Welcome to this overview, introduction to the study of religion and ecology. And our attempt here is to provide an overview of some of the terms and concepts that will be helpful in the study of religion and ecology. We open with this question: >> So the question is, how do the humanities and the religions interface with the ecological sciences? Now it's clear that what has driven the field of environmentalism and the field in academia is science and policy. Which are absolutely necessary but not sufficient. In recent years we've had a strong sense as well of economics and new technologies, industrial ecology, and so on. But with the fact that climate change science has not communicated well to a broad public, it's becoming increasingly clear that we need multiple ways of knowing, and in particular, we need the humanities. And that means history, the history of the environmental movement, literature, John Muir, Thoreau, right down to the present, Terry Tempest Williams. We need music, we need art, we need philosophy, environmental ethics, and so on. But especially, we need from all the cultures of the world, the religious understandings, intuition, practices, and ethics. That will help us complement the science and policy. >> So it's very helpful in this study of this field to be alert to these different ways of knowing. For example, we've had occasion to talk about religious traditions, in which dreams are capable of bringing a revelation to a person, a way of knowing, and we know of the tradition of yoga, where the sense of the knowledge of the mind is a powerful insight, and techniques. for examining these ways of knowing it. Similarly, devotional activities, or bhakti in Hinduism, opens up questions of emotional intelligence. So it's a very interesting set of questions raised here by this field of religion and ecology. >> So as we've been developing this over the last several decades, we've broken it down into (but interrelated, clearly), is an academic field of study and an engaged force of the religions in society. So the academic field has been growing for 25 years. We celebrated in November of 2016 at the American Academy of Religion, the beginning of this field. And we also celebrated the anniversary of the Harvard conferences in October of 2016 at Harvard, with a robust conference. All ages were represented, different racial groups and so on, the traditions, but also the topics, the themes that are pressing now. There are many jobs available in this academic field that weren't simply available 20 years ago. But we want to highlight as well, the engaged force of religious environmentalism, which still needs to be developed. It has its roots and activities and organizations, such as Interfaith Power and Light, where religious communities, churches, synagogues, and so on, are measuring their carbon footprint, are trying to reduce their sense of energy use. Around the world, we can see examples of religious environmentalism in Southeast Asia, where Buddhist monks are protecting trees in India, where the reforestation, especially around monasteries and temples, has been one of the activities of Hinduism. So increasingly, in various parts of the world, this sense of religious grassroots environmentalism is something we want to study and assist around the world. >> That's very helpful. Also, in the study of religion and ecology, from our perspective, we have attended, from the very beginning, to this question of the problems within religious traditions as well as their promise. In this way, we're inviting you to not only critique these traditions as you see them, but to be aware of the visions that they provide. This might find expression this way that sometimes, we talk of religions as being traditions, and in that sense, that traditional or conservative character of religions, which is very evident, can mask or make one miss how they change, and the dynamic historical character of traditions. Similarly, we know that traditions have a doctrinal dimension that certain teachings become fixed, and as they're handed on, they give the idea of an inflexible or the sense of a religion as not being able to change. But in other instances, we see how these traditions are very flexible. I've mentioned yoga, for example, and yoga is found deeply developed in Hinduism. It's at the center of Buddhism and Janism. >> And that's what theology does, that's what the rabbinical tradition does: study and change these traditions. >> So also, practices, rituals, for example, the set of questions that can be raised: are they limiting or liberating? And in what ways, then, does interaction with the natural world enhance that limiting or liberating character of practices? >> All of these traditions are mixed in terms of their problems and their promise. For example, their focus might be otherworldly salvation outside this world. But many of the traditions are also committed to how we live within this world, an incarnational sensibility, for Christianity; for Confucianism, the dynamic changes of nature and so on, right in the world itself. As well, we have tolerance towards the other and intolerance, and this is true throughout history. But the problems and promise, we need to keep identifying. Realized that there are billions of people who are part of these traditions, a billion Muslims, a billion Hindus, a billion Confucians. We can't leave them out of the solutions of environmental issues. >> Excellent. If we would consider overarching methods, then, for the study of religion and ecology, in terms of the historical dimension of religious traditions, "retrieval" presents itself as the first approach. We'll consider each one of these in a moment. But retrieval, reevaluation, and reconstruction, then, could be said to be at the heart of one approach to the study of religion and ecology. By retrieval. >> So even at the Harvard conferences, 20 years ago, this is what we were trying to do. To examine the history of a tradition through texts and scriptures, through rituals and ethics. To understand how individuals and communities in that religious tradition interact with the natural world. Those conferences covered the Asian religions, the Western religions, and Indigenous traditions. And 10 volume volumes illustrate this method of retrieval. >> Next, then, "evaluation" brings us to assessing what has been retrieved for its relevance to contemporary social and environmental concerns. So we have examples within Indigenous traditions of kinship with the natural world. And "reevaluation" asked the question then: Is this still a working ideal? And more pointedly perhaps, does that example from Indigenous traditions, is it relevant to other traditions, say, Christianity or Judaism? >> Yeah, and reevaluation would also be something like taking the Genesis passage of dominion. >> Exactly. >> And saying, well, we understand this as stewardship, not as dominating the natural world. So this brings us, finally, to "reconstruction". And that means adopting and adapting those religious ideas and practices within a tradition. That contribute to mutually enhancing human-earth relations. This is how religions are moving into their ecological phase. >> Along, then, with these approaches and methods, we wanted to stop for a moment and consider two major concepts that we've developed in this study of religion and ecology, and that we're calling religious ecology