ROUTLEDGE STUDIES IN RELIGION Religion and Ecological Crisis s" at Fif Edited by Todd LeVasseur and Anna PetersonContents Acknowledgments —1Introduction TODD LEVASSEUR AND ANNA PETERSON. 2_Lynn White Jr.’s “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis” after Fifty Years ELSPETH WHITNEY 3 The Historical Roots of Environmental Philosophy J. BAIRD CALLICOTT 4 Sinners in the Hands of an Ecologic Crisis: Lynn White’s Environmental Jeremiad MARK R. STOLL 5 Lynn White Jr. Right and Wrong: The Anti-Ecological Character of Latin Christianity and the Pro-Ecological Turn of Protestantism MICHAEL 8. NORTHCOTT 6 Animism and Reincarnation: Lynn White in Indian Country SHEPARD KRECH IIL 7 Lynn White Jr., One Catalyst in the HistoricalDevelopment of Spiritual Ecology LESLIE SPONSEL 8 Continuing the Conversation: Applying Lynn White Jr.’s Prescriptions for a Christian Environmental Ethic CHRISTOPHER CONE 9 Lynn White Jr. and India: Romance? Reality? CHRISTOPHER KEY CHAPPLE 10 The Challenges of Worldview Transformation: “To Rethink and Refeel Our Origins and Destiny” HEATHER EATON 11 Gender and Genesis: Religion, Secular Science, and the Project of Power and Control CHAONE MALLORY 12_A Lens, a Path, a Return Journey—Lynn White and the Question of Animal Protection PAUL WALDAU 13 What's Left (Out) of the Lynn White Narrative? WHITNEY A. BAUMAN 14 Therefore the Winds: Some Thoughts on the “Roots” WILLIAM R. JORDAN IIL Contributors IndexAcknowledgments We are grateful, first, to the contributors who provided wonderful chapters, providing such a diverse and thoughtful set of responses to our request for their reflections on Lynn White’s article. In addition, we are very grateful to the knowledgeable, supportive, and skilled editorial staff at Routledge who made the process of getting the book into print not only possible but relatively painless. We especially thank Allie Simmons, Christina Kowalski, Andrew Weckenmann, and Margo Irvin. Todd would like to thank Jeanette Marie Halberda and Aviva Ellianna LeVasseur for needed laughter and swims in the ocean; his colleagues in the Religious Studies Department and Environmental Studies Program at the College of Charleston, especially Zeff Bjerken and Seth Pritchard; his many mentors at the University of Florida’s Department of Religion, especially their Religion and Nature program, including Bron Taylor, Whitney Sanford, and Anna Peterson; and all scholar-activists, inspired by Lynn White Jr. or not, who are using education as a vehicle to help solve the ecological crisis. Anna would like to thank, first, Todd LeVasseur, who has been an inspiring colleague and a wonderful friend. He deserves credit for conceiving of this project and doing the lion’s share of the work that it has involved. I am also thankful for my students at the University of Florida, especially the graduate students who continue to challenge and inspire my own work on environmental ethics. I’m also grateful, as always, to friends and family who make academic projects such as this possible. Thanks are also dueto Anne Newman of the UF Religion Department for her administrative and editorial support.1 Introduction Todd LeVasseur and Anna Peterson Early in the 1999 movie Shakespeare in Love, a romantic comedy about the playwright William Shakespeare (played by Joseph Fiennes) and his muse (Gwyneth Paltrow), there’s a scene that sets the stage for the drama, humor, and romance that follows. Will Shakespeare convinces a local theater manager (Geoffory Rush) that he, Shakespeare, has a comedy about a pirate in the works. Persuaded by Shakespeare, the manager holds an open audition in order to fill the cast. Part of this is by necessity, because the best local actors were, at the time, touring England, so the reliable troupe that normally acted in the theater was gone. Thus, the scene is set: for a period of several hours, local after local (all men, because women were not allowed to act at that time) all come to the stage to audition, and every single one of them begins their audition by reciting a line from Shakespeare’s contemporary and competitor, Christopher Marlow. After hours of this perceived abuse, since it is, after all, a play by Shakespeare for which they audition, not one by Marlow, Shakespeare can handle it no more and has his confidence crushed, until Paltrow’s character, dressed as a man, auditions by reciting some of Shakespeare’s own work. The import of her audition (the viewing audience knows it is Paltrow) creates the context for the remainder of the movie, while Marlow, in the movie as in history, becomes a footnote compared to Shakespeare’s genius. Every hopeful thespian, from one-time actors to theater stagehands to local villagers to a street orphan, attempted to win the ear and eye of the theater director by reciting the exact samepassage from Marlow, who had, according to those involved in Elizabethan-era theater in the fictional movie, set the standard by which all theater was to be judged. The same is true of the essay that has inspired this volume. Published in 1967 as a five-page article in Science, Lynn White Jr.’s essay “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis” has become the foundation, jumping-off point, and lodestar for countless academic endeavors and even a new subdiscipline or two. The article contains numerous lines and passages that are cited by almost every academic working on religion and nature (or ecology), environmental ethics, environmental history, and ecotheology, as well as by historians, social scientists, and ecologists, broadly. It is consistently assigned in both undergraduate and graduate courses, where it introduces students to the scholarly study of human-nature-culture interactions. White’s (1967) article is the equivalent of Marlow’s work for hopeful actors in Elizabethan