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Center for the Study of World Religions, Harvard
Divinity School
Religions of the World and Ecology Series
Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim
Ours is a period when the human community is in search
of new and sustaining relationships to the earth amidst
an environmental crisis that threatens the very existence
of all life-forms on the planet. While the particular
causes and solutions of this crisis are being debated
by scientists, economists, and policymakers, the facts
of widespread destruction are causing alarm in many
quarters. Indeed, from some perspectives the future
of human life itself appears threatened. As Daniel Maguire
has succinctly observed, “If current trends continue,
we will not.”1
Thomas Berry, the former director of the Riverdale Center
for Religious Research, has also raised the stark question,
“Is the human a viable species on an endangered
planet?”
From resource depletion and species extinction to
pollution overload and toxic surplus, the planet is
struggling against unprecedented assaults. This is aggravated
by population explosion, industrial growth, technological
manipulation, and military proliferation heretofore
unknown by the human community. From many accounts the
basic elements which sustain life-sufficient water,
clean air, and arable land are at risk. The challenges
are formidable and well documented. The solutions, however,
are more elusive and complex. Clearly, this crisis has
economic, political, and social dimensions which require
more detailed analysis than we can provide here. Suffice
it to say, however, as did the Global 2000 Report:
“. . . once such global environmental problems
are in motion they are difficult to reverse. In fact
few if any of the problems addressed in the Global
2000 Report are amenable to quick technological
or policy fixes; rather, they are inextricably mixed
with the world’s most perplexing social and economic
problems.”2
Peter Raven, the director of the Missouri Botanical
Garden, wrote in a paper titled, “We Are Killing
Our World,” with a similar sense of urgency regarding
the magnitude of the environmental crisis: “The
world that provides our evolutionary and ecological
context is in serious trouble, trouble of a kind that
demands our urgent attention. By formulating adequate
plans for dealing with these large-scale problems, we
will be laying the foundation for peace and prosperity
in the future; by ignoring them, drifting passively
while attending to what may seem more urgent, personal
priorities, we are courting disaster.”
For many people an environmental crisis of this complexity
and scope is not only the result of certain economic,
political, and social factors. It is also a moral and
spiritual crisis which, in order to be addressed, will
require broader philosophical and religious understandings
of ourselves as creatures of nature, embedded in life
cycles and dependent on ecosystems. Religions, thus,
need to be re-examined in light of the current environmental
crisis. This is because religions help to shape our
attitudes toward nature in both conscious and unconscious
ways. Religions provide basic interpretive stories of
who we are, what nature is, where we have come from,
and where we are going. This comprises a worldview of
a society. Religions also suggest how we should treat
other humans and how we should relate to nature. These
values make up the ethical orientation of a society.
Religions thus generate worldviews and ethics which
underlie fundamental attitudes and values of different
cultures and societies. As the historian Lynn White
observed, “What people do about their ecology depends
on what they think about themselves in relation to things
around them. Human ecology is deeply conditioned by
beliefs about our nature and destiny—that is, by
religion.”3
In trying to reorient ourselves in relation to the
earth, it has become apparent that we have lost our
appreciation for the intricate nature of matter and
materiality. Our feeling of alienation in the modern
period has extended beyond the human community and its
patterns of material exchanges to our interaction with
nature itself. Especially in technologically sophisticated
urban societies, we have become removed from the recognition
of our dependence on nature. We no longer know who we
are as earthlings; we no longer see the earth as sacred.
Thomas Berry suggests that we have become autistic
in our interactions with the natural world. In other
words, we are unable to value the life and beauty of
nature because we are locked in our own egocentric perspectives
and shortsighted needs. He suggests that we need a new
cosmology, cultural coding, and motivating energy to
overcome this deprivation.4
He observes that the magnitude of destructive industrial
processes is so great that we must initiate a radical
rethinking of the myth of progress and of humanity’s
role in the evolutionary process. Indeed, he speaks
of evolution as a new story of the universe, namely,
as a vast cosmological perspective that will resituate
human meaning and direction in the context of four and
a half billion years of earth history.5
For Berry and for many others an important component
of the current environmental crisis is spiritual and
ethical. It is here that the religions of the world
may have a role to play in cooperation with other individuals,
institutions, and initiatives that have been engaged
with environmental issues for a considerable period
of time. Despite their lateness in addressing the crisis,
religions are beginning to respond in remarkably creative
ways. They are not only rethinking their theologies
but are also reorienting their sustainable practices
and long-term environmental commitments. In so doing,
the very nature of religion and of ethics is being challenged
and changed. This is true because the reexamination
of other worldviews created by religious beliefs and
practices may be critical to our recovery of sufficiently
comprehensive cosmologies, broad conceptual frameworks,
and effective environmental ethics for the twenty-first
century.
