Religious Environmentalism Research Articles

Comparing Religious Environmental Ethics to Support Efforts to Achieve Local and Global Sustainability: Empirical Insights Based on a Theoretical Framework

This paper develops a theoretical framework to assess the feasibility of environmental sustainability solutions, at local and global levels, based on the religious environmental ethics of several key religions: Hinduism (including Jainism), Buddhism (including Confucianism and Daoism), Judaism, Christianity (Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Protestantism), and Islam. Solutions are defined in terms of consumption (measured by GDP), environment use (measured by the ecological footprint), and welfare for representative individuals. Empirical insights for alternative religious environmental ethics focus on the relative importance attached to the consumption of goods (α) vs. involvement in a (local/global) community, and on the importance attached to the environment within the (local/global) community (μ). In terms of feasibility for national environmental problems (i.e., pairs of α and μ achieving sustainability, in countries where the religion is a majority) and consistency (i.e., coherence with the religion’s precepts) of policies for national environmental problems: Hinduism = uddhism > Islam > Judaism. Christianity produced no feasible solutions. In terms of effectiveness for global environmental problems (i.e., pairs of α and μ achieving global sustainability, if inequalities among nations are reduced in the future) and replicability for local environmental problems (i.e., pairs of α and μ achieving sustainability in countries where the religion is a minority): Hinduism = Buddhism > Judaism > Islam.

Mapping the field of religious environmental politics

Abstract Until fairly recently, consideration of religion has been marginal or even non-existent in the scholarly discourse about environmental politics. Renewed attention to the intersection of these fields has been encouraged by a recent widening in discussions of ‘environmental values’ to include the role of religious institutions and personal belief in forming spiritual environmental values and renewed attention to the place of ethics and religious institutions in global environmental politics. Following a range of historic declarations by religious leaders, the recent encyclical by Pope Francis signalled a new level of integration between Catholic concerns for social and environmental justice. Yet, much of the continued engagement by large environmental NGOs and governments has continued to ignore the complex interrelation of local, intermediate and transnational religious political ecology. In this article, which is based on data gathered during five years of fieldwork, primarily with British Christian REMOs (religious environmental movement organizations), I probe the complexities of political engagement with religious environmentalism which arise from the many different organizational iterations these groups may take. On the basis of such investigation I suggest that effective high-level engagement with REMO groups will be greatly enhanced by a nuanced understanding of the many different shapes that these groups can take, the various scales at which these groups organize, and the unique inflection that political action and group identity can take in a religious context.

Introduction to “Religious Environmental Activism in Asia: Case Studies in Spiritual Ecology”

Environmental issues and problems are serious; some are getting worse, and occasionally new ones are still being discovered (Flannery 2010; Meyers and Kent 2005; Ripple et al [...]

God and the Green Divide: Religious Environmentalism in Black and White, by Amanda J. Baugh

God and the Green Divide: Religious Environmentalism in Black and White, by Amanda J. Baugh

SCIENTISM, ONLINE SPIRITUALITY, AND (MIS)READING EVOLUTION

SCIENTISM, ONLINE SPIRITUALITY, AND (MIS)READING EVOLUTION

Explicit and Embedded Environmentalism

AbstractThe precise influence that religious outlooks have on environmental attitudes and behaviors is a matter of debate among scholars of religion and ecology. While some studies suggest that emergent ecofriendly interpretations of traditional religions offer a promising path for addressing the world’s ecological crisis, others advance more skeptical evaluations about institutional religions’ efficacy in advancing sustainability efforts. In this article I seek to shift the terms of this debate. Whether scholars suggest there is a correlation or insist there is not, these arguments envision environmentalism based on the model of the mainstream, white American environmental movement, assuming that religious environmentalism must entail explicit, concerted efforts to protect the earth. This assumption has led scholars to overlook embedded environmental expressions that are conveyed theologically rather than politically, especially among communities that do not identify with mainstream American environmentalism. By interrogating the assumption that religious environmentalism must involve concerted, political efforts, scholars of religion and ecology can better account for the ways religion influences environmental attitudes and behaviors among religious communities who are not affluent and white.

