Religion and Ecology

Intersections of Nature, Science, and Religion: An Introduction

by Adrian Ivakhiv

Co-authored with Catherine Tucker

"Transforming Feminisms: Religion, Women and Ecology"

by Elaine Nogueira-Godsey

Co-authored with Nina Hoel; published In 'Journal for the Study of Religion', vol 24, issue 2, 2011

Crying Out for Rain: The Human, the Holy, and the Earth in the Ritual Fasts of Rabbinic Literature

by Julia Watts Belser

Julia Watts Belser, “Crying Out for Rain: The Human, the Holy, and the Earth in the Ritual Fasts of Rabbinic Literature.”  Worldviews: Global Religions, Culture, and Ecology 13:2, 2009 : 219-238.

I trace the religious significance of rain in Tractate Taanit, a 6th century volume of the Babylonian Talmud that... more I trace the religious significance of rain in Tractate Taanit, a 6th century volume of the Babylonian Talmud that addresses fasts in response to drought among rabbinic Jewish communities in late antiquity.  Tractate Taanit incorporates rain symbolism into key rabbinic conceptions of Torah, revelation, and divine compassion.  As the tractate crafts rain into a symbol that expresses God’s presence and relationship with Israel, it also articulates drought as the essential expression of divine absence.  Within the tractate, fasting serves as the quintessential collective response to the physical and spiritual crisis of drought.  Fasting practice in Tractate Taʿanit fashions the vulnerable collective body into an instrument particularly suited to cry out for divine answer.  By invoking and intensifying the experience of suffering caused by drought, the community uses its communal body to align itself with both a suffering God and a suffering earth, each of which yearn for reconciliation.

Annual Review.Religion and Environment.Jenkins & Chapple

by Willis Jenkins

Loving Scripture and Nature

by Michael Northcott

Religion, Nature, and Culture: Theorizing the Field

by Adrian Ivakhiv

JSRNC 1.1 (2007), 47-57

The inaugural conference of the International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture demonstrated... more The inaugural conference of the International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture demonstrated several tensions at play within the emerging field of ‘religion, nature and culture’. Each of these three terms is a modern western folk construct, not a universal category. The place of ‘culture’ within this trinity is especially unclear, and its use risks essentializing a category that cultural anthropologists have themselves begun to question. With a nod to the burgeoning literature on ‘social nature’, this article thinks through the relationship between these three terms. It argues that their combination be thought of not as an object or field of study for the Society, but as an ‘invocation’ by which the Society can cultivate international and interdisciplinary discussion on a confluence of timely concerns.

Religion and Ecology: A Review Essay on the Field

by Willis Jenkins

AFTER LYNN WHITE: RELIGIOUS ETHICS AND ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS

by Willis Jenkins

AFTER LYNN WHITE: RELIGIOUS ETHICS AND ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS

by Willis Jenkins

Religion and Ecology: A Review Essay on the Field

by Willis Jenkins

Book Review of John R. Mabry's "Taoism: God As Nature Sees God" (Journal of Religion and Health, Volume 46, Number 1, March 2007)

by Kieran Conroy

Published in Journal of Religion and Health, Volume 46, Number 1, March 2007

My review of a work which explores a dialog between the Christian Gospels and foundational text of Taoism, and a fresh... more My review of a work which explores a dialog between the Christian Gospels and foundational text of Taoism, and a fresh translation of the latter.

Galbraith's Synthesis: Understanding the U.S. Federal Environmental Ethic

by Gabriel Ertsgaard

Draft only. I wrote this paper for an environmental ethics class last August. The professor suggested that I expand it for publication, which I intend to do. However, I stretched myself to the limits of my competency with regard to economic matters, and so will have to improve my grasp of that area before I attempt to do more.

Two often conflicting ethics shape American federal environmental policy. These are the ethic of consumerism and the... more Two often conflicting ethics shape American federal environmental policy. These are the ethic of consumerism and the ethic of sustainability. Both exert normative, moral influence on human behavior. Thus to fully understand either one, we must examine both.

From Artwork to Place: Finding the Voices of Moreelse, Bacon and Beuys at the Hermeneutical Intersection of Culture and Nature

by Forrest Clingerman

Published in Environmental Philosophy 8, no. 1 (2011): 1-24.