While in the past none of the religions of the world
have had to face an environmental crisis such as we
are now confronting, they remain key instruments in
shaping attitudes toward nature. The unintended consequences
of the modern industrial drive for unlimited economic
growth and resource development have led us to an impasse
regarding the survival of many life-forms and appropriate
management of varied ecosystems. The religious traditions
may indeed be critical in helping to reimagine the viable
conditions and long-range strategies for fostering mutually
enhancing human-earth relations.6
Indeed, as E. N. Anderson has documented with impressive
detail, “All traditional societies that have succeeded
in managing resources well, over time, have done it
in part through religious or ritual representation of
resource management.”7
It is in this context that a series of conferences
and publications exploring the various religions of
the world and their relation to ecology was initiated
by the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard
University. Coordinated by Mary Evelyn Tucker and John
Grim, the conferences involved some 800 scholars, graduate
students, religious leaders, and environmental activists
over a period of three years. The collaborative nature
of the project is intentional. Such collaboration maximizes
the opportunity for dialogical reflection on this issue
of enormous complexity and accentuates the diversity
of local manifestations of ecologically sustainable
alternatives.
This series is intended to serve as initial exploration
of the emerging field of religion and ecology while
pointing toward areas for further research. We are not
unaware of the difficulties of engaging in such a task,
yet we have been encouraged by the enthusiastic response
to the conferences within the academic community, by
the larger interest they have generated beyond academia,
and by the probing examinations gathered in the volumes.
We trust that this series and these volumes will be
useful not only for scholars of religion but also for
those shaping seminary education and institutional religious
practices, as well as for those involved in environmental
public policy.
We see such conferences and publications as expanding
the growing dialogue regarding the role of the world’s
religions as moral forces in stemming the environmental
crisis. While, clearly, there are major methodological
issues involved in utilizing traditional philosophical
and religious ideas for contemporary concerns, there
are also compelling reasons to support such efforts,
however modest they may be. The world’s religions
in all their complexity and variety remain one of the
principal resources for symbolic ideas, spiritual inspiration,
and ethical principles. Indeed, despite their limitations,
historically they have provided comprehensive cosmologies
for interpretive direction, moral foundations for social
cohesion, spiritual guidance for cultural expression,
and ritual celebrations for meaningful life. In our
search for more comprehensive ecological worldviews
and more effective environmental ethics, it is inevitable
that we will draw from the symbolic and conceptual resources
of the religious traditions of the world. The effort
to do this is not without precedent or problems, some
of which will be signaled below. With this volume and
with this series we hope the field of reflection and
discussion regarding religion and ecology will begin
to broaden, deepen, and complexify.
These volumes, then, are built on the premise that the
religions of the world may be instrumental in addressing
the moral dilemmas created by the environmental crisis.
At the same time we recognize the limitations of such
efforts on the part of religions. We also acknowledge
that the complexity of the problem requires interlocking
approaches from such fields as science, economics, politics,
health, and public policy. As the human community struggles
to formulate different attitudes toward nature and to
articulate broader conceptions of ethics embracing species
and ecosystems, religions may thus be a necessary, though
only contributing, part of this multidisciplinary approach.
It is becoming increasingly evident that abundant
scientific knowledge of the crisis is available and
numerous political and economic statements have been
formulated that reflect this concern. Yet we seem to
lack the political, economic, and scientific leadership
to make necessary changes. Moreover, what is still lacking
is the religious commitment, moral imagination, and
ethical engagement to transform the environmental crisis
from an issue on paper to one of effective policy, from
rhetoric in print to realism in action. Why, nearly
fifty years after Fairfield Osborne’s warning in
Our Plundered Planet and more than thirty years
since Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, are
we still wondering, is it too late?8
It is important to ask where the religions have been
on these issues and why they themselves have been so
late in their involvement. Have issues of personal salvation
superseded all others? Have divine-human relations been
primary? Have anthropocentric ethics been all-consuming?
