Religion to the Rescue (?) in an Age of Climate Disruption
Issued Date: 18 May 2015
Abstract
Since the early 1990s calls by religious elites as well as by scholars who affiliate with and study religions to address the negative consequences of anthropogenic climate change have been increasing. An important example of the trend occurred in November 2014 during the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion in San Diego where ‘Religion and Climate Change’ was the conference’s central theme. Data presented at this meeting, however, was not encouraging for those hoping that religious individuals were embracing consensus scientific understandings about anthropogenic climate change, and becoming deeply concerned about climate disruption and making a strong response to it a high priority. The scientific study of the religious dimensions of perceptions and actions related to climate change, for its part, is showing signs of becoming more rigorous and illuminating, better able to track changes that might unfold with regard to religious perceptions and practices related to the earth’s environmental systems.
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References
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Chapple, Christopher Key (ed.). 2000. Hinduism and Ecology: The Intersection of Earth, Sky, and Water (Religions of the World and Ecology; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).
———. (ed.). 2002. Jainism and Ecology: Nonviolence in the Web of Life (Religions of the World and Ecology; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).
Dasgupta, Partha, and Veerabhadranm Ramanathan. 2014. ‘Pursuit of the Common Good: Religious Institutions May Mobilize Public Opinion and Action’, Science
345.6203: 1457-58. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1259406.
Foltz, Richard, Frederick M. Denny, and Azizan Baharuddin (eds.). 2003. Islam and Ecology: A Bestowed Trust (Religions of the World and Ecology; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).
Girardot, Norman J., James Miller, and Xiaogan Liu (eds.). 2001. Daoism and Ecology: Ways within a Cosmic Landscape (Religions of the World and Ecology; Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press).
Gottlieb, Roger. 2007. ‘Religious Environmentalism: What It Is, Where It’s Heading and Why We Should Be Going in the Same Direction’, Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture 1.1: 81-91.
Grim, John A. (ed.). 2001. Indigenous Traditions and Ecology: The Interbeing of Cosmology and Community (Religions of the World and Ecology; Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press).
Haluza-DeLay, Randolph. 2014. ‘Religion and Climate Change: Varieties in Viewpoints and “Practices”’, Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change 5.2:
261–79.
Hessel, Dieter T., and Rosemary Radford Ruether (eds.). 2000. Christianity and Ecology: Seeking the Well-Being of Earth and Humans (Religions of the World and Ecology; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).
Jones, Robert P., Daniel Cox, and Juhem Navarro-Rivera. 2014. ‘Believers, Sympathizers, & Skeptics: Why Americans Are Conflicted about Climate Change, Environmental Policy, and Science’, Findings from the Public Research Religion Institute/American Academy of Religion Religion, Values, and Climate Change Survey. Online: http://goo.gl/KR64Rc.
Kearns, Laurel. 1997. ‘Noah’s Ark Goes to Washington: A Profile of Evangelical Environmentalism’, Social Compass 44.3: 349-66. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/
003776897044003004.
McKibben, Bill. 1989. The End of Nature (New York: Random House).
Moyers, Bill. 1991. ‘Spirit and Nature’. Public Broadcasting System (USA). Online:
http://billmoyers.com/series/spirit-nature-1991/.
Oppenheimer, Mark. 2014. ‘Setting Aside a Scholarly Get-Together, for the Planet’s
Sake’, New York Times, 5 December: A16.
Rockefeller, Steven C., and John C. Elder (eds.). 1992. Spirit and Nature: Why the Environment Is a Religious Issue—An Interfaith Dialogue (Boston: Beacon Press).
Saler, Benson. 1993. Conceptualizing Religion: Immanent Anthropologists, Transcendent Natives, and Unbounded Categories (Leiden: Brill).
Sponsel, Leslie E. 2012. Spiritual Ecology: A Quiet Revolution (Santa Barbara: Praeger).
———. 2014. ‘Spiritual Ecology: Is It the Ultimate Solution to the Environmental
Crisis?’, Choice 51.8: 1339-42, 1344-48. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5860/
CHOICE.51.08.1339.
Taylor, Bron. 1991. ‘The Religion and Politics of Earth First!’ The Ecologist 21.6: 258-66.
———. (ed.). 1995a. Ecological Resistance Movements: The Global Emergence of Radical and
Popular Environmentalism (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press).
———. 1995b. ‘Resacralizing Earth: Pagan Environmentalism and the Restoration of
Turtle Island’, in David Chidester and Edward T. Linenthal (eds.), American
Sacred Space (Bloomington: Indiana University Press): 97-151.
———. 2002. ‘Diggers, Wolves, Ents, Elves and Expanding Universes: Bricolage, Religion, and Violence from Earth First! and the Earth Liberation Front to the Antiglobalization Resistance’, in Jeffrey Kaplan and Heléne Lööw (eds.), The Cultic Milieu: Oppositional Subcultures in an Age of Globalization (Lanham, MD: Altamira/Rowman & Littlefield): 26-74.
———. 2005a. ‘Earth First! and the Earth Liberation Front’, in Bron Taylor (ed.), Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature (London, UK: Continuum International): 518-24.
———. 2005b. ‘Religious Studies and Environmental Concern’, in Bron Taylor (ed.), Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature (London, UK: Continuum International): 1373-79.
———. 2007. ‘Exploring Religion, Nature and Culture’, Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture 1.1: 5-24.
———. 2011. ‘Toward a Robust Scientific Investigation of the “Religion” Variable in the Quest for Sustainability’, Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture 5.3: 253-62
Tirosh-Samuelson, Hava (ed.). 2002. Judaism and Ecology: Created World and Revealed Word (Religions of the World and Ecology; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).
Tucker, Mary Evelyn. 2014. The Emerging Alliance of Religion and Ecology: 2013 Wallace Stegner Lecture (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press).
Tucker, Mary Evelyn, and John Berthrong (eds.). 1998. Confucianism and Ecology: The Interrelation of Heaven, Earth, and Humans (Religions of the World and Ecology; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).
Tucker, Mary Evelyn, and John A. Grim. 2001. ‘The Emerging Alliance of World Religions and Ecology’, in Mary Evelyn Tucker and John A. Grim (eds.), ‘Special Issue: Religion and Ecology: Can the Climate Change?’, Daedalus: Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 130.4: 1-22.
Tucker, Mary Evelyn, and Duncan Ryuken Williams (eds.). 1997. Buddhism and Ecology: The Interconnection of Dharma and Deeds (Religions of the World and Ecology; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).
Veldman, Robin Globus, Andrew Szasz, and Randolph Haluza-Delay (eds.). 2014. How the World’s Religions Are Responding to Climate Change: Social Scientific Investigations (London: Routledge).
White, Lynn. 1967. ‘The Historical Roots of our Ecologic Crisis’, Science 155: 1203-207. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.155.3767.1203.
Zaleha, Bernard Daley, and Andrew Szasz. 2014. ‘Keep Christianity Brown! Climate Denial on the Christian Right in the United States’, in Veldman, Szasz, and Haluza-DeLay 2014: 209-28.
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