England: within their respective dramas, both laid the foundation for an industry. Our goal in this introduction is to introduce the reader to these lines of Lynn White, briefly, while also exploring how they were received and subsequently became pivotal for a variety of disciplines. At the same time, we offer caution in reading White as fully responsible for subsequent work in the environmental humanities, as Bauman’s chapter in this volume deftly argues. We also encourage readers to consider how, fifty years after its initial publication, White’s words and article are still deserving of sustained reflection and analysis. With the stage set, we then invite the reader to engage the diverse essays collected here. The Lynn White Thesis The “Lynn White thesis” is really a complex argument packed into a very short essay. White makes three particular claims that have prompted most of the ongoing debate and discussion since the article’s publication. First, he argues that ideological and cultural factors, especially religion, are the root causes of the “ecologic crisis” facing contemporary humans. Second, he identifies Western Christianity as particularly influential in creating environmentallydestructive attitudes. Third, he suggests that, just as the fundamental causes of ecological destruction are religious, so too must their solution be religious. Different interpreters highlight one or another of these themes, depending on their own background, academic field, and goals. The first point may be the most important aspect of the “Lynn White thesis.” By privileging religion and culture as root causes of environmental crisis, White challenges the then-dominant approaches that identified technology, overpopulation, and other material conditions as the source of the problem. While material changes are important, White acknowledges, he believes that they are driven by ideological and cultural factors, and especially by changing attitudes about the proper human relationship to nature. In one of the most frequently quoted passages in his article, White asserted that “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” (White 1967, 1205). White makes this argument based on his own analysis that changes in religious attitudes during the European medieval and early modern periods made possible the development of destructive technologies and practices in agriculture, forestry, and other uses of nature. This leads to the second important point: White’s identification of Christianity as particularly influential in creating environmentally destructive attitudes. In particular, he argues that Western Christianity, and not Eastern or Orthodox streams, are most at fault for the modern environmental crisis. Thus, our introduction and the chapters that follow all reflect this focus on Western Christianity. White’s critique of Christianity has probably received the most attention and is the most frequently mentioned of his multiple arguments. One particular line is widely quoted, sometimes approvingly, sometimes critically: “Especially in its Western form, Christianity is the most anthropocentric religion the world has seen” (1967, 1205). As a historian, White identified several specific aspects of Christian thought that shaped attitudes toward nature. First, hepointed out that, according to Christian theology, “Man shares, in great measure, God’s transcendence of nature” (1967, 1205). Christianity thus encouraged humans to consider themselves separate from and superior to other aspects of creation. In addition, Western Christianity denied that natural objects and processes, such as trees, streams, or animals, had sacred value. Against pre-Christian attitudes, which valued nature, White argued, “To a Christian, a tree can be no more than a physical fact. The whole concept of a sacred grove is alien to Christianity and to the ethos of the West. For nearly two millennia, Christian missionaries have been chopping down sacred groves, which are idolatrous because they assume spirit in nature” (1967, 1206). Thus, with the rise of Christianity, “The spirits in natural objects, which formerly had protected nature from man, evaporated. Man’s effective monopoly on spirit in this world was confirmed, and the old inhibitions to the exploitation of nature crumbled” (1967, 1205). Because Christianity denied that nature—in general or in specific places and objects—had intrinsic or sacred value, the new religion “made it possible to exploit nature in a mood of indifference to the feelings of natural objects” (1967, 1205). White contrasts the anthropocentrism and dualism of Western Christianity not only to pre-Christian paganism in Europe but also to non-Western traditions, which do not devalue the nonhuman world as thoroughly. This brings us to the third aspect of White’s thesis: the potential solution to environmental destruction. On the one hand, White predicted that “ecological crisis will worsen until we reject Christian axiom that nature has no reason for existence “save to serve man” (1967, 1207). On the other hand, he does not believe that the solution lies in atheism or conversion to non-Western religions. Rather, the solution must mirror the problem: just as White blames Christianity and religion generally for many of our “ecologic” problems, he believes that we cannot solve these problems without religion. “Since the roots of our trouble are so largely religious, the remedy must also be religious, whether we call it that or not” (1967, 1207). The last clause hints at an expansive understanding of religion,perhaps encompassing spiritual traditions and ideas that do not fit neatly into established doctrines or institutions. What is important, to White, is the way people understand their place in nature and the ethical implications of that role. As he puts it, “What we do