Has the material world of nature been devalued by religion?
Does the search for otherworldly rewards override commitment
to this world? Did the religions simply surrender their
natural theologies and concerns with exploring purpose
in nature to positivistic scientific cosmologies? In
beginning to address these questions, we still have
not exhausted all the reasons for religions’ lack
of attention to the environmental crisis. The reasons
may not be readily apparent, but clearly they require
further exploration and explanation.
In discussing the involvement of religions in this
issue, it is also appropriate to acknowledge the dark
side of religion in both its institutional expressions
and dogmatic forms. In addition to their oversight with
regard to the environment, religions have been the source
of enormous manipulation of power in fostering wars,
in ignoring racial and social injustice, and in promoting
unequal gender relations, to name only a few abuses.
One does not want to underplay this shadow side or to
claim too much for religions’ potential for ethical
persuasiveness. The problems are too vast and complex
for unqualified optimism. Yet there is a growing consensus
that religions may now have a significant role to play,
just as in the past they have sustained individuals
and cultures in the face of internal and external threats.
A final caveat is the inevitable gap that arises between
theories and practices in religions. As has been noted,
even societies with religious traditions which appear
sympathetic to the environment have in the past often
misused resources. While it is clear that religions
may have some disjunction between the ideal and the
real, this should not lessen our endeavor to identify
resources from within the world’s religions for
a more ecologically sound cosmology and environmentally
supportive ethics. This disjunction of theory and practice
is present within all philosophies and religions and
is frequently the source of disillusionment, skepticism,
and cynicism. A more realistic observation might be
made, however, that this disjunction should not automatically
invalidate the complex worldviews and rich cosmologies
embedded in traditional religions. Rather, it is our
task to explore these conceptual resources so as to
broaden and expand our own perspectives in challenging
and fruitful ways.
In summary, we recognize that religions have elements
which are both prophetic and transformative as well
as conservative and constraining. These elements are
continually in tension, a condition which creates the
great variety of thought and interpretation within religious
traditions. To recognize these various tensions and
limits, however, is not to lessen the urgency of the
overall goals of this project. Rather, it is to circumscribe
our efforts with healthy skepticism, cautious optimism,
and modest ambitions. It is to suggest that this is
a beginning in a new field of study which will affect
both religion and ecology. On the one hand, this process
of reflection will inevitably change how religions conceive
of their own roles, missions, and identities, for such
reflections demand a new sense of the sacred as not
divorced from the earth itself. On the other hand, environmental
studies can recognize that religions have helped to
shape attitudes toward nature. Thus, as religions themselves
evolve they may be indispensable in fostering a more
expansive appreciation for the complexity and beauty
of the natural world. At the same time as religions
foster awe and reverence for nature, they may provide
the transforming energies for ethical practices to protect
endangered ecosystems, threatened species, and diminishing
resources.
It is important to acknowledge that there are, inevitably,
challenging methodological issues involved in such a
project as we are undertaking in this emerging field
of religion and ecology.9
Some of the key interpretive challenges we face in this
project concern issues of time, place, space, and positionality.
With regard to time, it is necessary to recognize the
vast historical complexity of each religious tradition,
which cannot be easily condensed in these conferences
or volumes. With respect to place, we need to signal
the diverse cultural contexts in which these religions
have developed. With regard to space, we recognize the
varied frameworks of institutions and traditions in
which these religions unfold. Finally, with respect
to positionality, we acknowledge our own historical
situatedness at the end of the twentieth century with
distinctive contemporary concerns.
Not only is each religious tradition historically
complex and culturally diverse, but its beliefs, scriptures,
and institutions have themselves been subject to vast
commentaries and revisions over time. Thus, we recognize
the radical diversity that exists within and among religious
traditions which cannot be encompassed in any single
volume. We acknowledge also that distortions may arise
as we examine earlier historical traditions in light
of contemporary issues.
Nonetheless, environmental ethics philosopher J. Baird
Callicott has suggested that scholars and others “mine
the conceptual resources” of the religious traditions
as a means of creating a more inclusive global environmental
ethics.10As
Callicott himself notes, however, the notion of “mining”
is problematic, for it conjures up images of exploitation
which may cause apprehension among certain religious
communities, especially those of indigenous peoples.
