-nature interaction), as expressed in the 'field of religion and ecology', a new religious-environmental movement that seeks to challenge modern secular views that it sees as leading to environmentally destructive thought and actions and create new ones based in religious traditions. In this sense, the book also explores the re-imagination and possible re-vitalisation of religion in the modern world. It analyses and explores the idea that the environmental crisis is a moral and spiritual issue at heart, the result of a hegemonic, modern, secular, Western worldview - a mechanical model - that is dualist, materialist, and objective, separating humanity from nature, fact from value, spirit from matter, seeing nature in a disenchanted, passive way, as a commodity. The book analyses responses to this view - an emerging ecological model - providing a contestation or politicisation of nature (which is argued as a diverse process); ones that stress holistic, organic, spiritual visions, seeing humanity and nature as inter-dependent, combining fact/value, spirit/matter, seeing nature as active and meaningful, re-enchanting it. The book also explores the means to this, metaphors and myths, cosmogonies and cosmologies, that are seen as needed to evoke and inspire ecological thought and action and, in particular, religion, which is argued as able to provide these. It analyses the perceived need for religion to re-imagine nature as well as the need for it to re-imagine itself in doing so, arguing for it also as a process, analysing the place and role of religion in the modern world and its possible re-vitalisation in the face of secularisation, environmental issues in this sense being argued as providing an arena for religious traditions to address the discontents of the modern world, realigning human boundaries. In particular, the book analyses a greening of religion within the field of religion and ecology that is encouraging, inspiring, assessing, comparing, and combining, religious traditions to explore and express ecological ideas. The main body of the book thus analyses different religious ecotopias, different visions of nature (and humanity) expressed in the field of religion and ecology - Indian (Hindu and Jain), Chinese (Confucian and Daoist), and Buddhist, Jewish, Christian, and Islamic - exploring the ecological metaphors and myths expressed, arguing for these as new religious forms, new ecological interpretations of religious traditions (it is not religious traditions, per se, that are analysed, then, but particular new ecologically aware or inspired forms of them, although these may influence the traditions). The book argues that ecological issues and the religious-ecotopian expressions they stimulate, critiquing the present and imagining alternative worlds, may act as compass points for learning and change, critically and reflexively bringing to light and engaging problematic issues of the modern world, as well as demonstrating religious creativity and innovation.


Publisher Blurb: "The field of religion and ecology is an emerging and growing movement that is becoming relevant and influential in the world. It seeks to analyze, encourage, inspire, use, compare, and combine religious traditions to engage and shape environmental issues.Tony Watling seeks to ethnographically analyze this important field and its expressions. In particular, he analyzes and compares its explorations of different world religions for ecological themes and the resulting expressions of ecological visions, in what he terms 'religious ecotopias' - idealized, environmentally-friendly re-imaginings of nature and humanity, and correspondingly religion, which seek to influence environmental attitudes."

Contents

Acknowledgements viii
Introduction 1
Ch 1. The Modern World-View, the Ecological Model and the
Reimagination of Nature 14
Ch 2. Religious Environmentalism: Reimagining and Revitalizing Nature and Religion 38
Ch 3. Indian (Hindu and Jain) Visions 64
Ch 4. Chinese (Confucian and Daoist) Visions 85
Ch 5. Buddhist Visions 105
Ch 6. Jewish Visions 123
Ch 7. Christian Visions 140
Ch 8. Islamic Visions 158
Ch 9. Conclusion 175
Bibliography 198
Index 223

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.

Warnings about climate change often come wrapped in apocalyptic language and scenarios, often as a rhetorical strategy to convey the sense of urgency with which action is required. Similarly, technologies that promise to deliver us from the impending climate apocalypse often come shrouded as savior-technologies. Once such example are carbon capture and storage solutions. Language and imagery on websites and in marketing material presents these technologies as transformative technologies: they promise to transform something harmful in the atmosphere (CO2) into paradisiacal plentitude: carbon as infinite energy resource. This paper will discuss and explore the underlying ideas behind carbon capture and storage technologies and discuss how language used to talk about the climate opportunities they offer transcends the everyday and the ordinary. Based on David Chidester’s understanding of religion, this paper argues that the power of carbon capture narratives is grounded in religious tropes and ideas.