about ecology depends on our ideas of the man-nature relationship. More science and more technology are not going to get us out of the present ecologic crisis until we find a new religion, or rethink our old one” (1967, 1206). He points, in fact, to the possibility of a transformation within Christianity, to recover and put into practice less destructive attitudes. According to White, more ecologically sensitive attitudes are present in Christian history, even though they have never been dominant. The chief representative of an ecological Christianity is Saint Francis of Assisi, whom White proposes as “patron saint for ecologists” (1967, 1207). This proposal became reality on November 29, 1979, when Pope John Paul II declared St. Francis the Patron Saint of Ecology, in his bull InterSanctos (John Paul 1979). One of the questions to be addressed in this book is whether this and other “green” trends within Christianity in particular, and world religions generally, represent a response to White's call for humans to “rethink and refeel our nature and destiny” (White 1967, 1207). White’s arguments in his 1967 article prompted a vast, diverse, and ongoing scholarly response. To no small extent, most work— including scholarly writing and also teaching—in the fields of environmental philosophy, ecotheology, and the environmental humanities generally constitute a reply to or commentary upon White’s article. As environmental historian Elspeth Whitney notes, “Few pieces of writing by an academic historian, and a medievalist to boot, have had such a major impact on contemporary thinking on a contemporary issue” (Whitney 2013, 314). Just as Marlow provided the base for would-be actors in Elizabethan England, Lynn White is the keystone for scholars in various domains writing about human-nature interactions, especially where religion or ethics play a pivotal role. Our goal in this book is not to unpack every reference to White, every rebuttal or affirmation of his 1967 article, but rather to highlight precisely how important White’simage not availableimage not available106-107). Writing as a Christian, to fellow Christians, about the interface of environmental, virtue, and Christian ethics, White claims that “man too is a creature with rights that must be balanced—but not merely on an anthropocentric pivot—with those of his companion creatures. Ecology, as it is now developing, provides us with new religious understandings of our own being, of other beings, and of being” (1978, 107). In this passage, and the conclusion of the essay, White reads a bit like an early Christian deep ecologist, exhorting readers that a proper Christian ethics includes contemplation and celebration of the arts and education, as compared to consumption; that we must limit human population numbers; and must recognize the intrinsic value of our evolutionary neighbors and thus only satisfy our needs while “not impinging on the ability of our companions to satisfy their needs” (1978, 107). We must do this, further, “because of our belief that they are all creatures of God, and not from expediency” (1978, 108-109). The power of religion to motivate ecological concern and activism thus comes to the fore in this later work, giving fuel to interpreters who believe his original essay was not as much a condemnation of Christianity as it was a call to uncover and strengthen the tradition’s environmental promise. White’s (1973, 1978) essays are rarely cited, perhaps because they mostly repeat points made in “The Historical Roots.” Their importance comes primarily as a confirmation of White's continuing adherence to his key claims, even while he responds to ongoing critiques. The “Lynn White Thesis” The three-part thesis set out in “The Historical Roots” and reaffirmed in White’s later work has been important for a remarkably diverse set of scholars who have addressed a wide range of topics. Writers from religious studies, theology, history, and natural and social sciences have drawn on White’s essay, and they have written about issues ranging from the specifics of his critique of Christian anthropocentrism to the broader argument about the significance of ideas in shaping environmental behavior;image not availableimage not availableimage not availableinterpretation of the influence of religious attitudes on behavior. To put these two pieces together: European and Asian environmental practices are not that different from each other historically, precisely because religious ideas do not exercise a simple or direct influence on such practices. Tuan’s doubts about White’s idealist arguments have been taken up by subsequent scholars, especially from the social sciences. Despite frequent criticisms, this sustained engagement with White’s essay underlines its significance. Even its critics took the arguments seriously, and the essay clearly touched a nerve among scholars interested in better understanding and theorizing about human-nature interactions. Many of these give White credit for launching scholarly interest in the effects of religion, and of cultural attitudes and values more generally, on environmental behavior, even if they disagree with his ultimate conclusions. These studies include surveys measuring the correlation between religious identity and environmental attitudes, both in individuals and in religious groups. A landmark survey of American environmental attitudes in the early 1990s used White as a starting point for evaluating the role of religion, even though the authors used what we consider an oversimplified reading of White’s work. They interpreted White’s argument as asserting that religion undermined environmental support, and presented their findings as a contradiction to this view. Pace White, they claimed, “Americans already use a broad range of religious teachings to justify environmental protection. Religion seems not to be getting in the way of environmental support, but instead is reinforcing and justifying it” (Kempton, Boster, and Hartley 1995, 94). A more recent survey, conducted by Paul Djupe and Patrick Hunt, found more ambiguity about the role of religion, or at least of established doctrine, on environmental attitudes, or in the authors’ words, “religious belief effects on environmental attitudes may be overdetermined” (Djupe and Hunt 2009, 673). While religion does play a role, they acknowledge, this role is dependent upon social conditions, religious networks, and other institutional factors that are not taken into account either in White’s original essay or in most of the subsequent testing of hisimage not availableimage not availableimage not availablebroader response to “Roots” by not only medieval historians but also scholars in the fields of environmental philosophy and ethics, religion and ecology, and modern history. She argues that the bifurcated response to White reveals how the White thesis became a flashpoint for discussion of environmental issues outside and beyond medieval studies, a discussion that until recently took place largely independently of continuing work in medieval environmental history itself. Only within the last decade or so have the main lines of criticism of the White thesis by medieval historians begun to be integrated into a more unified consensus, leaving as White’s legacy the fundamental point that religion is an important, if not the only, factor in how human societies relate to the natural world. The next contributor is the prominent environmental ethicist J. Baird Callicott, who examines the ways that White’s (1967) essay helped shape the field of environmental philosophy. According to Callicott, the “text” of “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis’—especially the claims that “Christianity bears a huge burden of guilt” for environmental problems—is so lurid and cavalier that it eclipses a deeper sub-text repeated five or six times throughout the essay as a kind of refrain: “What we do about our ecology depends on how we think about it;” “We need to rethink and refeel our nature and destiny;” and so forth. Callicott argues, with substantial evidence, that this sub-text in White’s article provided both the mandate for and the agenda of a future environmental philosophy. Philosophers’ task, Callicott points out, is precisely to think and rethink about things. For environmental philosophers in particular, their task is to think about and rethink the nature of nature, human nature, and the relationship between humans and nature. Callicott’s chapter sets up the philosophical significance of White's essay while offering an_ original contribution to environmental ethics. Mark Stoll, a historian of both the environment and religion, has written a chapter on “Sinners in the Hands of an Ecologic Crisis: Lynn White’s Environmental Jeremiad.” Stoll outlines the wide range of reactions that White’s article provoked on the American religious scene, from complete acceptance to angry denial. On oneimage not availableimage not availableimage not availablefacing movements seeking positive change for nature and animals. He also engages the values that shape contemporary science, the importance of examining our own actions and motives, and humans’ abilities to care about the nested communities to which we belong, from nuclear families to local communities and cultural and religious traditions. Waldau suggests that the implications and significance of White’s (1967) claims are well represented by contemporary re-wilding efforts around the globe. The next chapter, by Whitney Bauman, asks “What’s Left (Out) of the Lynn White Narrative?” Bauman notes that there are many good reasons to begin the story of “religion and ecology/nature” with the White thesis. After all, he points out, all good histories need a story. However, Bauman notes that there are also many stories that get sidelined or covered over by starting the narrative of religion and nature with Lynn White. His chapter addresses those blind spots in an attempt to put White into a larger critical context. First, he examines how starting with White privileges a white, American, Christian, and largely male story of “nature” over that of other starting points. Second, he looks at other stories of “religion and nature” from around the world that have nothing to do with White. Finally, Bauman suggests that contextualizing White in this way challenges a dominant narrative of environmentalism to which “others” are attached and instead suggests that there is in the end, as with any religious discourse, polydoxy when it comes to religious, environmental narratives. The final chapter, by Bill Jordan, is titled “Therefore the Winds: Some Thoughts on the ‘Roots.’ ” The author respond to the challenge of value that White’s work poses from the perspective provided by literary critic Frederick Turner’s theory of values. From this perspective, he finds that the commitment to, or invention or discovery or idea or experience of, a transcendent god is indeed dangerous. However, this danger is inherent in the human—that is, self-conscious—apprehension of the “other” and of the self as both part of and apart from its environment. This danger is, Jordan argues, also the basis for achievements such as the invention of science and the social criticism exemplified by White’s analysis of the Biblical tradition and further for theimage not availableimage not availableimage not available———. 1978. “The Future of Compassion.” Ecumenical Review 30, no. 2: 99- 109. Whitney, Elspeth. 