Planting the Seeds of the Future: Eschatological Environmentalism in the Time of the Anthropocene

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, this essay examines how the local Jehovah’s Witnesses’ response to the current ecological crisis on the Galápagos Islands has produced a distinct form of religious environmentalism. Specifically, I argue that the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ vision of the ultimate future informs action rather than despair—contrary to what is often assumed about millenarian beliefs. This essay joins voices in Christian feminist and eco-theology interested in reclaiming eschatology for its imaginative valence. Yet, unlike invocations for hope that lack consideration of their viability, my ethnographic approach contributes to this literature with a view of the practical reverberations of eschatology. Further, current discussions about ecological unraveling, often couched around the concept of the Anthropocene, have reinforced expert-driven, techno-scientific measures that exclude other forms of knowledge production and practical interventions. If such worries continue to motivate a paradigm of conservation that exclude locals, my essay shows how the local Jehovah’s Witnesses promote a valuable alternative form of environmentalism, on the Galápagos and elsewhere.

“The world food crisis is not a fad”: TheMore-with-LessCookbook and Protestant Environmental Spirituality

ABSTRACTThis article examines the spirituality reflected in the 1976 cookbookMore-with-Less. Written by a former Mennonite missionary hoping to provide religious households with a practical way to respond to world hunger, the cookbook's message of a simple diet that could transform users' influence on the world is an early example of the religious environmentalism that has grown increasingly popular among middle-class American Protestants in the last several decades. By examining its historical context, narrating its genesis, and critically assessing the spirituality it recommended, this article argues that the cookbook provides a useful window into Protestant environmental spirituality, its version of which allowed practitioners to maintain traditional institutional relationships and conceptions of the divine while cultivating the individuated religiosity increasingly sought after in modern culture. Emerging in the institutional overlap of traditional religious organizations and the putatively secular formations of mass media, globalization, and consumer culture, the cookbook leveraged the incipient emphasis on lifestyle choices within consumer culture to craft an individuated response to a vision of the world in permanent crisis.More-with-Lessand the Protestant environmental spirituality it represents shed light on current scholarly debates about the form religion takes within modern contexts of secularity, especially when religious practitioners seek adaptations that can maintain traditional theological and organizational commitments.

To Care for Creation: The Emergence of the Religious Environmental Movement, by STEPHEN ELLINGSON

To Care for Creation: The Emergence of the Religious Environmental Movement, by STEPHEN ELLINGSON

To Care for Creation: The Emergence of the Religious Environmental Movement

To Care for Creation: The Emergence of the Religious Environmental Movement

A Framework for Buddhist Environmentalism

Resorting to Buddhism to advance a form of religious environmentalism has been done by many scholars both from inside and outside the tradition because Buddhism holds a worldview and a number of teachings often perceived as environmentally friendly. This paper contributes to this effort by proposing a framework that is faithful to the Buddhist pedagogical approach. It asserts that this approach comprises two overarching and integral dimensions-a horizontal (relational) and a vertical (developmental) dimension. In establishing Buddhist environmentalism, the horizontal dimension is employed to assess the root cause of the environmental crisis and the state of human-nature relationship. The horizontal dimension also helps to provide a corrective to the abnormalities in this relationship is proposing a vision of harmonious human-nature relationship characterized by solidarity, responsibility, accountability, service and gratitude. These relationships can be established by resorting to Buddhist cosmogony and fundamental teachings such as the Principle of Dependent Origination and the Three Characteristics of Existence. The vertical dimension constitutes the prescriptive aspect of Buddhist environmentalism, which insists that self-cultivation aimed at emancipation from mundane existence is part and parcel of the effort to promote self and environmental well-being. It asserts that human-nature relationship must be added to the total number of relationships in one’s life, and it must be held in view in the process of self-cultivation so that it becomes an indicator of a person’s spiritual progress. Virtues such as loving kindness, gentleness, moderation and generosity developed through the Noble Eightfold Path not only go towards promoting interpersonal relationship but also promote environmental well-being and flourishing. Consequently, this paper is critical of any Buddhist environmentalism that fails to give due attention to both dimensions, and it emphasizes that both the relational and developmental dimensions must be held in balance in order for a genuine Buddhist environmentalism to be possible.