and religious cosmology. First, religious ecology. We want to clearly say that we see this as complementing scientific ecology. But there's a different motivation, here, because religious ecology points towards the ways of religious understanding, of the interaction and interdependence of humans with the larger community of life. So again, if we think of Indigenous traditions and the Lakota people in the Northern Plains, the Lakota concept of Mitakuye Oyasin, "all my relations", that opens the sense of humans as embedded by kinship with the earth community. So that constitutes a religious ecology, in our understanding. >> And religious cosmology also complements scientific cosmology, Here we mean ways of religious understanding in which humans narrate and perform cosmological stories, thus experiencing the generative matrix of the universe. If we give an example, even in the Christian traditions, how do we weave ourselves into the cycles of the day? Monastic traditions have prayers throughout the day. How do we weave ourselves into the agricultural cycles of planting, of harvest, and feasting, and celebrating? And most especially, how do we weave ourselves into the cosmological cycles? For example, the solstice, the winter solstice is very close to Christmas. The equinox is close to Easter. So we're putting ourselves in a cosmological context for the celebrations of a Christian calendar. >> So in our understanding, these two conceptual approaches, religious ecologies and religious cosmologies, are not simply two separate realms. They can be distinguished, but they are two sides of the same activity, so they're constantly interacting with one another. And in fact, if we would raise the question, how do these pathways manifest themselves? It brings us to the perspectives of orienting, grounding, nurturing, and transforming. Let's consider each one of these separately, then. >> So, orienting humans to the universe means that which is above, that which gives direction and guidance, a divine presence. In Confucianism, it's just called heaven, like conscience directing the whole universe. So, this is something that points towards transcendence, points towards a God, sometimes outside of the universe or earth. But it's that sense, we are part of some much larger whole. >> Yes, and consider in the Dine, or Navajo, tradition, the traditional house or hogan, the materials themselves are assembled from the natural world. So you get this sense of a religious ecology because the Hogan, as it is built, becomes a mirroring or a manifestation of the larger universe. So you have this orienting to the universe in the very traditional house of the Navajo people, similarly grounding. >> So grounding of humans in the community of nature, again, I've given some examples of this. But the rituals of church and community, be they Western, or Asian, or native, are very much trying to give people attention to and response to these changes, these seasonal changes. It's why East Asia is just absolutely penetrated with a profound sense of seasonal changes, the cherry blossoms and so on. So each of these traditions has that sense of grounding in the community of life. >> Yes, in the South Asian, in Hinduism, the Vedic traditions, and the many gods in the natural world would be a a powerful example of grounding in a religious ecology. Again, brings one into the natural world, but simultaneously opens one to the larger universe, nurturing it. >> So, as well, the grounding, I wanted to just continue for a moment, with the incarnational sense that many traditions have, that there's actual sense of a divine presence. And then, how do humans nurture and encourage that sense of divine presence in themselves? They do it through rituals such as a Eucharist in the Christian tradition. Taking wheat, transforming it into flour, into bread, taking grapes and making wine out of it. This is a sense that one is taking the fruits of the earth to nurture oneself, both physically and spiritually. >> Well, food in all of the religious traditions manifest the sacred, and so many interesting ways in the South Asian religions, Hinduism. The early expression in the Vedic tradition of an external altar, and the fire on that altar, then. And you feed the gods by putting offerings into that fire, and the gods then bring prosperity and bring material benefits to the community. So, again, food as the medium for this very powerful exchange of the sacred. And finally, then, transforming. >> So transforming of humans into their deeper cosmological selves. All of these traditions have what we would call the microcosm identified with the macrocosm: the small self and the great self. The Atman and the Brahman in the Hindu and Upanishadic traditions. So, that sense of, how do we take ourselves out of our petty concerns? Our fallibility, our degeneracy at times, how we lose our path. How do we bring ourselves forward in something that is actually transforming to recognize and cultivate our deepest selves? All of these traditions have processes of self cultivation, that lead to transformation of humans in society, in nature, and in the cosmos itself. >> Yeah, it is really interesting. And considering the South Asian spirituality of yoga, again, in this context. We know that the yoga spirituality was adapted into many traditions, but there's a very interesting consistency of attention. For example, to the moon and the waxing and waning of the moon. And the moon providing a symbolic insight into the transforming of the lower human self into the deeper cosmological self. So it's a very interesting dynamic that we find in many of the religious traditions. About disciplines that are attending to changes, potential changes of transformation. >> So we have shared values as well within their religious traditions. And after the Harvard conferences in the mid nineties, these were some of the values that came forward and we call them the Rs, so to speak. >> And reverence is the first that we focused on. In the traditions, you find a reverence for earth in as many manifestations and its ecological processes. >> We find a respect for earth's myriad species, and an extension of ethics to include all life forms. >> A sense of reciprocity in relation to both humans and nature. >> A restraint in the use of natural resources, combined with support for effective alternative technologies. >> You find within these traditions, then, that social justice concern for redistribution of economic opportunities that are made more equitable across society. >> As well, and there's a profound sense of a responsibility for the continuity of life itself. >> Restoration is central also in many traditions, a sense of restoring humans and ecosystems to the flourishing of life. >> And finally, this notion of resilience in the face of loss and diminishment of the natural world. This is perhaps one of the greatest contributions of the traditions, who are dealing with the profound reality of suffering that is inevitable. But they're suggesting resilience is one of the ways forward. So we invite you to this course, to a sense of your own discovery of these values, of these methods in the study of religion and ecology. >> Yes, and especially, to see how these concepts and pathways interact with one another. How to be able to use them, so you can build your insights, so we look forward to the future discussion of these issues.
