The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Religion and Ecology ed. by John Hart

2018 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-200
Author(s):  
Dannis M. Matteson
Keyword(s):  
Religion And Ecology

Biophilia's Queer Remnants

2017 ◽  
Vol 46 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 18-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Courtney O'Dell-Chaib
Keyword(s):  
Healthy Animal ◽  
Religion And Ecology ◽  
Evolutionary Biologist ◽  
Ecological Degradation ◽  
Biophilia Hypothesis ◽  
Ethical Investments ◽  
Affective Dimensions

Evolutionary biologist Edward O. Wilson’s biophilia hypothesis, that humans have a genetically influenced emotional affiliation with life and life-like processes, for some time has invigorated a prominent strain of scholarship within religion and ecology that taps into the affective dimensions of our evolutionary histories. Our biophilic tendencies coupled with the awe, wonder, and reverence evoked by these religiously resonant cosmologies, they argue, provide occasions for cultivating ethical investments rooted in genetic kinship. However, much of this work that adopts biophilia assumes a “healthy” animal-other and rarely affiliates with the ill, disabled, and mutated creatures impacted by ecological degradation. In conversation with Donovan Schaefer’s provocative new book Religious Affects: Animality, Evolution, and Power and his engagement with biophilia, this paper considers possibilities for addressing aversion to animals impacted by ecological collapse through Schaefer’s understanding of affects as not merely adaptive, but embedded within complex economies of embodiment and power.

Conclusion

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amanda J. Baugh
Keyword(s):  
Religious Studies ◽  
Main Argument ◽  
Religion And Ecology

The conclusion reiterates the book’s main argument, that that environmental innovations in American religions have developed for reasons that expand far beyond direct expressions of religious teachings and faith. Then it discusses implications of these findings for the study of religion and ecology and religious studies more broadly.

scholarly journals Spiritual Ecology: On the Way to Ecological Existentialism

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (11) ◽  
pp. 580
Author(s):  
Sam Mickey
Keyword(s):  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
The Other ◽  
Spiritual Ecology ◽  
Religion And Ecology ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The Way

Spiritual ecology is closely related to inquiries into religion and ecology, religion and nature, and religious environmentalism. This article presents considerations of the unique possibilities afforded by the idea of spiritual ecology. On one hand, these possibilities include problematic tendencies in some strands of contemporary spirituality, including anti-intellectualism, a lack of sociopolitical engagement, and complicity in a sense of happiness that is captured by capitalist enclosures and consumerist desires. On the other hand, spiritual ecology promises to involve an existential commitment to solidarity with nonhumans, and it gestures toward ways of knowing and interacting that are more inclusive than what is typically conveyed by the term “religion.” Much work on spiritual ecology is broadly pluralistic, leaving open the question of how to discern the difference between better and worse forms of spiritual ecology. This article affirms that pluralism while also distinguishing between the anti-intellectual, individualistic, and capitalistic possibilities of spiritual ecology from varieties of spiritual ecology that are on the way to what can be described as ecological existentialism or coexistentialism.

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