Moreover, we cannot simply expect to borrow or adopt
ideas and place them from one tradition directly into
another. Even efforts to formulate global environmental
ethics need to be sensitive to cultural particularity
and diversity. We do not aim at creating a simple bricolage
or bland fusion of perspectives. Rather, these conferences
and volumes are an attempt to display before us a multiperspectival
cross section of the symbolic richness regarding attitudes
toward nature within the world’s religious traditions.
To do so will help to reveal certain commonalities among
traditions, as well as limitations within traditions,
as they begin to converge around this challenge presented
by the environmental crisis.
We need to identify our concerns, then, as embedded
in the constraints of our own perspectival limits at
the same time as we seek common ground. In describing
various attitudes toward nature historically, we are
aiming at critical understanding of the complexity,
contexts, and frameworks in which these religions articulate
such views. In addition, we are striving for empathetic
appreciation for the traditions without idealizing their
ecological potential or ignoring their environmental
oversights. Finally, we are aiming at the creative revisioning
of mutually enhancing human-earth relations. This revisioning
may be assisted by highlighting the multi-perspectival
attitudes toward nature which these traditions disclose.
The prismatic effect of examining such attitudes and
relationships may provide some necessary clarification
and symbolic resources for reimagining our own situation
and shared concerns at the end of the twentieth century.
It will also be sharpened by identifying the multilayered
symbol systems in world religions which have traditionally
oriented humans in establishing relational resonances
between the microcosm of the self and the macrocosm
of the social and natural orders. In short, religious
traditions may help to supply both creative resources
of symbols, rituals, and texts as well as inspiring
visions for reimagining ourselves as part of, not apart
from, the natural world.
The methodological issues outlined above were implied
in the overall goals of the conferences, which were
described as follows:
- To identify and evaluate the distinctive ecological
attitudes, values, and practices of diverse religious
traditions, making clear their links to intellectual,
political, and other resources associated with these
distinctive traditions.
- To describe and analyze the commonalities that exist
within and among religious traditions with respect
to ecology.
- To identify the minimum common ground on which to
base constructive understanding, motivating discussion,
and concerted action in diverse locations across the
globe; and to highlight the specific religious resources
that comprise such fertile ecological ground: within
scripture, ritual, myth, symbol, cosmology, sacrament,
and so on.
- To articulate in clear and moving terms a desirable
mode of human presence with the earth; in short, to
highlight means of respecting and valuing nature,
to note what has already been actualized, and to indicate
how best to achieve what is desirable beyond these
examples.
- To outline the most significant areas, with regard
to religion and ecology, in need of further study;
to enumerate questions of highest priority within
those areas and propose possible approaches to use
in addressing them.
In this series, then, we do not intend to obliterate
difference or ignore diversity. The aim is to celebrate
plurality by raising to conscious awareness multiple
perspectives regarding nature and human-earth relations
as articulated in the religions of the world. The spectrum
of cosmologies, myths, symbols, and rituals within the
religious traditions will be instructive in resituating
us within the rhythms and limits of nature.
We are not looking for a unified worldview or a single
global ethic. We are, however, deeply sympathetic with
the efforts toward formulating a global ethic made by
individuals, such as the theologian Hans Kung or the
environmental philosopher J. Baird Callicott, and groups,
such as Global Education Associates and United Religions.
A minimum content of environmental ethics needs to be
seriously considered. We are, then, keenly interested
in the contribution this series might make to discussions
of environmental policy in national and international
arenas. Important intersections may be made with work
in the field of development ethics.11
In addition, the findings of the conferences have bearing
on the ethical formulation of the Earth Charter that
is to be presented to the United Nations for adoption
within the next few years. Thus, we are seeking both
the grounds for common concern and the constructive
conceptual basis for rethinking our current situation
of estrangement from the earth. In so doing we will
be able to reconceive a means of creating the basis
not just for sustainable development, but also for sustainable
life on the planet.
As scientist Brian Swimme has suggested, we are currently
making macrophase changes to the life systems of the
planet with microphase wisdom. Clearly, we need to expand
and deepen the wisdom base for human intervention with
nature and other humans. This is particularly true as
issues of genetic alteration of natural processes are
already available and in use. If religions have traditionally
concentrated on divine-human and human-human relations,
the challenge is that they now explore more fully divine-human-earth
relations. Without such further exploration, adequate
environmental ethics may not emerge in a comprehensive
context.
