Abstract
Religious individuals and institutions around the world have often been involved with important moral issues, guiding their communities in moral behavior and at times influencing policymakers. In the early twenty-first century, environmental problems such as anthropogenic climate change, resource depletion, and pollution are critical moral issues. While religious leaders offer vastly different solutions and perspectives, religious voices have gained influence in local, national, and global environmental policy debates. Traditionally-defined religious traditions and institutions are not the only emerging religious responses to environmental problems. Forms of nature-venerating religiosity—whether viewing the natural world as a sacred entity or finding wonder in natural ecological processes—have also emerged as critiques of anti-environmental practices and policies, forming a supportive activist spiritual network in the western world. Acknowledging that controversies exist I provide greater discussion on “dark green religion,” a diverse set of nature-revering values and practices often found among western environmentalist communities. Its many branches include Gaia Theory (a scientific theory understanding the whole world as a singular organism), Deep Ecology (an ethical theory positing inherent value in nature), and certain interpretations of Native North American religious traditions (at times problematic and romanticized), all of which define a complex and diverse religious milieu among western environmentalist communities. I discuss several examples from within the long-lived opposition movement to surface coal mining. Nature-venerating religiosity, including dark green religion, forms an important thread of contemporary religious response to burgeoning environmental problems. As some scientists argue that climate change, resource depletion, and other environmental issues will only worsen without proactive changes toward sustainable policies, dark green religiosity will likely continue to be important.
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Notes
- 1.
There is an extensive body of literature on faith-based environmental efforts around the world. A good starting place for those interested in learning more is the FORE’s website (http://fore.research.yale.edu/), which includes numerous faith statements on environmental problems and scholarly resources for further study. Roger Gottlieb’s Oxford Handbook of Religion and Ecology (2010) and Ecospirit, by Laurel Kearns and Catherine Keller (2007), are also useful introductions to the field. See also Kalland (2005) and Taylor (2005) for more critical perspectives on the FORE and other similar academic projects.
- 2.
I am not suggesting that the FORE and the “World Religions and Ecology” series should be seen as competing research projects to dark green religion, or that all of the hundreds of contributors to FORE projects share the same theoretical and methodological groundings. Adding the consideration of dark green religion only increases the number of approaches available to study religions and the environment.
- 3.
For example, environmental ethicist Anna Peterson problematized simplistic causal connections between value traditions and environmental practices. She argued, “values and practices, desires and structures, are always interacting with and transforming each other; to single one out as the dominant or sole factor in any social process reflects a deep failure of understanding” (2009: 131). See also Heberlein (2012).
- 4.
- 5.
Some of my interview subjects preferred to remain anonymous. I have given these individuals pseudonyms, which are indicated by quotation marks.
- 6.
Sherman’s quotes and other details from the rally come from the author’s field notes, Marsh Fork Elementary, Sundial, West Virginia, 23 June 2009.
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Witt, J. (2015). Dark Green Religion: Advocating for the Sacredness of Nature in a Changing World. In: Brunn, S. (eds) The Changing World Religion Map. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9376-6_19
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