2013. “The Lynn White Thesis: Reception and Legacy.” Environmental Ethics 35: 313-331.image not availableimage not availableimage not availablepreoccupations. As early as 1940, he had begun to publish on the history of medieval technology, the first American historian to do so. Prior to “Roots,” he had published Medieval Technology and Social Change (1962), establishing medieval environmental history and medieval technology as fields. “Roots” also reflected White's deep personal affiliation with his Protestant Christian faith, as well as his desire to reach beyond academia to a wider readership. Finally, “Roots” served the purpose of putting the Middle Ages at the center of world history, rather than at the margins, where, he frequently complained, it had been relegated by his fellow historians. The recognition accorded “Roots,” however, belies that fact that “Roots” and White’s other writings have long been subjected to sustained criticism from scholars in a multitude of fields. White’s argument linked three assertions: that the historical record shows medieval Europe to be the first society to possess a drive to control nature through technology; that the cause of this drive was Latin Christianity; and that religion was the most important reservoir of environmental values. Each of these assertions would be intensely criticized by scholars from a range of disciplines. Medieval and other historians have questioned most of White’s evidence and conclusions on the record of medieval technological practices and medieval attitudes toward the natural world; scholars of the philosophical and theological traditions of the West have questioned whether White had correctly understood Christian values in the past and present; sociologists have challenged White’s assertion that religious views correlated to environmental attitudes; and some proponents of environmental activism have suggested that White had ruined religion as a viable vehicle for environmental values. In 2013, Karel Davids, after reviewing much of the salient historical scholarship, concluded unequivocally that “Lynn White’s thesis that the crucial transformation in technology in the Western world occurred during the Middle Ages thus appears to be seriously flawed” and, consequently, that the “ghost” of Lynn White should be laid to rest (Davids 2013, 33-43, 48-56, 225-228). Neither blanket praise nor criticism, however, captures theimage not availableimage not availableimage not availableThis was not, I believe, merely an artifact created by his writing style, as has been suggested, but a genuine “bleeding through” of personal belief that contributed to the power and breadth of his writing but also thoroughly confused the problem of what White was actually claiming. Two months after the publication of “Roots,” for example, Science published a letter criticizing White on the basis that “not everything Christians do is Christian in character”; White replied in a very brief note saying that “the historical impact of Christianity upon ecology has depended not on what we, individually, at present, may think that Christianity should have been, but rather upon what the vast ‘orthodox’ majority of people who called themselves Christians have in fact thought it was” (Feenstra 1967, 737; White 1967b, 737-738). In “Continuing the Conversation,” a reply to critics of “Roots,” White again makes the point that the historian “wants to know what Christians in various times and places have thought Scripture was saying to them” (White 1973, 60). Yet, by identifying modern Western culture as essentially identical with medieval Latin Christianity, and, furthermore, assigning to late medieval Catholicism the same spiritualizing of labor and technology that Max Weber had earlier attributed to Calvinism, White implicitly suppressed a recognition of Christianity in its various forms as the products of specific historical contexts. He also muddied the waters by rhetorically conflating historical readings of Scripture with the “progressive unfolding of truths inherent in an original deposit of revelation” through the aegis of the Holy Spirit (White 1973, 60). It is difficult to judge White’s tone here. He was a believing Christian and he enjoyed making provocative statements. He may have been both ironic and reflecting his personal religious beliefs. Viewed from this perspective, it is less surprising that he has been credited with being the founder of ecotheology, despite his explicit avowals that he is writing history, not theology. “Roots,” moreover, in its brevity, lack of nuance, and focus on Christian values in the present, also became a polemic devoted to altering “our” spiritual orientation toward nature in order to solve a pressing contemporary problem. While White’s more scholarlyimage not availableimage not availableimage not availablebe written and “Roots” continues to be routinely included in bibliographies, this broadening of concerns has considerably diluted the explicit influence of “Roots,” while registering the long- term ripple effects of White’s ideas. Exemplifying the new diversity is the recent volume Inherited Land: The Changing Grounds of Religion and Ecology (2011), which “celebrate[s]” the “remarkable differences” in methodology and disciplinary focus of scholars working in the field while still recognizing White as its founder (Baumann, Bohannon II, and O’Brien 2011, 3). Moving far beyond the terms of White’s original argument, these scholars challenged White’s paradigm on two related fronts. One argument questioned White’s assumption that an autonomous human population acted upon a passive natural landscape. Whitney A. Bauman, for example, has called for “post-foundational” thinking that places humans in nature, rather than outside of nature, and sees religion and nature as mutually interactive realities that fluctuate between destabilizing and stabilizing effects (Baumann 2011, 82, 92, 93). Two recent overviews by James D. Proctor and