Religion and environmentalism

Religion and Ecology is an emerging subfield in the academic discipline of Religious Studies. It is founded on the understanding that, in the words of Iranian-American philosopher Seyyed Hossein Nasr, "the environmental crisis is fundamentally a crisis of values," and that religions, being the primary source of values in any culture, are thus implication in the decisions humans make regarding the environment. Historian Lynn White, Jr. first made the argument in a 1966 lecture before the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, subsequently published in the journal Science, that Western Christianity, having de-sacralized and instrumentlized nature to human ends, bears a substantial "burden of guilt" for the contemporary environmental crisis. White's essay stimulated a flurry of responses, ranging from defenses of Christianity to qualified admissions to complete agreement with his analysis. Some proposed that Eastern religions, as well as those of indigenous peoples, neo-pagans, and others, offered more eco-friendly worldviews than Christianity. By the 1990s many scholars of religion had entered the debate and begun to generate a substantial body of literature discussing and analyzing how nature is valued in the world's various religious systems. A landmark event was a series of ten conferences on Religion and Ecology organized by Bucknell University professors Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim and held at the Harvard University Center for the Study of World Religions from 1996-1998. The conference papers were published in a series of ten books, one for each of the world's major religious traditions. An active Religion and Ecology group has been in existence within the American Academy of Religion since 1990, and an ever-increasing number of universities in North America and around the world are now offering courses on religion and the environment.

References: Lynn White, Jr., “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis,” Science 155 (1967): 1203-1207. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Man and Nature: The Spiritual Crisis in Modern Man. Rev. ed. Chicago, Ill.: Kazi Publishers, 1997 [1967]. <http://www.religionandecology.org> <http://www.religionandnature.com> Richard C. Foltz, ed., Worldviews, Religion, and the Environment: A Global Anthology, Belmont, CA: Wadsworth (2002).