Elective Affinities in the Anthropocene

Christianity and the Natural Environment Reconsidered

Bibliographic Data

ID16996012
AuthorsThomas J Burns (0000-0003-4336-6697), Tom W Boyd (University of Oklahoma), Peyman Hekmatpour (0000-0002-9391-8202, University of Oklahoma)
Year2021
Volume2
Issue4
Pagesp82
Publication date2021-11-10
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSocial Science Humanities and Sustainability Research (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2690-3628 • E-ISSN: 2690-3636
PublisherScholink Co, Ltd. (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.22158/sshsr.v2n4p82
OpenAlexW3214426295
LanguageEN
References cited12

To reach a deeper understanding of the complex relationship between religion and the natural environment, it is important to move beyond essentializing any religious tradition as having a pro-environmental or anti-environmental ethic. Rather, prior work has shown that the canonical, scholarly, and popular literatures and discourse of a number of religious traditions can and have been socially and rhetorically constructed as supporting an array of positions, from preservation to profligacy, and much in between those two ideal types. In this paper, we develop Max Weber’s theory of “elective affinities” and adapt it to the Anthropocene, to make the case that in a fragmented society, people and communities of convenience tend to choose the tropes and framing from the dominant culture to justify self-interested action. That often can take the form of religious discourse. In the sense of finding a wide array of practical interpretations relative to the environment, the theory is largely supported, although we do find important nuances. It is instructive to look at how the language and legitimacy of one institution (e.g. religion) has been used to justify and legitimate that of others (e.g. the polity). While these processes of institutional co-optation can be effective in the short run, they may have corrosive longer-term effects. Key rhetorical, and in fact political, battles in the Third Millennium, will likely be organized around how to adapt pre-industrial religion to late industrial and perhaps post-industrial times, and it remains to see how central the natural environment will be in what communities hold sacred

Anthropocene · Archaeology · Christianity · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Legitimacy · Political science · Politics · Polity · Rhetorical question · Sociology · Environmental Philosophy and Ethics · History · Law · Philosophy · Religion, Ecology, and Ethics · Religion, Society, and Development

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