Anne Elvey emphasize new understandings of nature in order to destabilize traditional dichotomies of nature/culture; order/disorder; natural/artificial; and matter/spirit. Proctor, for example, explores cultural ideas of nature as both evolutionary and sacred, allowing for the possibility at least of “a science and religion of the future [that] will be built upon a much more integrated metaphysical and epistemological perspective than has existed in the past” (Proctor 2004, 648, 652; Fredericks and O’Brien 2011, 42-63). Elvey works to challenge human/nature dualism (as expressed by White) while staying within a Christian theological perspective by positing nature itself as “otherworldly.” For Elvey, “the otherworldly unsettles a nature/culture dualism, not by positing a spiritual outside to matter but by affirming the otherness of nature as beyond culture” (Elvey 2006, 66, 77, 78, 79; Ivakhiv 2007, 47-57). A second challenge is to White’s emphasis on ideas to the detriment of environmental activism, which White had rejected as “palliative,” atavistic, or mere “prettification” (White 1967a, 20). Religion and Ecology’s emergence as an academic field had beenimage not availableimage not availableimage not availabletopics, yet its continuing hold on the imaginations of not only the public but of professional academics demonstrates that White had tapped into a reservoir of deeply held but unresolved cultural issues about the roots of the environmental damage inflicted on the earth. Endnote * This essay was originally published in History Compass 13/8 (2015): 396-410, 10.1111/hic3.12254. It is reprinted with permission and slightly modified from the original. Works Cited Afzaal, A. 2012. “Disenchantment and the Environmental Crisis: Lynn White Jr., Max Weber, and Muhammad Iqbal.” Worldviews 16: 239-261. Armstrong, Susan J. and Richard G. Botzler, eds. 2004. Environmental Ethics: Divergence and Convergence, 3rd ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill. Attfield, Robin. 2009. “Social History, Religion and Technology: An Interdisciplinary Investigation into White’s ‘Roots.’ ” Environmental Ethics 31 (Spring): 31-50. Bachrach, Bernard S. 1970. “Charles Martel, Mounted Shock Combat, the Stirrup, and Feudalism.” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History 7: 49-75. Bauman, Whitney A. 2011. “Opening the Language of Religion and Ecology: Viable Spaces for Transformative Politics.” Ed. Whitney A. Bauman, Richard R. Bohannon II and Kevin J. O’Brien Inherited Land: The Changing Grounds of Religion and Ecology. Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications: 80-101. ——, Richard R. Bohannon II, and Kevin J. O’Brien. 2011. “The Tensions and Promises of Religion and Ecology’s Past, Present, and Future.” Ed. Whitney A. Bauman, Richard R. Bohannon II and Kevin J. O’Brien Inherited Land: The Changing Grounds of Religion and Ecology. Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications: 1-17. Beattie, James and John Stenhouse. 2007. “Empire, Environment and Religion: God and the Natural World in Nineteenth-Century Newimage not availableimage not availableimage not availableand the Plough.” Past and Present 24 (April): 90-100. Schwarzschild, Steven S. 2001. “The Unnatural Jew.” Ed. Martin D. Yaffe Judaism and Environmental Ethics: A Reader. Lanham, MD, Boulder, New York and Oxford: Lexington Books: 267-282. Sessions, George. 1995. “Ecocentrism and the Anthropocentric Detour.” Ed. George Session Deep Ecology for the Twenty-First Century: Readings on the Philosophy and Practice of the New Environmentalism. Boston: Shambhala Press: 156-194. Shelvey, Bruce. 2001. “Christian Thought in the Age of Ecology: Historical Roots of a Religious Crisis.” Historical Papers: Canadian Society of Church History: 101-111. Stoll, Mark R. 1997. Protestantism, Capitalism, and Nature in America. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. ———. 2015. Inherit the Holy Mountain: Religion and the Rise of American Environmentalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Taylor, Bron. 2005. “Introduction.” Ed. Bron Taylor, Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Kaplan, Consulting Editor Laura Hobgood-Oster, Exec. Eds. Adrian Ivakhiv and Michael York, The Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature. London and New York: Thoemmes Continuum: vii-xxi. Tirosh-Samuelson, H. 2006. “Judaism.” Ed. Roger. $. Gottlieb The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Ecology. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 25— 64. Tucker, Mary Evelyn. 2006. “Religion and Ecology: Survey of the Field.” Ed. Roger S. Gottlieb The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Ecology. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 398-418. ——— and John A. Grim. 2001. “Introduction: The Emerging Alliance of World Religions and Ecology.” Daedalus: Religion and Ecology, Can the Climate Change? 130, no. 4: 1-22. Van Houtan, Kyle S. and Stuart L. Pimm. 2006. “The Various Christian Ethics of Species Conservation.” Ed. David M. Lodge and Christopher Hamlin Religion and the New Ecology: Environmental Responsibility in a World of Flux. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame: 116-147. Wallace, William A. 1980. “Review.” Catholic Historical Review 66, no. 4: 597-598, Whelan, Robert, Joseph Kirwan, and Paul Haffner. 