Religion, Science, and Nature: Shifts in Meaning on a Changing Planet

Abstract

This article explores how religion and science, as worlding practices, are changed by the processes of globalization and global climate change. In the face of these processes, two primary methods of meaning making are emerging: the logic of globalization and planetary assemblages. The former operates out of the same logic as extant axial age religions, the Enlightenment, and Modernity. It is caught up in the process of universalizing meanings, objective truth, and a single reality. The latter suggests that the processes of globalization and climate change break open any universalizing attempt at meaning onto a proliferation of different, evolving planetary contexts. Both science and religion are affected by these changes, and the ways in which they shape our understandings of and relationship to the rest of the natural world are changed.

TECHNO‐SECULARITY AND TECHNO‐SAPIENS: EDITORIAL FOR ZYGON'S FIRST REAL VIRTUAL ISSUE

“…In 2006 Zygon published a set of articles on Bronislaw Szerszynski's Nature, Technology and the Sacred (2005a; see also Szerszynski 2005b; Kull 2006; Rodriguez da Cruz 2006; DeLashmutt 2006b; Szerszynski 2006). Szerszynski provides an original perspective on the long arc of our dealings with nature, which according to him is not characterized by “disenchantment,” to use Max Weber's terminology, but rather by transformations of “the sacred.” Like Caiazza, Szerszynski explores the religious motives and beliefs implicit in our technological culture, but he does not treat their development as manifestation of a persistent tension between reason and revealed religion, but rather as transformations within the cultural history of the West—a history that includes our dealing with nature, “the environment,” which has become a major topic in recent years (e.g., Bauman 2011).…”

Connecting Global and Local Indonesian Religious Environmental Movements

“…In Globalization: The Human Consequences, Zygmunt Bauman (1998) proposes that globalization produces two categories of people: global mobiles, who are able to use the benefits of mobile capital and ease of travel to maximize benefits from globalization; and local immobile, who are less able to shield themselves from the rapid social and economic changes wrought by globalization on local communities. From this level of analysis, religious environmental activists could be considered an example of global mobiles, as they jet around the world to international climate conferences and forge networks with international organizations (Bauman, 2011). As global mobiles, activists may become disconnected from local contexts and local problems, focused more on "rallying values to support climate action in general and less attentive to how specific action proposals use the idea of climate change to generate diverse models of cultural action" (Jenkins, 2009, p.15;Hulme, 2009).…”

“…For sociologists of religion, studying religion in geographical sites rather than as an essentialized categories (e.g., unchanging and universal Hinduism, Christianity or Islam) enables a deeper understanding of the relationship between social processes and religious concepts (Lynch, 2009;Guhin, 2014). In religious studies, a focus on lived religion (McGuire, 2008), and studies of neighborhoods and religious congregations (Knott, 2008;Ward, 2004) have given new insights into how religion is inter-preted, framed and re-framed in particular geographical places and spaces, adding a spatial v to the traditional chronological narrative of religion (Bauman, 2011). Bergmann (2017) argues that religion helps people to feel at home in specific times and places.…”

“…This is a good point to clarify what is meant by "religion" in this article. Drawing on Bauman (2011; and Tweed (2006) in a spatial approach to religion, religion refers to the complex processes of how people make meaning of their lives and how that meaning is continually re-made and re-interpreted in time and space. In particular, religion "functions to help us cope with existential matters such as life transitions, illness, and death" (Bauman, 2011, p.779).…”