Teaching & Learning Guide for: Religious Environmentalism in the West

Abstract

This guide accompanies the following article(s): Religious Environmentalism in the West I: a Focus on Christianity, Religion Compass 3/4 (2009) pp. 717–737, 10.1111/j.1749‐8171.2009.00161.x Religious Environmentalism in the West. II: Impediments to the Praxis of Christian Environmentalism in Australia, Religion Compass 3/4 (2009) pp. 738–751, 10.1111/j.1749‐8171.2009.00162.x Author’s Introduction Religious environmentalism (also termed, amongst others, ‘religion and ecology’) is a growing field of academic study that encompasses disciplines such as ecological theology, ecopsychology, environmental education, political science, environmental sociology and applied ecology. This field of research is of particular political significance as it is argued that the rise of religious environmentalism in the West has been and continues to be a factor in promoting an alliance of socially conservative religion and socially progressive environmentalism. Growing concern about climate change is a factor in the rise of religious environmentalism, in part because the impacts of climate change are seen to be significant for people as well as non‐human Nature. Religious groups who have long been concerned with human welfare, often to the exclusion of any form of environmentalism, are increasingly seeing that human welfare and ecological well‐being are inextricably linked. Similarly, secular environmentalists and scientists are acknowledging the potentially powerful role that religion and spirituality can play in changing human behaviours for the better. Author Recommends The following recommended works are specific to Christian environmentalism. Hessel, D.T. and Ruether, R.R. (eds.), (2000). Christianity and Ecology: Seeking the Well‐Being of Earth and Humans. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press/Centre for the Study of World Religions. This is a large volume of work written by a range of authors. It is a core resource in the field of Christian environmentalism, and provides good coverage of this broad field. Habel, N. (2000). Introducing the Earth Bible. In: N. Habel (ed.), Readings from the Perspective of Earth (Earth Bible Vol. 1), pp. 1–25. Sheffield, Sheffield Academic Press. The Earth Bible is a series of theological texts that amount to an ecologically oriented reinterpretation of biblical texts. Kearns, L. (1996). ‘Saving the creation: Christian environmentalism in the United States’, Sociology of Religion, 57(1), pp. 55–59. http://users.drew.edu/lkearns/creation.pdf Whilst written in a USA context, this relatively short work (which is freely available on‐line) provides a classification of religious environmentalism that is useful more widely. It provides some particularly useful background information to important works and events in the development of Christian environmentalism. McDonagh, S. (1990). The Greening of the Church. Quezon City: Claretian Publications. This is a potent earlier work on religious environmentalism in the Catholic Church. The author, himself a Catholic, points out the...