Please contact me for an electronic copy.

This essay investigates the correlation between theological investigations of culture and those of the natural world.... more This essay investigates the correlation between theological investigations of culture and those of the natural world. A fruitful question emerges when reflecting on how theological thinking resides between these subjects: how does our theological reflection on art meaningfully inform our consideration of nature? The path to exploring this question takes the form of questioning three different works of art: Willem Moreelse’s A Portrait of a Scholar, Francis Bacon’s Landscape, and Joseph Beuys’ Lightning with Stag in Its Glare. Exploring the interconnection between these works, a hermeneutical mediation between art, place, and the spiritual is suggested.

RENOVATING THE HOUSEHOLD OF LIFE: ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF ECUMENICAL RELATIONS BETWEEN SACRED AND SCIENTIFIC

by Aaron Hollander

New Cosmologies and Sacred Visions: Re-Imagining the Human-Environment Relationship via Religio-Scientific Metaphor and Myth

by Tony Watling

Published in Creation’s Diversity: Voices from Theology and Science, Drees, W.B, Meisinger, M, and Smedes, T, eds:89-112, London: Continuum, 2008.

This article is concerned with science, spirituality, and ecology. It analyses how certain scientific based metaphors,... more 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 Field of Religion and Ecology: Addressing the Environmental Crisis and Challenging Faiths

by Tony Watling

Published in Religion: Beyond a Concept, de Vries, H, ed:473-489, New York: Fordham Press, 2008.

This essay is concerned with “religion and ecology,” or religious environmentalism. It analyzes how religious... more 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.

Religion, Science, and Ecology: Re-Imagining the Human-Environment Relationship via Religious Traditions and New Scientific Cosmologies

by Tony Watling

Published in Technology, Trust, and Religion: Roles of Religions in Controversies over Ecology and the Modification of Life, Drees, W.B, ed:77-105, Leiden: Leiden University Press, 2009.

This article is concerned with religion, science and ecology: religious and ‘religio-scientific’ perceptions of the... more 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.

Reading the Book of Nature: A Hermeneutical Account of Nature for Philosophical Theology

by Forrest Clingerman

Published in Worldviews: Global Religions, Culture, and Ecology 13, no 1 (2009): 72-91.

How can we read nature as a revelatory text? This essay argues for a re-opening of the Book of Nature for... more How can we read nature as a revelatory text? This essay argues for a re-opening of the Book of Nature for philosophical theology. I first will summarize the traditional use of the metaphor of the Book of Nature. But this “book” was closed when science discarded the metaphor of divine authorship as unnecessary. We can re-open nature as a text by discovering the textuality of nature, which in turn presents a reemergence of text itself. From this, we can point to a revelatory nature of nature. The import of the text of nature comes from a reflexive, meditative reading, which sees the way in which the world of the text—and simultaneously the world as text—interacts with/as the world of the reader. The world that we encounter through reading is the very world of our existence—we are encountering the world that forms the foundation of the world from which we read.

Wilderness as the Place between Philosophy and Theology: Questioning Martin Drenthen on the Otherness of Nature

by Forrest Clingerman

Published in Environmental Values 19 (2010): 211-232.

Contact me for an electronic copy of this paper.

This essay addresses how the idea of wilderness is a point of conversation between environmental philosophy and... more This essay addresses how the idea of wilderness is a point of conversation between environmental philosophy and environmental theology. This topic is approached through a conversation with the environmental philosophy of Martin Drenthen. First, I discuss the respective aims of environmental philosophy and environmental theology. Second, I summarise the work of Drenthen on wilderness and otherness. Third, I compare this vision of environmental philosophy and a theological concept of Divine Otherness. Finally I sketch how this exploration is part of a theological account of wilderness. Taking seriously Drenthen's view that wilderness is the otherness at the intersection of nature and culture, wilderness can be understood as indicative of Divine Otherness. Thus wilderness is a unique place where theological and philosophical thinking traverse and challenge each other.

Interpreting Heaven and Earth: The Theological Construction of Nature, Place, and the Built Environment

by Forrest Clingerman

Published in Nature, Space and the Sacred. Edited by Sigurd Bergmann, Peter Scott, Heinrich Bedford Strohm and Maria Jansdotter, Ashgate Publishing, 2009.