For many people, when challenges such as the environmental
crisis are raised in relation to religion in the contemporary
world, there frequently arises a sense of loss or a
nostalgia for earlier, seemingly less complicated eras
when the constant questioning of religious beliefs and
practices was not so apparent. This is, no doubt, something
of a reified reading of history. There is, however,
a decidedly anxious tone to the questioning and soul-searching
that appears to haunt many contemporary religious groups
as they seek to find their particular role in the midst
of rapid technological change and dominant secular values.
One of the greatest remaining challenges to contemporary
religions is how to respond to the environmental crisis,
a crisis that many believe has been perpetuated because
of the enormous inroads made by unrestrained materialism,
secularization, and industrialization in contemporary
societies, especially in societies arising in or influenced
by the modern West. Indeed, some suggest that the very
division of religion from secular life may be a major
cause of the crisis.
Others, such as the medieval historian Lynn White,
have cited religion’s negative role in the crisis.
White has suggested that the emphasis in Judaism and
Christianity on the transcendence of God above nature
and the dominion of humans over nature has led to a
devaluing of the natural world and a subsequent destruction
of its resources for utilitarian ends.12
While the particulars of this argument have been vehemently
debated, it is increasingly clear that the environmental
crisis and its perpetuation due to industrialization,
secularization, and ethical indifference present a serious
challenge to the world’s religions. This is especially
true because many of these religions have traditionally
been concerned with the path of personal salvation,
which frequently emphasized otherworldly goals and rejected
this world as corrupting. Thus, as we have noted, how
to adapt religious teachings to this task of revaluing
nature so as to prevent its destruction marks a significant
new phase in religious thought. Indeed, as Thomas Berry
has so aptly pointed out, if the human is to continue
as a viable species on an increasingly degraded planet,
what is necessary is a comprehensive reevaluation of
human-earth relations. This will require, in addition
to major economic and political changes, examining worldviews
and ethics among the world’s religions that differ
from those that have captured the imagination of contemporary
industrialized societies that regard nature primarily
as a commodity to be utilized. It should be noted that
when we are searching for effective resources for formulating
environmental ethics, each of the religious traditions
have both positive and negative features.
For the most part, the worldviews associated with
the Western Abrahamic traditions of Judaism, Christianity,
and Islam have created a dominantly human-focused morality.
Because these worldviews are largely anthropocentric,
nature is viewed as being of secondary importance. This
is reinforced by a strong sense of the transcendence
of God above nature. On the other hand, there are rich
resources for rethinking views of nature in the covenantal
tradition of the Hebrew Bible, in sacramental theology,
in incarnational Christology, and in the vice-regency
(khalifa Allah) concept of the Qur’an. The
covenantal tradition draws on the legal agreements of
biblical thought which are extended to all of creation.
Sacramental theology in Christianity underscores the
sacred dimension of material reality, especially for
ritual purposes.13
Incarnational Christology proposes that because God
became flesh in the person of Christ, the entire natural
order can be viewed as sacred. The concept of humans
as vice-regents of Allah on earth suggests that humans
have particular privileges, responsibilities, and obligations
to creation.14
In Hinduism, although there is a significant emphasis
on performing one’s dharma, or duty, in
the world, there is also a strong pull toward moksha,
or liberation, from the world of suffering, or samsara.
To heal this kind of suffering and alienation through
spiritual discipline and meditation, one turns away
from the world (prakrti) to a timeless world
of spirit (purusa). Yet at the same time there
are numerous traditions in Hinduism which affirm particular
rivers, mountains, or forests as sacred. Moreover, in
the concept of lila, the creative play of the
gods, Hindu theology engages the world as a creative
manifestation of the divine. This same tension between
withdrawal from the world and affirmation of it is present
in Buddhism. Certain Theravada schools of Buddhism emphasize
withdrawing in meditation from the transient world of
suffering (samsara) to seek release in nirvana.
On the other hand, later Mahayana schools of Buddhism,
such as Hua-yen, underscore the remarkable interconnection
of reality in such images as the jeweled net of Indra,
where each jewel reflects all the others in the universe.