In this paper I use insights from extensive ethnographic research with evangelicals in Colorado Springs, Colorado to investigate how competing ethical understandings of time and the future underpin conceptions of and responses to ecological collapse. It argues that a dominant apocalyptic chronotope in US evangelicalism makes the future of the earth redundant, an understanding that Christian Right leaders have linked to decreased interest in environmental issues. This dominant evangelical view looks to the future with anticipation when a promised and ever-close apocalypse and rapture will signal the end of the earth. The temporal structure of climate change clashes with this narrative about time and the future of the planet. In contrast, a new theological understanding is emergent among younger evangelicals, where Christ’s return is understood as involving a remaking of the earth, and not an ejection from it. This contrasting view makes the care of the planet a crucial Christian priority.

Cet article aborde l’imbrication des questions de religion et d’environnement dans les procédures judiciaires en Inde. Il examine des cas de figure qui témoignent de la complexité de certains problèmes que les juges ont à trancher. L’approche privilégiée ici est anthropologique plutôt que juridique et l’accent est mis sur la pluralité des dimensions des phénomènes envisagés dans le contexte des transformations que connaît la société indienne. Outre une présentation du  rôle des cours supérieures de justice en Inde les auteurs examinent la manière dont des projets de développement susceptibles de porter atteinte à l’environnement sont contestés devant les tribunaux en faisant aussi appel à des arguments religieux.

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.

General Editor:
Dr Paul Hedges, University of Winchester, UK

International Editorial Advisory Board:
James Miller
Khaleel Mohammed
Musa Dube
Eloisa Martin
Marion Maddox
Makarand Paranjape

Table of Contents:

Volume 1: Theoretical and Academic Debates
Introduction
Paul Hedges
Chapter 1: What is Religion? Or, What is it We’re Talking About?
Anna S. King and Paul Hedges
Chapter 2: Is the Study of Religion Religious? How to Study Religion and Who Studies Religion
Paul Hedges and Anna S. King
Chapter 3: Charisma, Scriptures, Revelation, Texts: Sources of Religious Authority
Christina Welch and Paul Hedges
Chapter 4: Religion and Embodiment: Religion and the (Latin-American) Bodies that Practice it
Renée de la Torre
Chapter 5: Religion, Commodification and Consumerism
Vineeta Singh
Chapter 6: Terror/ism and Violence in the Name of God
Lucien van Liere
Chapter 7: Belonging, Behaving, Believing, Becoming: Religion and Identity
Paul Hedges and Angela CoCo
Chapter 8: Why are there Many Gods? Religious Diversity and its Challenges
Paul Hedges
Chapter 9: Is Religion Dying? Secularization and Other Religious Trends in the World Today
Jayeel Serrano Cornelio
Chapter 10: Christian and Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist: Can you have a Multiple Religious Identity?
Rose Drew
Chapter 11: Empires and Religions: Colonialism, Post-colonialism, and Orientalism
Clinton Bennett

Volume 2: Debates in the Public Square and Ethical Issues
Introduction
Paul Hedges
Chapter 1: Women in Religion: Does Gender Matter?
Kayla Wheeler
Chapter 2: Friend or Foe? Current Debates in Science and Religion
Allison P. Coudert
Chapter 3: Sexuality and Religion: Homosexuality and Religious Values
Maria das Dores Campos Machado
Chapter 4: Religion and Human Rights: Conflicts and Connections
Nazila Ghanea and Farrah Ahmed
Chapter 5: The New Atheists
Ian Markham and Chrstine Faulstich
Chapter 6: Censorship, Free Speech and Religion
Christoph Baumgartner
Chapter 7: Is Religion Environmentally Friendly: Connecting Religion and Ecology
James Miller
Chapter 8: Religion and Culture: Religious Artefacts as T-shirts, Toys and Museum Exhibits
Christina Welch
Chapter 9: Are Religions Prejudiced? Religion and Disability
Susannah Cornwall
Chapter 10: Religion, Nationalism, and International Relations
Enzo Pace
Chapter 11: Religion and Politics
Marion Maddox
Chapter 12: Riots, Mass Casualities, and Religious Hatred: Countering Anti-cosmopolitan Terror through Intercultural and Interreligious Understanding
Anna Halafoff

