Olivia Strittmatter - Religion-Environment Connection

April 10, 2020

From topic of my choosing 4

This blog post is number four out of the five on my personal topic, religion and ecology. The fourth article that I’m going to cover is an article by Jan Boersema, Andrew Blowers, and Arian Martin. I will add the link to the article at the bottom of this blog. 

At the beginning they ask a couple questions such as, “does religion have a bearing on environmental issues?” and “do religious beliefs affect a person’s environmental stance?” as well as “is modern environmentalism in itself a kind of ‘pagan religion’?” So, I’ve decided that for this blog post I want to talk about my answers, and opinions, of these questions, rather than summarizing like I did for the previous two blogs. 

Question one was “does religion have a bearing on environmental issues?” I think that it does. I think that because religion plays a large role in lots of people’s lives that it can have a huge impact on environmental issues. Imagine if every religion was ecocentric, I think that the world would be a lot cleaner and a lot less destroyed.

Question two was “how do religious beliefs affect a person’s environmental stance and conduct?” I think that religions affect a person’s environmental stances, because if their religion calls for the protection of nature, then they’re more likely to care about and protect the environment. Such as how Christians believe that God created nature for man, and that man is allowed to use it as he sees fit, but Pagans believe that nature is sacred, and that it must be honored and protected.

Question three was “can environmental issues be solved leaving religion - taken in the broadest sense - out of the picture?” I think that yes, absolutely environmental issues can be solved without religion. At this point environmental issues need to be fixed with laws and science, so if religion was taken out of it completely I think things would get done a lot faster. The harder part about taking religion out would be trying to change people’s mindset about the environment, because people have grown up with religion interfering with their daily lives, and wouldn’t really know what to think without it.

Question four was “is modern environmentalism in itself a new form of ‘pagan religion’?” I don’t think it is. There is a lot more to pagan religions than just environmentalism. I think that by referring to modern environmentalism as a new form of paganism it’s quite offensive and rudimentary. 


https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15693430802542257

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