Likewise, the Zen gardens in East Asia express the fullness
of the Buddha-nature (tathagatagarbha) in the
natural world. In recent years, socially engaged Buddhism
has been active in protecting the environment in both
Asia and the United States.
The East Asian traditions of Confucianism and Taoism
remain, in certain ways, some of the most life-affirming
in the spectrum of world religions.15
The seamless interconnection between the divine, human,
and natural worlds that characterizes these traditions
has been described as an anthropocosmic worldview.16
There is no emphasis on radical transcendence as there
is in the Western traditions. Rather, there is a cosmology
of a continuity of creation stressing the dynamic movements
of nature through seasons and agricultural cycles. This
organic cosmology is grounded in the philosophy of ch’i
(material force), which provides a basis for appreciating
the profound interconnection of matter and spirit. The
aim of personal cultivation in both Confucianism and
Taoism is to be in harmony with nature and with other
humans while being attentive to the movements of the
Tao (Way). It should be noted, however, that
this positive worldview has not prevented environmental
degradation (e.g., deforestation) in parts of East Asia
in both the premodern and modern periods.
In a similar vein, indigenous peoples, while having
ecological cosmologies have, in some instances, caused
damage to local environments through such practices
as slash-and-burn agriculture. Nonetheless, most indigenous
peoples have environmental ethics embedded in their
worldviews. This is evident in the complex reciprocal
obligations surrounding life-taking and resource-gathering
which mark a community’s relations with the local
bioregion. The religious views at the basis of indigenous
lifeways involve respect for the sources of food, clothing,
and shelter that nature provides. Gratitude to the creator
and to the spiritual forces in creation is at the heart
of most indigenous traditions. The ritual calendars
of many indigenous peoples are carefully coordinated
with seasonal events such as the sound of returning
birds, the blooming of certain plants, the movements
of the sun, and the changes of the moon.
The difficulty at present is that for the most part
we have developed in the world’s religions certain
ethical prohibitions regarding homicide and restraints
concerning genocide and suicide, but none for biocide
or geocide. We are clearly in need of exploring such
comprehensive cosmological perspectives and communitarian
environmental ethics as the most compelling context
for motivating change regarding the destruction of the
natural world.
How to chart possible paths toward mutually enhancing
human-earth relations remains, one of the greatest challenges
to the world’s religions. It is with some encouragement,
however, that we note the growing calls for the world’s
religions to participate in these efforts toward a more
sustainable planetary future. There have been various
appeals from environmental groups and from scientists
and parliamentarians for religious leaders to respond
to the environmental crisis. For example, in 1990 the
Joint Appeal in Religion and Science was released highlighting
the urgency of collaboration around the issue of the
destruction of the environment. In 1992 the Union of
Concerned Scientists issued the statement “Warning
to Humanity,” signed by more than 1,000 scientists
from 70 countries, including 105 Nobel laureates, regarding
the gravity of the environmental crisis. They specifically
cited the need for a new ethic toward the earth.
Numerous national and international conferences have
also been held on this subject and collaborative efforts
have been established. Environmental groups such as
World Wildlife Fund, have sponsored interreligious meetings
such as the one in Assisi in 1986. The Center for Respect
of Life and Environment of the Humane Society of the
United States has also held a series of conferences
in Assisi on Spirituality and Sustainability and has
helped to organize one at the World Bank. The United
Nations Environmental Programme in North America has
established an Environmental Sabbath, each year distributing
thousands of packets of materials for use in congregations
throughout North America. Similarly, the National Religious
Partnership on the Environment at the Cathedral of St.
John the Divine in New York City has promoted dialogue,
distributed materials, and created a remarkable alliance
of the various Jewish and Christian denominations in
the United States around the issue of the environment.
The Parliament of World Religions held in 1993 in Chicago
and attended by some 8,000 people from all over the
globe issued a statement of Global Ethics of Cooperation
of Religions on Human and Environmental Issues. International
meetings on the environment have been organized. One
example of these, the Global Forum of Spiritual and
Parliamentary Leaders held in Oxford in 1988, Moscow
in 1990, Rio in 1992, and Kyoto in 1993, included world
religious leaders, such as the Dalai Lama, and diplomats
and heads of state, such as Mikhail Gorbachev. Indeed,
Gorbachev hosted the Moscow conference and attended
the Kyoto conference to set up a Green Cross International
for environmental emergencies.
