Religion and Sustainability
Social Movements and the Politics of the Environment
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6078733 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Leslie Sponsel, Leslie E Sponsel (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2014 |
| Volume | 17 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 33-36 |
| Publication date | 2014-12-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Ecological Anthropology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1528-6509 • E-ISSN: 2162-4593 |
| Publisher | University of South Florida Libraries (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.5038/2162-4593.17.1.1 |
| OpenAlex | W2094292807 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 4 |
Religion and Sustainability: Social Movements and the Politics of the Environment Lucas F. Johnston Equinox Publishing Ltd., Sheffield, UK, 2013 x + 273 Pp. Hardcover $99.95, Paperback $29.95 Reviewed by Leslie E. SponselMany may be surprised by the juxtaposition of reli- gion and sustainability in the title of this book. How- ever, since the late 1980s, basic and applied research has increasingly attended to the relationship between religion and ecology, including the relevance of reli- gion for sustainability as well as for the related arenas of environmentalism and conservation (e.g., Dudley, et al., eds., 2005, and Vershuuren, et al., eds. 2010).An overview of this book is best expressed in John- ston's own words in the final chapter: In places where sustainability provides convincing identity markers for people who use the term to reflect particular visions of where society is headed and what values it ought to maximize, it is fulfilling the function of explicitly religious narratives- a basic companion to human culture (p. 198). For example, he discusses the religious ideas, meta- phors, and imagery that leaders of sustainability initiatives use in their narratives.The primary goal and achievement of this book is to reveal the relatively little-recognized, let alone appreciated, connections between religion and sustainability through a historical review of the pertinent literature and, more importantly, the results of field research. The latter encompassed dozens of informal interviews and 25 formal interviews with leaders of major organizations focused on sustain- ability. The results of Johnston's interviews are discussed in Chapters 7-9 which focus, respectively, on Evangelical Creation Care, interfaith approaches like the Alliance of Religions and Conservation, and the Faith-based Outreach Program of Conservation International, among other cases. These religious, interfaith, and cases of sustainability initia- tives at the local grass-roots and international levels, plus much more, are well-contextualized, including points regarding the broader arena of what may be called religion and ecology, religion and nature, or spiritual ecology. Importantly, Johnston reveals that: Even ostensibly secular international organizations utilize the religious dimensions of sustainability (in the form of spiritualized language, religious meta- phors, or discourses of awe and reverence) for their own, often different ends (p. 55).The presentation of the results of these interviews in Part III: The Ethnographic and Data is skillfully set up by Part I: Defining Religion and Sustainability, and Why it Matters, and Part II: The Emergence and Development of Sustainability. Johnston's rigorous analysis of sustainability recog- nizes the diverse and sometimes conflicting ways in which the concept is applied by energy companies, international political institutions, environment organizations, radical environmentalists, indigenous peoples, and others. Johnston himself applies this working definition: Sustainability is a strategy of cultural adaptation to the limitations imposed by the dynamic interplay of ecological and social systems, couched in large-scale stories that illustrate how to persist within habitats in a manner that provides genuine affective fulfillment now, and for the fore- seeable future (p. 25). Although this definition is rather involved, it serves as a heuristic device to help Johnston reveal many of the religious and religious- like elements in sustainability discourse that may generate emotive responses and promote core beliefs and values in the audience.Throughout the book Johnston repeatedly asserts that sustainability serves as a political religion to the degree that its underlying core values function as a vehicle for connecting affective or emotionally evoca- tive states with political issues regarding resource use. He broadly conceives religion as simply deep beliefs and core values
Environmental ethics · Political science · Politics · Social movement · Social sustainability · Sociology · Sustainability · Law · Pentecostalism and Christianity Studies · Philosophy · Religion, Ecology, and Ethics · Religion, Society, and Development · Ecology
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,14 |
| Citation span | 2019 - 2019 (1) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |