REL 245 Religion and Nature
Every society is shaped by religious practices, including ours. Religion thus shapes one’s understanding of the environment. Yet at the same time, the environment shapes one’s religious sensibilities. This course will provide students a grounding in theoretical texts from religious studies and the social sciences to examine how religious traditions shape and are shaped by nature and their environment. We will closely read sacred texts from religions as diverse as Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Indigenous religions, and new religious movements, and ask which texts take precedence over others when thinking about the environment. We will investigate the close relationship religion consistently has to place and what this might mean for broader understandings of how communities relate to the environment. Finally, we will reflect on how religions change to meet new problems, the relationship between society’s parallel treatment of the environment and women and ecofeminist responses, and squaring new ethical systems with ancient texts that have their own values and concerns.