Since the United Nations Conference on Environment
and Development (the Earth Summit) held in Rio in 1992,
there have been concerted efforts intended to lead toward
the adoption of an Earth Charter by the year 2000. This
Earth Charter initiative is under way with the leadership
of the Earth Council and Green Cross International,
with support from the government of the Netherlands.
Maurice Strong, Mikhail Gorbachev, Steven Rockefeller,
and other members of the Earth Charter Project have
been instrumental in this process. At the March 1997
Rio+5 Conference a benchmark draft of the Earth
Charter was issued. The time is thus propitious for
further investigation of the potential contributions
of particular religions toward mitigating the environmental
crisis, especially by developing more comprehensive
environmental ethics for the earth community.
More than two decades ago Thomas Berry anticipated such
an exploration when he called for “creating a new
consciousness of the multi-form religious traditions
of humankind” as a means toward renewal of the
human spirit in addressing the urgent problems of contemporary
society.17
Tu Weiming has written of the need to go “Beyond
the Enlightenment Mentality” in exploring the spiritual
resources of the global community to meet the challenge
of the ecological crisis.18
While this exploration has also been the intention of
both the conferences and these volumes, other significant
efforts have preceded our current endeavor.19
Our discussion here highlights only the last decade.
In 1986 Eugene Hargrove edited a volume titled, Religion
and Environmental Crisis.20
In 1991 Charlene Spretnak explored this topic in her
book, States of Grace: The Recovery of Meaning in
the Post-Modern Age.21
Her subtitle states her constructivist project clearly:
“Reclaiming the Core Teachings and Practices of
the Great Wisdom Traditions for the Well-Being of the
Earth Community.” In 1992 Steven Rockefeller and
John Elder edited a book based on a conference at Middlebury
College titled, Spirit and Nature: Why the Environment
Is a Religious Issue.22
In the same year Peter Marshall published, Nature’s
Web: Rethinking Our Place on Earth,23
drawing on the resources of the world’s traditions.
An edited volume titled, Worldviews and Ecology,
compiled in 1993, contains articles reflecting on views
of nature from the world’s religions and from contemporary
philosophies, such as process thought and deep ecology.24
In this same vein, in 1994, J. Baird Callicott published
Earth’s Insights which examines the intellectual
resources of the world’s religions for a more comprehensive
global environmental ethics.25
This expands on his 1989 volumes, Nature in Asian
Traditions of Thought and In Defense of the Land
Ethic.26
In 1995 David Kinsley issued a book titled, Ecology
and Religion: Ecological Spirituality in a Cross- Cultural
Perspective,27
which draws on traditional religions and contemporary
movements, such as deep ecology and ecospirituality.
Seyyed Hossein Nasr wrote his comprehensive study, Religion
and the Order of Nature, in 1996.28
Several volumes of religious responses to a particular
topic or theme have also been published. For example,
J. Ronald Engel and Joan Gibb Engel compiled a monograph
in 1990 titled, Ethics of Environment and Development:
Global Challenge, International Response29
and in 1995 Harold Coward edited the volume, Population,
Consumption, and the Environment: Religious and Secular
Responses.30
Roger Gottlieb edited a useful source book, This
Sacred Earth: Religion, Nature, Environment.31
Single volumes on the world’s religions and ecology
were published by the Worldwide Fund for Nature.32
The series Religions of the World and Ecology is thus
intended to expand the discussion already under way
in certain circles and to invite further collaboration
on a topic of common concern—the fate of the earth
as a religious responsibility. To broaden and deepen
the reflective basis for mutual collaboration was an
underlying aim of the conferences themselves. While
some might see this as a diversion from pressing scientific
or policy issues, it was with a sense of humility and
yet conviction that we entered into the arena of reflection
and debate on this issue. In the field of the study
of world religions, we have seen this as a timely challenge
for scholars of religion to respond as engaged intellectuals
with deepening creative reflection. We hope that these
volumes will be simply a beginning of further study
of conceptual and symbolic resources, methodological
concerns, and practical directions for meeting this
environmental crisis.
1
He goes on to say, “And that is qualitatively and
epochally true. If religion does not speak to [this],
it is an obsolete distraction.” Daniel Maguire,
The Moral Core of Judaism and Christianity: Reclaiming
the Revolution (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1993) 13.
