A Note on the Use of Religions in the Phronocene

Abstract

A Note on the Use of Religions in the Phronocene Anthony Lioi In a burst of ecumenical categorization, the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences are adopting the term Anthropocene for our current geologic epoch. The term entered the arena of discourse in the year 2000 when Paul Crutzen, an atmospheric chemist who won the Nobel Prize for his work on ozone, leapt up a professional meeting and declared that the Holocene—the era after the most recent ice age—was over, replaced by the anthropos kainos, the New Epoch of Humanity. In making this claim, Crutzen emphasized the rise of humanity as a geophysical power, a species that changes the face of the earth, the depths of the sea, and the substance of the air. Though it has served as a useful rallying point for academics concerned with climate change, ocean acidification, and species extinction, Anthropocene has an unpleasant aftertaste. Marxists argue that it is capital and industry, not “humanity,” that have granted some of us the status of natural force. Advocates for indigenous peoples and the Global South observe that environmental destruction is a product of colonization, genocide, and empire. Feminist critics aver that it is “man” in the non‐inclusive sense, not humanity as such, that has wielded anthropic power in an attempt to master nature. In an important sense, however, the horse has left the barn. In recognition of an imperfect but necessary term, the French historians Christophe Bonneuil and Jean‐Baptiste Fressoz observe: “The great advantage of the concept of the Anthropocene is that it abolishes the futile distinction between modernity and reflexive modernity, forcing us to consider the contemporary situation from a historical standpoint, less as a threshold in the acquiring of environmental awareness than as the culminating point of a history of destruction” (170). In other words, we should stop arguing about the distinction between modernity and post‐modernity; rather, we ought to forge an understanding of this history of destruction in order to see what must be done about it. To that end, Bonneuil and Fressoz wrote The Shock of the Anthropocene (), in which they critique the term by way of expansion, producing a panoply of other names that reveal its productive tensions. One of these terms is Phronocene, which they name after the Greek phronesis, the exercise of prudence or practical judgment (171). In doing so, they suggest that the advent of the “Anthropocene” may inaugurate an era of environmental phronesis in which we teach ourselves how best to cope with the damage the anthropos (whoever that is) has caused. In editing this special issue of CrossCurrents, I contend that religions will inevitably play a part in the creation of the Phronocene. As the Australian ecocritic Kate Rigby says in “Religion and Ecology: Toward a Communion of Creatures”: “For better or ill, religion informs the environmental views, values, relations, and behavior of an overwhelming majority of people around the world, often in profound ways. For this reason alone, studies in religion and ecology should comprise a crucial component of the wider work of the environmental humanities” (Rigby n.p.). Readers familiar with the transdisciplinary fields of religion and ecology and ecotheology may balk at this claim. Are not such studies already on the scene? To take only a few examples: Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim have edited the magisterial series “Religions of the World and Ecology” out of the Harvard University Center for the Study of World Religions for several decades. Lynn White, Jr.'s seminal essay “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis,” which pinned responsibility for the Anthropocene squarely on Christianity, has sparked debate for as long as this author has been alive. The colossus of Oxford University Press gave its imprimatur to the field with Roger S. Gottlieb's The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Ecology (2006). Indeed, the flourishing of feminist theology is barely conceivable without the ecological feminist contributions of such figures as Alice Walker, Susan Griffin, Arundhati Roy, Leslie Marmon Silko, Vandana Shiva, Rosemary Radford Ruether, Maria Mies, Sallie McFague, Starhawk (Miriam Simos), Dolores Williams, Mary Daly, Carol P. Christ, Mary Grey, Judith Plaskow, Rigoberta Menchú, Charlene Spretnak, Berta Cáceres, Ishimure Michiko, Ariel...