‘Our Only Heaven’: Nature Veneration, Quest Religion, and Pro-Environment Behavior
Issued Date: 8 Aug 2013
Abstract
Utilizing the Pure Pantheism/Dualistic Theism/Nihilistic Atheism sacrality scale as a heuristic, I survey sociological/social psychological studies assessing whether people’s values and religious worldviews affect the likelihood of pro-environment behavior. One set of studies divides environmental values into three types: (1) self-interest (or egoistic) values; (2) humanistic altruism, and (3) biospheric altruism. Another study analyzes three types of self-construal as pro-environment indicators: (1) independent, (2) interdependent, and (3) metapersonal. Analyzing these models in light of the tripartite social psychological model of (1) religion as means; (2) religion as an end unto itself; and (3) religion as quest, I demonstrate that both the biospheric and metapersonal orientations, and perceptions that tend toward the pantheistic end of the sacrality scale, are the strongest predictors of pro-environment behavior. Put simply, nature veneration is predictive of pro-environmental behavior. I further argue that available data make the testing of this hypothesis worth pursuing whether naturevenerating religions are growing in the United States and beyond.
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References
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Batson, C. Daniel, Patricia Schoenrade, and W. Larry Ventis. 1993. Religion and the Individual: A Social-Psychological Perspective (New York: Oxford University Press).
Becker, Ernest. 1973. The Denial of Death (New York: Free Press).
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Berry, Wendell. 1993. Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community: Eight Essays (New York: Pantheon Books).
Boff, Leonardo. 1997. Cry of the Earth, Cry of the Poor, Ecology and Justice (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books).
Casciato, Tom (dir.). 2006. Is God Green? (USA: PBS). Online: http://www.pbs.org/ wgbh/pages/frontline/video/flv/generic.html?s=moyj06pa68.
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Fox, Matthew. 1988. The Coming of the Cosmic Christ: The Healing of Mother Earth and the Birth of a Global Renaissance (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco).
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Kosmin, Barry A., and Ariela Keysar. 2009. American Religious Identity Survey (Hartford, CT: Trinity College).
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Schultz, P. Wesley, and Lynnette C. Zelezny. 1999. ‘Values as Predictors of Environmental Attitudes: Evidence for Con¬sistency Across 14 Countries’, Journal of Environmental Psychology 19.3: 255-65. Doi: 10.1006/jevp.1999.0129.
Schultz, P. Wesley et al. 2005. ‘Values and their Relationship to Environmental Concern and Conservation behavior’, Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 36.4: 457-75. Doi: 10.1177/0022022105275962.
Schweitzer, Albert. 1933. Out of My Life and Thought: An Autobiogrphy (trans. C.T. Campion; New York: H. Holt & Co.).
Smith, Jonathan Z., William Scott Green, Jorunn Jacobsen Buckley, and American Academy of Religion. 1995. The HarperCollins Dictionary of Religion (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco).
Stroink, Mirella, and Teresa DeCicco. 2011. ‘Culture, Religion, and the Underlying Value Dimensions of the Metapersonal Self-construal’, Mental Health, Religion & Culture 14: 917-34. Doi: 10.1080/13674676.2010.536979.
Taylor, Bron. 2010. Dark Green Religion: Nature Spirituality and the Planetary Future (Berkeley: University of California Press).
Taylor, Bron. 2011. ‘Editor’s Introduction: Toward a Robust Scientific Investigation of the “Religion” Variable in the Quest for Sustainability’, Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture 5: 253-62.
Tillich, Paul. 1948. The Shaking of the Foundations (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons).
Tillich, Paul. 1951. Systematic Theology (3 vols.; Chicago: University of Chicago Press).
US Court of Appeals, 5th Circuit. 1975. Young v. Southwestern Savings & Loan Association. Federal Reporter, 2d Series 509: 140.
US Court of Appeals, 7th Circuit. 2003. Reed v. The Great Lakes Companies. Federal Reporter, 3d Series 330: 931.