God and the Green Divide: Religious Environmentalism in Black and WhiteAmanda J.Baugh. University of California Press, 2017.

God and the Green Divide: Religious Environmentalism in Black and WhiteAmanda J.Baugh. University of California Press, 2017.

God and the Green Divide: Religious Environmentalism in Black and White. By Amanda Baugh

God and the Green Divide: Religious Environmentalism in Black and White. By Amanda Baugh

To Care for Creation: The Emergence of the Religious Environmental Movement. By Stephen Ellingson. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016. Pp. x+203. $30.00 (paper).

<i>To Care for Creation: The Emergence of the Religious Environmental Movement</i>. By Stephen Ellingson. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016. Pp. x+203. $30.00 (paper).

Varieties of Religious Environmentalism: Understanding the Theological Foundations of Environmental Concern among Christians and Muslims in Northeast Nigeria

Varieties of Religious Environmentalism: Understanding the Theological Foundations of Environmental Concern among Christians and Muslims in Northeast Nigeria

Recycling Bodhisattva: The Tzu-Chi movement’s response to global climate change

This article traces the emergence of climate change discourse and its related practices in one of the largest and globally most influential Taiwanese Buddhist organizations – Tzu-Chi (Buddhist Compassion Relief Tzu-Chi Association). The authors analyse more than 500 volumes of Tzu-Chi’s periodicals and describe its recycling practice from the social organizational perspective. Our findings suggest that climate change discourse has emerged in recent years as a response to increasing natural disasters, particularly typhoons. Practices such as recycling are implemented in order to address this crisis through the cultivation of a disciplined inner self. The article compensates for the lack of current studies on what Buddhist organizations actually do for the environment and how they address climate change. It also offers a correction to the studies on environmental movements, in which religious environmentalism is often overlooked.

The Uses and Abuses of Science in Religious Environmentalism

The Uses and Abuses of Science in Religious Environmentalism

Intersystemic Care: How Religious Environmental Praxis Expands the Pastoral Theological Norm of Relational Justice

This essay provides theological reflection, theoretical resources, ethnographic data, and pastoral theological proposals regarding religious environmentalism as a form of intersystemic care that can connect social and ecological justice-making pursuits. The religious environmental praxis of the Central Texas Episcopal Church demonstrates how this form of religious praxis represents efforts at an ecologically inclusive relational justice, a key norm for pastoral theologians. This article explores theological and contextual rationales for pastoral theological engagement with ecological issues as a more thorough way of addressing structures of violence that impede the flourishing of both people and planet.

The Dragon King and the 1931 Wuhan Flood: Religious Rumors and Environmental Disasters in Republican China

This article explores popular religious conceptualizations of the environment and disasters in early twentieth-century China. In 1931, the city of Wuhan experienced a catastrophic flood. Soon a rumor began to circulate suggesting that the disaster had been caused by the recent demolition of a local Dragon King Temple. This article examines this rumor as a mode of popular discourse, using it to illustrate debates among members of the local population regarding the link between the environment, religion, and disasters. It describes the place of Dragon Kings in late imperial religious environmental management, before discussing how the status of these deities was devalued during the early twentieth century. It argues that, in spite of vigorous attempts at secular reform, for a large section of the population the experience of disasters continued to be dominated by popular religious conceptualizations of the environment. While modern critics disparaged what they saw as lamentable superstitions, for many people rainmaking Dragon Kings continued to exist.

Secular and Religious Environmentalism in Contemporary Turkey

Turkish environmentalism is gaining ground but has not yet become a serious source of influence in society. The environmental movements have long been held as left wing politics and less religious, but today environmental awreness is also reaching the religious establishment. This article presents some of the secular and religious environmental currents in contemporary Turkey based on fieldwork mainly conducted in 2011. The main research questions are: who are the central environmental actors in Turkey, are there differences ragarding ideology and way of working between the secular and reigious field, and why there is no strong environmental scene in Turkey?