1996. The Cross and the Rain Forest: A Critique of Radical Green Spirituality. Grand Rapids, MI: Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty and William B.image not availableimage not availableimage not availableadopt any but an oppositional stance toward the idea that the West might adopt an “Oriental” worldview as a remedy for its environmental crisis. Passmore, in any case, positions himself as something of a philosophical knight errant residing in the farthest- flung outpost of Western civilization and defending it against a barbarous intellectual assault. Lastly, the inaugural publication in 1979 of Environmental Ethics: An Interdisciplinary Journal Dedicated to the Philosophical Aspects of Environmental Problems, edited by Eugene C. Hargrove, provided an identity for a new field in philosophy and created a community of environmental philosophers. Origins of Environmental Philosophy: A Cause for Alarm Why did environmental philosophy emerge just when it did on an international (Australia, Norway, the United States) stage? Because, according to Commoner (1971), by the 1960s, environmental insults had become both widespread and acute after the technological swords of World War I—various poisonous chemicals; high compression aircraft engines; tanks and other heavy machinery; nuclear fission—had been beaten into technological plowshares and redirected toward a final victory of “man” over “nature.” Oil spills fouled beaches (infamously in southern California and northern Spain); smog blighted big cities (Houston, Texas, and Los Angeles, California, most notoriously); aerially sprayed pesticides were threatening to drive many avian species to extinction (including the bald eagle, America’s national symbol); and rivers had become open sewers for industrial and municipal wastes. The Cuyahoga River running through Cleveland, Ohio, infamously caught fire in 1969, so grossly was it polluted with petrochemicals; acute mercury contamination from the Chisso Chemical Corporation in Minamata Bay killed hundreds and sickened thousands of piscivorous Japanese; and industrial deforestation in the Himalayas disrupted village economies and caused massive floods in India.image not availableimage not availableimage not availableThe Agenda of Environmental Philosophy: Critique and Create So much for the calling; what about the compass? White (1967) also sets out a clear agenda for environmental philosophy. First comes critical thinking. White himself provides a model in his critique of what he calls Judeo-Christianity. But the Western worldview has two taproots, the other being the Greco-Roman. What do Plato and Aristotle have to say about the “man-nature relationship?” And how about the foundational Moderns—Francis Bacon, René Descartes, John Locke? All of these figures and many others found themselves being unflatteringly rethought in the pages of Inquiry, a journal founded in 1957 by Arne Naess (e.g., Rodman 1977); Environmental Review, a history journal established in 1967 (e.g., Hughes 1982); and Environmental Ethics (e.g., Hoff 1983, Squadrito 1979). Second comes creative thinking. Environmental philosophers have to come up with new axioms, new fundamentals, new thoughts and ideas about the nature of human nature, the nature of Nature, and the human-Nature relationship. The critical task is relatively easy and straightforward—Plato’s metaphysics is otherworldly; Aristotle’s hierarchical teleology makes everything a means to human ends; Descartes’ dualism fetishizes human reason and otherizes the body and the whole physical world of which it is a part; Newton’s physics is reductive and makes the physical world into a machine, which invites redesigning it to suit human purposes; et cetera; et cetera; et cetera (Merchant 1980, Plumwood 1993). But the creative task is hard and anything but straightforward. Nevertheless, White points out a couple of ways that it might be undertaken. One possibility is to borrow from non-Western traditions of thought. At the time, thanks to the efforts of Daisetsu Teitaro Suzuki (1959) and Alan Watts (1958), Zen Buddhism had become popular in the American counterculture (Kerouac 1958). And so White (1967, 1206) proclaims that “The beatniks, who are the basic revolutionaries of our time, show a sound instinct in their affinity for Zen Buddhism, which conceives of the man-nature relationshipimage not availableimage not availableimage not availablenot with a Franciscan theology, but rather with an ecological worldview: “When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect... That land is a community is the basic concept of ecology.” The evolutionary aspect of the evolutionary-ecological worldview is introduced later in the book: “It is a century now since Darwin gave us the first glimpse of the origin of species. We know now what was unknown to all the preceding caravan of generations: that men are only fellow-voyagers with other creatures in the odyssey of evolution. This new knowledge should have given us, by this time, a sense of kinship with fellow-creatures; a wish to live and let live; a sense of wonder over the magnitude and duration of the biotic enterprise” (Leopold 1949, 109). Today, while the intellectual hegemony of science is politically contested by partisans of alternative epistemologies on both its right and left flanks, the scientific worldview will prevail if for no other reason than its inexorable movement forward along parallel tracks. On the one hand, science has a record of spectacular success in disclosing the nature of human nature and the nature of Nature. Thanks to science, we know ever more and more about our origins, our physiology and neurology, our microbial symbionts, and many, many other things human; and we know ever more and more about the origins of the cosmos, astrophysics, geomorphology, organic evolution, ecology, and many, many other things natural. On the other hand, science has a record of ruthless self-correction. Old theories are discarded in light of new information and critical examination, to be replaced by better ones. Further, science, pace White (1967), is culturally neutral: the same enormous body of scientific knowledge is tested, purged, refined, and enlarged in Beijing no less than in Boston, in Sao Paulo no less than in Saint