Volume 3: Specific Issues and Case Studies
Introduction
Paul Hedges
Chapter 1: The Rise of Fundamentalisms
Christopher van de Krogt
Chapter 2: Loving the “Enemy”: An alternative Narrative on Jewish-Muslim Relations
Yafiah Randall
Chapter 3: Buddhism, Nationalism, and Violence in Asia
Jude Lal Fernando
Chapter 4: Religion and Bioethics: Human Genetics and Embryo Research
Neil Messer
Chapter 5: What do Americans think of Muslims?: The 9/11 Islamic Community Centre
Khaleel Mohammed
Chapter 6: New Religious Movements, “Cults”, and the State
Ryan J. T. Adams
Chapter 7: Shariah Law and Women in Islam
Adis Duderjia
Chapter 8: Can Christianity take New Forms? Christianity in New Cultural Contexts
James Cox
Chapter 9: New Religious Movements in Global Context
Nobutaka Inoue
Chapter 10: Scandals
Marion Maddox
Chapter 11: Can Christians Engage in non-Christian Practices? Eastern Meditations and Contemplative Prayer
Fabrice Blée

The first anthology to provide a fully interdisciplinary approach to environmental studies. Intended as a text for environmental studies courses at the college and advanced high school level, and also serves as a guide to environmental literacy for the general reader as well. Fifteen chapters focus on individual disciplines in the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities, and ten chapters explore interdisciplinary concepts and case studies, from climate shock to wilderness to war & security.

... Every session's theme revolved around dis-covery and recovery of Judaism's earthly wisdom ... as “a more deliberate, engaging effort on people's part for their own spiritual formation, both inside ... talk about talk and symbol use, what about the influence of the non-discursive on the ...

... Ecological imaginations in the world religions : an ethnographic analysis / Tony Watling. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ... Lastly, special thanks to Arona and Cameron Allan and my sisters Jenine (and Rob, Rochelle, Kira and Sian) and Barbara. Page 11. ...

Description:
The Bible contains a variety of passages that defend the poor and champion the cause of the oppressed, but are these ancient texts able to find a voice in confronting injustice in the modern world? This selection of papers, compiled from the proceedings of the 2008 Conference on Bible and Justice at the University of Sheffield, address this question. Bible and Justice: Ancient Texts, Modern Challenges explores the various ways in which the Bible might effectively confront an array of human rights, poverty and environmental concerns, while considering the difficulties that arise when ancient concepts of justice are applied to modern socio-political ideals. Written to be accessible to those outside the field of biblical studies, this volume will be a valuable resource for both academics and non-academics alike.

Endorsement:
"This is a truly major contribution to discourse about the Bible and Ethics. To date the discussion has been dominated by simplistically polarized positions: on the one hand, the assumption that the Bible supports justice today without equivocation; on the other hand, the assumption that the outdated ethical views of the Bible are inapplicable today. The present volume confronts this dichotomy head-on by showing how the Bible may indeed contribute to efforts at social justice today once the difficulties in bridging the temporal and sociopolitical gap that separates us from the biblical world is taken fully into account. This volume coincides with the newly established Center and Library for the Bible and Social Justice in the United States which is committed to a critical sharing of the biblical imperatives for social justice with scholars, clergy, laity, and especially social activists and educators."
Norman K. Gottwald, author of The Tribes of Yahweh, Professor emeritus of biblical studies at New York Theological Seminary

Contents:
Introduction
Matthew J.M. Coomber, Concordia College

Part 1:Challenges and Understanding of Bible and Justice

1. On the Genesis of the Alliance between the Bible and Rights
Yvonne Sherwood, University of Glasgow

2. Rough Justice?
Philip Davies, University of Sheffield

3. Is the Belief in Human Rights either Biblical or Useful?
John Sandys-Wunsch,

4. Jesus: The Justice of God
Stanley Hauerwas, Duke University Divinity School

Part 2: Uses and Approaches to Bible and Justice

5. Justice and Violence in the Priestly Utopia
Walter J. Houston, Mansfield College, Oxford

6. A Signs Source: Approaching Deaf Biblical Interpretation
Louise J. Lawrence, University of Exeter

7. From a Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) of the Economy to the RDP of the Soul: Public Realm Biblical Appropriation in Postcolonial South Africa
Gerald West, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

Part 3: Prospects for Applications of Bible and Justice

8. The Old Testament and the Environment
J.W. Rogerson, University of Sheffield

9. Ecojustice in the Bible? Pauline Contributions to an Ecological Theology
David G. Horrell, University of Exeter

10. Can the Book of Revelation be a Gospel for the Environment?
Simon P. Woodman, South Wales Baptist College

11. ‘I Have Always Relied on the Kindness of Strangers’: Hospitality and the Geneva Conventions of Ancient Israel
Diana Lipton, King’s College London

12. Prophets to Profits: Ancient Judah and Corporate Globalization
Matthew J.M. Coomber, Concordia College