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2
Gerald Barney, Global 2000 Report to the President
of the United States (Washington, D.C.: Supt. of
Docs. U.S. Government Printing Office, 1980–1981)
40.
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3
Lynn White, Jr., “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic
Crisis,” Science 155 (March 1967): 1204.
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4
Thomas Berry, The Dream of the Earth (San Francisco:
Sierra Club Books, 1988).
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5
Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry, The Universe Story
(San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1992).
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6
At the same time we recognize the limits to such a project,
especially because ideas and action, theory and practice,
do not always occur in conjunction.
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7
E. N. Anderson, Ecologies of the Heart: Emotion,
Belief, and the Environment (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1996) 166. He qualifies this statement by saying,
“The key point is not religion per se, but the
use of emotionally powerful symbols to sell particular
moral codes and management systems” (p. 166). He
notes, however, in various case studies, how ecological
wisdom is embedded in myths, symbols, and cosmologies
of traditional societies.
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8
Is It Too Late? is also the title of a book by John
Cobb, first published in 1972 by Bruce and reissued
in 1995 by Environmental Ethics Books.
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9
Because we cannot identify here all of the methodological
issues that need to be addressed, we invite further
discussion by other engaged scholars.
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10
See J. Baird Callicott, Earth’s Insights: A
Survey of Ecological Ethics from the Mediterranean Basin
to the Australian Outback (Berkeley, Calif.: University
of California Press, 1994).
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11
See Martha C. Nussbaum and Amartya Sen, eds., The
Quality of Life, WIDER Studies in Development Economics
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993).
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12
White, “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis,”
1203–1207.
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13
Process theology, creation-centered spirituality, and
ecotheology have done much to promote these kinds of
holistic perspectives within Christianity.
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14
These are resources already being explored by theologians
and biblical scholars.
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15
While this is true theoretically, it should be noted
that, like all ideologies, these traditions have at
times been used for purposes of political power and
social control. Moreover, they have not been able to
prevent certain kinds of environmental destruction,
such as deforestation in China.
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16
The term “anthropocosmic” has been used by
Tu Weiming in Centrality and Commonality (Albany,
N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1989).
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17
Thomas Berry, “Religious Studies and the Global
Human Community,” unpublished manuscript.
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18
Tu Weiming, “Beyond the Enlightenment Mentality,”
in Worldviews and Ecology, eds. Mary Evelyn Tucker
and John Grim (Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University Press,
1993; reissued, Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1994).
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19
This history has been described more fully by Roderick
Nash in his chapter entitled, “The Greening of
Religion,” in The Rights of Nature: A History
of Environmental Ethics (Madison, Wisc.: University
of Wisconsin Press, 1989).
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20
Eugene Hargrove, ed., Religion and Environmental
Crisis (Athens, Ga.: University of Georgia Press,
1986).
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21
Charlene Spretnak, States of Grace: The Recovery
of Meaning in the Post-Modern Age (San Francisco,
Calif.: Harper San Francisco, 1991).
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22
Steven Rockefeller and John Elder, eds., Spirit and
Nature: Why the Environment Is a Religious Issue
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1992).
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23
Peter Marshall, Nature’s Web: Rethinking Our
Place on Earth(Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1992).
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24
Tucker and Grim, eds. Worldviews and Ecology.
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25
Callicott, Earth’s Insights.
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26
Both are State University of New York Press publications.
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27
David Kinsley, Ecology and Religion: Ecological Spirituality
in a Cross-Cultural Perspective (Englewood Cliffs,
N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1995).
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28
Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Religion and the Order of Nature
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).
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29
J. Ronald Engel and Joan Gibb Engel, eds. Ethics
of Environment and Development: Global Challenge, International
Response (Tucson, Ariz.: University of Arizona Press,
1990).
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30
Harold Coward, ed., Population, Consumption, and
the Environment: Religious and Secular Responses
(Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1995).
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31
Roger S. Gottlieb, ed. This Sacred Earth: Religion,
Nature, Environment (New York: Routledge, 1996).
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32
These include volumes on Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism,
Christianity, and Islam.
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Copyright © 1997 Center
for the Study of World Religions, Harvard Divinity School.
Reprinted with permission.
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