Petersburg. Science is color blind, gender blind, and religiously indifferent. There is no such thing as white versus black science, Muslim versus Sikh science, or male versus female science. That having been said, the racial, gender, religious, and geographical identities of particular scientists can influence their particular interests and provide them with liminalimage not availableimage not availableimage not availableConclusion Having reflected on these matters for nearly half a century, I have come to the following conclusion. By nature, human beings are an aggressive and manipulative lot. We have been a successful species of primate—up until now, at least—in part because we used tools and fire to transform our environments for enhanced resource extraction, security, and comfort. Our ideas, thoughts, beliefs, and values can serve to accelerate, brake, or redirect our aggressive and manipulative tendencies. By all accounts, including Tuan’s, Daoist and Buddhist belief systems brake them. The braking effects of Daoism in ancient China are difficult to assess because it was an underrepresented belief system. Moreover, Tuan points out that Buddhist temple building in ancient China had a deforestation effect not unlike pagan temple building in ancient Greece, which, in China, was exacerbated by the Buddhist doctrine of karma leading lay Buddhists to exploit the forests to generate money for contributions to the temples in order accumulate karmic merit. Nonetheless, recent empirical studies have shown that snow leopard conservation has been facilitated in areas around Buddhist monasteries on the Tibetan plateau (Li et al. 2013). If White is half right, the received Judeo-Christian belief system accelerates our aggressive and manipulative tendencies. And if I and many of my colleagues in environmental philosophy are half right, the toxic mix of Cartesian dualism and Newtonian mechanism does as well. Leopold’s project of worldview remediation seeks to redirect human aggression and manipulation in ways that are consonant with the ways of Nature. As he put it, the goal is to achieve “a universal symbiosis with land, economic and esthetic, public and private’—in other words, a human harmony with Nature (Leopold 1933). Environmentalists should therefore encourage the exposition and inculcation of Daoist, Buddhist, and other legacy braking belief systems and their associated environmental ethics wherever they may take hold (Callicott 1994). Thanks in no small measure to White, thinkers in the Abrahamic religious traditions responded to his critique by developing a very powerfulimage not availableimage not availableimage not availableimage not availableimage not availableimage not availableimage not availableimage not availableimage not availableimage not availableimage not availableimage not availableimage not availableimage not availableimage not availableimage not availablea You have either reached 2 page thts unevalale fer vowing or reached your ievina tit for his book.a You have either reached 2 page thts unevalale fer vowing or reached your ievina tit for his book.image not availablea You have either reached 2 page thts unevalale fer vowing or reached your ievina tit for his book.a You have either reached 2 page thts unevalale fer vowing or reached your ievina tit for his book.a You have either reached 2 page thts unevalale fer vowing or reached your ievina tit for his book.a You have either 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reached 2 page thts unevalale fer vowing or reached your ievina tit for his book.a You have either reached 2 page thts unevalale fer vowing or reached your ievina tit for his book.a You have either reached 2 page thts unevalale fer vowing or reached your ievina tit for his book.a You have either reached 2 page thts unevalale fer vowing or reached your ievina tit for his book.a You have either reached 2 page thts unevalale fer vowing or reached your ievina tit for his book.a You have either reached 2 page thts unevalale fer vowing or reached your ievina tit for his book.a You have either reached 2 page thts unevalale fer vowing or reached your ievina tit for his book.a You have either reached 2 page thts unevalale fer vowing or reached your ievina tit for his book.a You have either reached 2 page thts unevalale fer vowing or reached your ievina tit for his book.a You have either reached 2 page thts unevalale fer vowing or reached your ievina tit for his book.a You have either reached 2 page thts unevalale fer vowing or reached your ievina tit for his book.a You have either reached 2 page thts unevalale fer vowing or reached your ievina tit for his book.image not availableimage not availableimage not availableNash, Roderick 35 Native American cultures 75-87; see also Plains Indians New England 56-57, 68 new materialism 174-175 Oelschlaeger, Max 7 Orthodox Christianity see Christianity, Eastern Orthodox paganism 3, 41, 77, 79, 189 Paradise Lost (John Milton) 68-69 Paris Agreement on Climate Change (2015) 117 patriarchy 143-144 philosophy, environmental 10, 12, 33-44 Plains Indians 83, 181 Presbyterians 48, 56-58, 87, 89; see also Calvinism Protestantism 26-27, 47-58, 65-74, 107; Evangelical, 54-55, 103; see also Calvin, John; Calvinists; Presbyterians queer theory 174-175 Rappaport, Roy 182, 192n9 6, 98, 129, religion 2, 158, 170-171, 188 religious pluralism 15-16 restoration ecology see ecological restoration Rewilding 161 ritual 182-191 Romanticism 69-70 Santmire, Paul 7, 51, 186, 193018 science 36, 39-40, 142-143, 155, 168 Shakespeare, William 1, 180-181 shame 178-179, 190, 192 n1 Silent Spring (Rachel Carson) 35 Snyder, Gary 76 spiritual ecology 95-98 stewardship 103, 108 Stonewall 166 story see Narrativea You have either reached 2 page thts unevalale fer vowing or reached your ievina tit for his book.