US Supreme Court. 1965. United States v. Seeger, et al. United States Reports 380: 163-93.
Voas, David, and Alasdair Crockett. 2005. ‘Religion in Britain: Neither Believing nor Belonging’, Sociology 39.1: 11-28. Doi: 10.1177/0038038505048998.
Wallace, Mark I. 2005. Finding God in the Singing River: Christianity, Spirit, Nature (Minneapolis: Fortress Press).
Weber, Max. 1958 [1913]. ‘The Social Psychology of the World Religions,’ in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (New York: Oxford University Press): 267-301.
Weber, Max. 1993 [1922]. The Sociology of Religion (Boston: Beacon Press).
Weber, Max. 2001 [1930]. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (trans. T. Parsons; London/New York: Routledge).
White, Lynn. 1967. ‘The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis’, Science 155.3767: 1203-7. Doi: 10.1126/science.155.3767.1203.
White, Lynn. 1973. ‘Continuing the Conversation’, in I. Barbour (ed.), Western Man and Environmental Ethics (Menlo Park, CA: Addison-Wesley): 55-64.
Wolfe, Gregory. 1997. The New Religious Humanists: A Reader (New York: Free Press).
Zaleha, Bernard Daley. 2008a. ‘“The Only Paradise We Ever Need”: An Investigation into Pantheism’s Sacred Geography in the Writings of Edward Abbey, Thomas Berry, and Matthew Fox, and a Preliminary Survey of Signs of Emerging Pantheism in American Culture’ (MA diss., University of Florida).
Zaleha, Bernard Daley. 2008b. ‘Review of John Hart’s “Sacramental Commons: Christian Ecological Ethics’, Environmental Ethics 30.2: 217-20. Doi: 10.5840/enviroethics200830210.
Zaleha, Bernard Daley. 2010. ‘Nature and Nature Religions’, in P. Williams (ed.), Encyclopedia of Religion in America (Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications): 1527-33.
Zaleha, Bernard Daley, and Andrew Szasz. Forthcoming 2013. ‘Keep Christianity Brown! Climate Denial on the Christian Right in the United States’, in R.G. Veldman, A. Szasz, and R. Haluza-DeLay (eds.), How the World’s Religions Are Responding to Climate Change: Social Scientific Investigations (Oxford: Routledge).
Barna Group. 2007. ‘Born Again Christians Remain Skeptical, Divided about Global Warming’. Online: http://www.barna.org/barna-update/article/20-donorscause/95-born-again-christians-remain-skeptical-divided-about-global-warming.
Batson, C. Daniel. 1976. ‘Religion as Prosocial: Agent or Double Agent?’, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 15.1: 29-45. Doi: 10.2307/1384312.
Batson, C. Daniel, Drew M. Denton, and Jason T. Vollmecke. 2008. ‘Quest Religion, Anti-Fundamentalism, and Limited Versus Universal Compassion’, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 47.1: 135-45. Doi: 10.1111/j.1468-5906.2008.00397.x.
Batson, C. Daniel, Patricia Schoenrade, and W. Larry Ventis. 1993. Religion and the Individual: A Social-Psychological Perspective (New York: Oxford University Press).
Becker, Ernest. 1973. The Denial of Death (New York: Free Press).
Berry, Thomas Mary. 1988. The Dream of the Earth (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books).
Berry, Wendell. 1993. Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community: Eight Essays (New York: Pantheon Books).
Boff, Leonardo. 1997. Cry of the Earth, Cry of the Poor, Ecology and Justice (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books).
Casciato, Tom (dir.). 2006. Is God Green? (USA: PBS). Online: http://www.pbs.org/ wgbh/pages/frontline/video/flv/generic.html?s=moyj06pa68.
Dawkins, Richard. 2006. The God Delusion (Boston: Houghton Mifflin).
Dietz, Thomas, Amy Fitzgerald, and Rachael Shwom. 2005. ‘Environmental Values’, Annual Review of Environment and Resources 30: 335-72. Doi: 10.1146/annurev.energy.30.050504.144444.
Dogan, Mattei. 2003. ‘Religious Beliefs in Europe: Factors of Accelerated Decline’, in R.L. Piedmont and D.O. Moberg (eds.), Research in the Social Scientific Study of Religion (Leiden: Koninklijke Brill NV): 161-88.
Ehrlich, Paul R. 1978 [1968]. The Population Bomb (New York: Ballantine Books, rev. edn).
Fowler, Robert Booth. 1995. The Greening of Protestant Thought (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press).
Fox, Matthew. 1988. The Coming of the Cosmic Christ: The Healing of Mother Earth and the Birth of a Global Renaissance (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco).
Geertz, Clifford. 1973a. ‘Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Cul¬ture’, in The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (New York: Basic Books): 3-30.
Geertz, Clifford. 1973b. ‘Religion as a Cultural System’, in The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (New York: Basic Books): 87-125.
Gottlieb, Roger S. 2006. A Greener Faith: Religious Environmentalism and Our Planet’s Future (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Hartshorne, Charles, and William L. Reese. 1953. Philosophers Speak of God (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).
Karp, D.G. 1996. ‘Values and their Effects on Pro-environmental Behavior’, Environmental Behavior 28: 111–33. Doi: 10.1177/0013916596281006.
Kosmin, Barry A., and Ariela Keysar. 2009. American Religious Identity Survey (Hartford, CT: Trinity College).
Leopold, Aldo. 1949. A Sand County Almanac, and Sketches Here and There (New York: Oxford University Press).
Loeffler, Jack. 2005. ‘Edward Abbey’, in B. Taylor (ed.), Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature (London/New York: Continuum International): 1-4.
Lyden, John C. 2003. Film as Religion: Myths, Morals, and Rituals (New York: New York University Press).
Markus, Hazel Rose, and Shinobu Kitayama. 1991. ‘Culture and the Self: Implications for Cognition, Emotion, and Motivation’, Psychological Review 98.2: 224-53. Doi: 10.1037/0033-295X.98.2.224.
Marvier, Michelle. 2012. ‘The Value of Nature Revisited’, Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 10.5: 227.
McFague, Sallie. 1993. The Body of God: An Ecological Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press).
Ohlman, Dean. 2010. ‘Principles of Land Ownership for Christians’, Restoring Eden. Online: http://restoringeden.org/resources/Ohlman/LandOwnership/view.
Oxford English Dictionary. 2012. Online: http://oxforddictionaries.com/us/ definition/american_english/religion.
Pew Research Center. 2011. ‘Global Christianity: A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World’s Christian Population’ (Washington, DC: Pew Research Center).
Pope, Carl. 1998. ‘Reaching Beyond Ourselves: It’s Time to Recognize Our Allies in the Faith Community’, Sierra (November/December): 14-15.
Rappaport, Roy A. 1999. Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity (Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology 110; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Rappaport, Roy A., Brian A. Hoey, and Tom Fricke. 2007. ‘“From Sweet Potatoes to God Almighty”: Roy Rappaport on Being a Hedgehog’, American Ethnologist 34.3: 581-99. Doi: 10.1525/ae.2007.34.3.581.
Rouse, Carolyn Moxley. 2004. Engaged Surrender: African American Women and Islam (Berkeley: University of California Press).
Ruether, Rosemary Radford. 1992. Gaia & God: An Ecofeminist Theology of Earth Healing (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco).
Schultz, P. Wesley, and Lynnette C. Zelezny. 1998. ‘Values and Proenvironmental Behavior: A Five Country Survey’, Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 29.4: 540–58. Doi: 10.1177/0022022198294003.
Schultz, P. Wesley, and Lynnette C. Zelezny. 1999. ‘Values as Predictors of Environmental Attitudes: Evidence for Con¬sistency Across 14 Countries’, Journal of Environmental Psychology 19.3: 255-65. Doi: 10.1006/jevp.1999.0129.
Schultz, P. Wesley et al. 2005. ‘Values and their Relationship to Environmental Concern and Conservation behavior’, Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 36.4: 457-75. Doi: 10.1177/0022022105275962.
Schweitzer, Albert. 1933. Out of My Life and Thought: An Autobiogrphy (trans. C.T. Campion; New York: H. Holt & Co.).
Smith, Jonathan Z., William Scott Green, Jorunn Jacobsen Buckley, and American Academy of Religion. 1995. The HarperCollins Dictionary of Religion (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco).
Stroink, Mirella, and Teresa DeCicco. 2011. ‘Culture, Religion, and the Underlying Value Dimensions of the Metapersonal Self-construal’, Mental Health, Religion & Culture 14: 917-34. Doi: 10.1080/13674676.2010.536979.
Taylor, Bron. 2010. Dark Green Religion: Nature Spirituality and the Planetary Future (Berkeley: University of California Press).
Taylor, Bron. 2011. ‘Editor’s Introduction: Toward a Robust Scientific Investigation of the “Religion” Variable in the Quest for Sustainability’, Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture 5: 253-62.
Tillich, Paul. 1948. The Shaking of the Foundations (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons).
Tillich, Paul. 1951. Systematic Theology (3 vols.; Chicago: University of Chicago Press).
US Court of Appeals, 5th Circuit. 1975. Young v. Southwestern Savings & Loan Association. Federal Reporter, 2d Series 509: 140.
US Court of Appeals, 7th Circuit. 2003. Reed v. The Great Lakes Companies. Federal Reporter, 3d Series 330: 931.
US Supreme Court. 1965. United States v. Seeger, et al. United States Reports 380: 163-93.
Voas, David, and Alasdair Crockett. 2005. ‘Religion in Britain: Neither Believing nor Belonging’, Sociology 39.1: 11-28. Doi: 10.1177/0038038505048998.
Wallace, Mark I. 2005. Finding God in the Singing River: Christianity, Spirit, Nature (Minneapolis: Fortress Press).
Weber, Max. 1958 [1913]. ‘The Social Psychology of the World Religions,’ in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (New York: Oxford University Press): 267-301.
Weber, Max. 1993 [1922]. The Sociology of Religion (Boston: Beacon Press).
Weber, Max. 2001 [1930]. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (trans. T. Parsons; London/New York: Routledge).
White, Lynn. 1967. ‘The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis’, Science 155.3767: 1203-7. Doi: 10.1126/science.155.3767.1203.
White, Lynn. 1973. ‘Continuing the Conversation’, in I. Barbour (ed.), Western Man and Environmental Ethics (Menlo Park, CA: Addison-Wesley): 55-64.
Wolfe, Gregory. 1997. The New Religious Humanists: A Reader (New York: Free Press).
Zaleha, Bernard Daley. 2008a. ‘“The Only Paradise We Ever Need”: An Investigation into Pantheism’s Sacred Geography in the Writings of Edward Abbey, Thomas Berry, and Matthew Fox, and a Preliminary Survey of Signs of Emerging Pantheism in American Culture’ (MA diss., University of Florida).
Zaleha, Bernard Daley. 2008b. ‘Review of John Hart’s “Sacramental Commons: Christian Ecological Ethics’, Environmental Ethics 30.2: 217-20. Doi: 10.5840/enviroethics200830210.
Zaleha, Bernard Daley. 2010. ‘Nature and Nature Religions’, in P. Williams (ed.), Encyclopedia of Religion in America (Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications): 1527-33.
Zaleha, Bernard Daley, and Andrew Szasz. Forthcoming 2013. ‘Keep Christianity Brown! Climate Denial on the Christian Right in the United States’, in R.G. Veldman, A. Szasz, and R. Haluza-DeLay (eds.), How the World’s Religions Are Responding to Climate Change: Social Scientific Investigations (Oxford: Routledge).
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